By: E&P Staff An article in The Des Moines Register this morning announced the arrest of a local youth pastor on charges of sexual exploitation of a 17-year-old client but left out one key element of the story: the pastor?s embrace of President Bush?s ?values? in a meeting with the president last year.
The clergyman, Michael Hintz, 35, of Clive, Iowa, who is married with four children, ran a youth group at First Assembly of God Church in Des Moines. He was charged Monday with having an inappropriate relationship for several months this year with a girl he had counseled. If convicted he faces up to a year in prison.
According to the Register, Hintz was known for urging teens ?to avoid pursuing romantic relationships in favor of getting closer to God.?
But that wasn?t all he was known for. Last October, as the paper recalled, President Bush cited him as an example of a family that would realize tax savings with the signing of a tax relief bill. But that?s as far as the Register?s story went today.
But Tuesday, the popular
Eschaton blog had cited an Associated Press story from October, revealing that Bush had actually met Hintz and his wife during a swing through Iowa. At that time, Hintz embraced the moral-values issue, according to the AP account, saying, ?Where we are in this world, with not just the war on terror, but with the war with our culture that's going on, I think we need a man that is going to be in the White House like President Bush, that's going to stand by what he believes."
After Hintz said that in hoped to use part of his tax saving to go on vacation in Minnesota, Bush quipped: "Next year, maybe they'll want to come to Texas."
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