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Foster: The problem today is that evangelism has reached the point of diminishing returns. I talk with people and they say, "What am I to be converted to? I look at Christians and statistically they aren't any different." You want to be able to point to people who are really different. Willard: … and people who are running a bank or a school, or functioning in government, maybe even in the military. What we need is more examples of people who actually have character that is Christlike. Isaiah brought up this problem of people whose lips are "near me" but...

<p>The Bush White House has been accused of lying about all kinds of things, most of the time without proof. But a flap over its low-balled cost estimates for the new Medicare prescription drug benefit has even its allies concerned.</p>

<p>WASHINGTON, March 16 (UPI) -- Democrats are urging President Bush not to retaliate against a whistleblower who spoke out on alleged White House efforts to suppress Medicare program.</p> <p>A letter sent to Bush Monday by Sens. Jon Corzine, D-N.J., Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., and Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., asked Bush to instruct staff to avoid taking action against Richard Foster for speaking out about alleged White House efforts aimed at keeping Congress in the dark about alternative higher cost estimates for the new Medicare prescription drug program.</p>

Democrats called Saturday for an investigation of charges that the Bush administration threatened to fire a top Medicare official if he gave data to Congress showing the high costs of hotly contested Medicare legislation. The official, Richard S. Foster, chief actuary of the Medicare program, said he had been formally told not to provide the information to Congress. Moreover, he said, he was told that "the consequences of insubordination would be very severe." Senior officials at the Medicare agency made it clear that "they would try and fire me" for responding directly to inquiries from Congress, Mr. Foster said in...

<p>The government's longtime chief analyst of Medicare costs said yesterday that Bush administration officials threatened to fire him last year if he disclosed to Congress that he believed the prescription drug legislation favored by the White House would prove far more expensive than lawmakers had been told.</p>

<p>A U.S. Medicare cost analyst says the White House threatened his job if he revealed the real cost of prescription drug benefits President Bush wanted.</p> <p>Richard Foster, a Department of Health and Human Services official who has been Medicare's chief actuary for nine years, said the top Medicare administrator, and perhaps White House officials, were withholding information on what changes to the program would cost, the Washington Post reported Saturday.</p>

WASHINGTON — The government's top expert on Medicare costs was warned that he would be fired if he told key lawmakers about a series of Bush administration cost estimates that could have torpedoed congressional passage of the White House-backed Medicare prescription-drug plan. When the House passed the controversial benefit by five votes in November, the White House was embracing an estimate by the Congressional Budget Office that it would cost $395 billion in the first 10 years. But the administration's analysts in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services had concluded months earlier that the drug benefit could cost upward...