did see part of it and thought Obama did an excellent job, as did another minister I spoke with ..(both good Democrats, also)

However we didn't talk about it at all in my Sunday School Class. Our program today was our representative to Jurisdictional Conference to give us the LowDown on the Conference, which we have every 4 years. This conference elects new bishops, and conducts other regional business. However.......

This was the one where the big vote was happening regarding SMU and the Library.

Turns out the speaker (and I also consider her a friend) was one of the initial instigators of the movement to get the Think Tank/Policy Institute kicked out of the package. She actually is a Republican and openly admitted to our class (which took a lot of guts in THAT room) that she had only voted Democratic once and that was for JFK. She told us that because she wanted to emphasize her objections to the project are not partisan in nature.

She was steadfastly opposed to the Policy Institute sharing campus with the Library itself much less SMU. Period. As she pointed out, Jimmy Carter's deal is not part of the Library. No other presidential library has anything of that type on the campus with the library and museum, and she went to all 12 of them to see how they were done. Not all of the former presidents have policy institutes, either.

Also the manner in which the whole thing was put through was not in accordance with the Judicial rules of the United Methodist Book of Discipline and therefore there is still a chance to stop it.

She said "Library, Schmibary, don't really care about that part but this other thing just has to go, you know?" If you could have heard her tell this you would have done a lot of laughing because this woman is a hoot; very droll and funny with lots of little editorial asides (former teacher, wish she had been mine).

The Bishop's Judiciary Council of the Jurisdiction still has the opportunity to vote on this in October, and they can tell SMU to withhold the lease on the Policy Institute, and if they do that it is probably as far as they will go, but it is a good start.