President Barack Obama Thursday unveiled his administration’s plans to expand both the scope and power of the “faith-based” initiatives that were introduced eight years ago by the Bush White House…

The proposal represents a significant escalation of the assault on the constitutional principle of the separation of church and state, one of the bedrock foundations of the American republic. This attack is all the more egregious given campaign pledges made by Obama- himself a former professor of constitutional law-to amend the most flagrant elements of the Bush administration’s pandering to the Christian right.