Good Books in Pennsylvania legislature

Pennsylvania funds the distribution of religion books to its lawmakers, according to a Washington Post On Faith blog [1].

At least the lawmakers get to choose their religious book—and the Catholic Bible is the most popular—but this sounds like a bad idea to me. Beyond the whole church-state debate, I’m sure that the Bible or other book will just fill a spot on the book shelf of most legislators—and for career politicians, it’ll find itself sitting next to a number of other unopened Good Books.

Here’s a great line from David Water’s blog: “You've got to wonder why it didn't occur to Pennsylvania legislators that they could have spent the $13,700 on more constitutionally appropriate gifts -- say Starbucks' coupons, books on the First Amendment, or copies of Gov. Ed Rendell's proposed 2009-2010 budget that cuts $417 million for school textbooks.”