Earlier this month, at the United Methodist Church’s (UMC) Quadrennial General Conference, the UMC’s governing body, voted overwhelmingly — 844 to 20 — to refer a petition to its South Central Jurisdiction. The petition urges the rejection of President Bush’s presidential library which is set to be housed at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

The library has received significant criticism from SMU faculty, Methodist ministers and the public because of an attached institute — independent of the university — that will sponsor programs designed to “promote the vision of the president” and “celebrate” Bush’s presidency.

The South Central Jurisdiction, which owns the university property where the library is set to be built, will vote on the petition this July. In anticipation of the vote, some Methodist ministers have launched a public relations campaign to highlight the partisan nature of the library:

[T]he opponents have hired a Maine public relations firm to design ads for Methodist publications and do other strategies, said the Rev. Andrew Weaver of Brooklyn, N.Y.

He said the goal is informing people about the partisan think tank, which won’t be under SMU’s control and will promote the Bush administration’s policies — such as the war with Iraq and harsh interrogation techniques of military prisoners — that some Methodists feel conflict with church teachings.

Library supporters argue that a smaller church council’s vote to authorize SMU to lease its land to the Bush Foundation last year for the library will stand, but ministers opposed to the institute “will not give up“:

But the opponents, who have raised $10,000 for the public relations campaign so far, are urging Methodists to keep fighting and send donations for the campaign to Rev. Bob Weathers, a former Fort Worth district superintendent. [...]

“This is really about the partisan institute, which will do the most damage over time,” Weaver said. “And it’s not just an issue in Texas. Methodists have pride in their name.”

Indeed, opponents have cause for concern that the institute will ignore the realities of Bush’s eight years in office. Advisers to the library said the “think tank” will “rely chiefly” on a design firm, rather than historians, to showcase Bush’s policies as president.

Ambinder sez: “McCain veepstakes team: it’s difficult to find another candidate who’s working harder for the party than Romney right now.”

Of course the problem with Romney as a VP choice is much the same as the problem with Romney as a Presidential nominee, namely that Romney’s a hugely unpopular phony loathed by most Americans. Indeed, this problem is even more acute as a VP choice since all indications are that John McCain is one of the millions of Americans who despite Mitt Romney. Now as I said many times during the GOP primary, I think all indications are that Romney, despite his professed desire to “double Gitmo,” would be a better president than McCain. But as a candidate, he would have been a terrible choice, all but ensuring a Democratic landslide. The VP pick can only do so much harm, but it would still be an idiotic choice.

Indeed, I think Romney’s VP campaign is, on some level, just a kind of kabuki. If McCain loses in the fall, which he probably will, conservatives will engage in a bout of wishful thinking and reach the conclusion that McCain was a weak candidate who lost because he’s too heterodox even though, in reality, it’s hard to imagine any non-McCain figure being even remotely competitive. That will then create some kind of opening that Romney could effectively exploit were it not for the fact that everyone hates Mitt Romney.

CNN reports that Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) has finally rejected the support of radical pastor John Hagee. McCain’s repudiation comes as recent attention has turned to a sermon in which Hagee said that Hitler was fulfilling God’s will:

McCAIN: Obviously, I find these remarks and others deeply offensive and indefensible and I repudiate them. I did not know of them before Reverend Hagee’s endorsement, and I feel I must reject his endorsement as well.

The audio of Hagee’s remarks was first posted by Bruce Wilson on Talk to Action and later circulated by the Huffington Post.

In February, McCain said he was “very honored by Pastor John Hagee’s endorsement.” After controversy broke out over offensive comments made by Hagee, McCain originally evoked Hagee’s support for Israel as his reason for continuing to embrace his support. McCain’s full statement is here.

Digg It!

UPDATE: Hagee has put out a statement saying that he withdraws his endorsement from McCain because he has “become a distraction in what should be a national debate about important issues.”

If you think of Karl Rove as a basically malign person who doesn’t care at all about the well-being of the American people or the world at large, this is a pretty clever point:

If Mr. Obama believes he can change the behavior of these nations by meeting without preconditions, he owes it to the voters to explain, in specific terms, what he can say that will lead these states to abandon their hostility. He also needs to explain why unconditional, unilateral meetings with Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or North Korea’s Kim Jong Il will not deeply unsettle our allies.

Obviously, the problem here is that it would be irresponsible for Obama to spell out publicly and in advance precisely what kind of deals he’d be aiming to strike with Iran or North Korea. Nobody negotiates for anything that way. But the plan here is that when Obama correctly declines to do that, Obama can then be mocked for allegedly having “secret plans” and so forth.

As with a lot of conservative national security gambits, I could easily imagine this working except for the fact that conservative foreign policy has at the moment been revealed as a huge and unpopular catastrophe which makes it easy to (accurately) shorthand these critiques as part and parcel of John McCain’s determination to continue with Bush’s failed policies. So I don’t see it working. But qua talking point, it’s a good one.

The House Judiciary Committee issued a subpoena today to Karl Rove, to compel him to testify about the politicization of the Justice Department, including his involvement in the firing of nine U.S. attorneys last year and the prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman. The subpoena comes after Rove’s lawyer, Robert Luskin, wrote the Committee yesterday to say Rove would not testify voluntarily, contrary to what Luskin had indicated last month.