The furious backlash against Obama's selection of Rick Warren continues. On CNN, Jane Hamsher said Obama might as well have invited the "grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan" and argued that Warren is worse than Ahmadinejad and Chavez. Markos Moulitsas wonders when Obama will send out the invitations to David Duke and Fred Phelps. All the lefty rage makes me wonder why conservatives didn't go berserk when Bush chose a progressive to deliver his inaugural prayer in 2005. Sam Stein wrote yesterday:
At his 2005 inaugural, George W. Bush tapped Rev. Dr. Louis Leon to deliver the invocation. Like Obama and Warren, the two shared a commitment to combating AIDS in Africa, as well as a friendship from time spent in each other's company. But Leon was and is a progressive voice. And his selection in '04 sparked a lot of interest, though little of the outrage that we see with Warren.
This 2005 story provides a little more context on the divergence between Bush's views and those of Leon's church:
Theirs is a friendly relationship based in part on their shared love of Christ. But on many political and social issues, Bush and the St. John's clergy are not as compatible. The Episcopal Church officially supports legal abortion; the president does not. St. John's has blessed gay unions; the president has pushed a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. It opposes the death penalty; under Bush, Texas led the nation in executions. The bishop of the Washington diocese opposes the war in Iraq.