Christ’s blood and candy cane stripes.

The New York Times reported today that the Bush administration “has recast the federal government’s role in civil rights by aggressively pursuing religion-oriented cases while significantly diminishing its involvement in the traditional area of race.” Cliff Schecter highlighted one notable excerpt (via Atrios):

The changes are evident in a variety of actions. They include:

-Supporting groups that want to send home religious literature with schoolchildren; in one case, the government helped win the right of a group in Massachusetts to distribute candy canes as part of a religious message that the red stripes represented the blood of Christ.