WHAT WOULD JESUS SPEND?

This would be hysterically funny if it weren't so pathetic. A conservative group is putting out a commercial this weekend using Jesus to emphasize the scale of the Obama stimulus package. The American Issues Project, which briefly aired a TV spot in last year's presidential race, will go up on Friday with a TV spot that compares the dollars spent in the package with the passage of time - "One million dollars a day since the birth of Jesus." Clever, huh? Sounds like a lot of money, too.

Here's what's missing though: the money spent on the Iraq war, at a million dollars a day, would take us back to around 380 A.D., when Christianity first became the official religion of the Roman Empire, another misuse of the legacy of Jesus by authoritarian fanatics, I guess.