Sam Brownback Goes to Prison

Chuch Colson writes:

Believe it or not, it’s less than fourteen months until the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. Thus, there’s hardly a potluck dinner or a PTA meeting in either state that won’t be graced by the presence of at least one would-be presidential candidate.

Even in the era of the “perpetual campaign,” there are some places where you don’t, however, expect to find possible presidential candidates. One of them used to be inside a prison.

I said, “used to be,” because Senator Sam Brownback (R) of Kansas, who has established a presidential exploratory committee, wasn’t in Iowa or New Hampshire this past weekend—he was in Louisiana. Specifically, he was in Angola, Louisiana, the site of one of America’s most famous—or infamous—prisons.

Brownback spent the night in a 7-by-10-foot cell. He called his night “a little rough,” adding, “I didn’t sleep the best.”

Obviously, Brownback didn’t spend the night at Angola for the accommodations. Nor did he do it as some kind of campaign stunt. As he put it, “There aren’t probably a lot of votes for me here.”

What was there was an opportunity to “promote religious-based prison efforts to curtail violence and provide inmates with an alternative to crime once—or if—they got out.”

Brownback told reporters, “We don’t want to build more prisons in the country [and] we don’t want to lock people up. We want people to be good, productive citizens.”

***
Ironically, on the same weekend that Brownback spent a night in prison promoting faith-based programs, the New York Times published a grossly misleading attack on the InnerChange Freedom Initiative. The contrast between competing visions of the common good couldn’t have been more stark: The Times ignores real-world results in order to maintain its slanted version of separation of church and state. Brownback, while also committed to this separation, insists that it doesn’t require the “removal of faith from the public square.”

Not unless your goal, that is, is to build more prisons.

Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
Pro-Life Senator Sam Brownback Says He'll Win GOP Presidential Primary

Brownback Eyes 2008 White House Bid

Students for Brownback

Looks Like Feddie's Endorsing Brownback, Too

Mr. Compassionate Conservative

Sen. Brownback Files Bill Against Assisted Suicide

Washington Post Profile on Sen. Sam Brownback

USCCB Official Expresses Gratitude to Sen. Brownback for Hearings on Capital Punishment

Senator Brownback Conducts Senate Hearings To Examine Pornography's Effects On Families, Society

Will This Catholic Senator Be the Next President?

Kansas Senator Brownback, Looking at Presidential Bid, Makes Faith the Bedrock of Campaign