Jailhouse rock of ages

Jeb Bush shares one thing with his idiot brother, he’s hell bent to make you pay for spreading the Faith.  When I read that the Mullah of Tallahassee had just opened a “Faith Based” prison in Florida, I couldn’t believe my eyes.  What’s being called the nation's largest faith-and character-based prison will attempt to redeem prisoners through Jesus Christ at the taxpayers expense and the Constitution be damned.

According to Thursday’s Sun-Sentinel, Wakulla Correctional Institution in Florida’s panhandle offers religious training, choir practice, "life skills" and anger-management lessons and other spiritual activities to its 1600 prisoners seven days a week.

As the Republicans have been arguing against the redeemability of any inmate for more decades than I can count, this is a truly remarkable event in the annals of hypocrisy, if not the history of raiding the public treasury to promote State-approved religion.  Officials say that they are attempting to “serve” prisoners of all faiths and even of no faith, but the definition of “serve” is not specified. I would volunteer that it means “convert” as nearly all the religious instructors are Evangelicals.

Governor Bush told reporters he is pleased to see the faith-based program expand in the state, although he acknowledges that there is only anecdotal evidence that it's having an effect on reducing inmates' rate of returning to crime. There is no evidence at all that singing about Jesus all day has any better effect than literacy training and other education programs scorned by Republicans, but there is certainly a motive for prisoners to avoid gang-infested and dangerous jails by volunteering.  One has to question the sincerity of any conversions obtained in this way.

One does not have to question the audacity of Jeb, whose children all have criminal records, he just doesn’t care what the Constitution says any more than does his brother, St George the Crusader.