For those of you who don't know who he is, here is a brief description from Wikipedia:

Richard D. "Rick" Warren is the founder and senior pastor of the evangelical megachurch, Saddleback Church, in Lake Forest, California, currently the fourth largest church in the United States. He is also a bestselling author of many Christian books, including his guide to Christian church ministry and evangelism entitled The Purpose Driven Church, which has spawned a series of conferences on Christian ministry and evangelism. He is perhaps most famously known for the subsequent devotional The Purpose Driven Life, which has sold over 20 million copies, becoming one of the best selling non-fiction books of all time. He has been christened by the media as "America's Pastor."

Warren holds conservative theological and political views. Though maintaining traditional evangelical positions on issues such as abortion and gay marriage, Warren has called on the church to also focus its efforts on causes not traditionally associated with evangelicals, such as fighting international poverty and disease, expanding educational opportunities for the marginalized, and caring for the environment.

From a political standpoint, I think the choice is pure genius.  Obama has invoked the wrath of the Far Left, but what is the Far Left going to do, vote Republican?  More importantly, Obama is fighting Republicans on their own turf, and the Republicans have already been beaten on every bit of other turf in America.  They are on the ropes, and Obama hasn't stopped swinging.

But the cleverest thing about the choice, whatever Obama's motivations may be, is that it genuinely is a "reaching across the aisle" kind of motion.  Obama is cutting out the Republicans' legs from underneath them, who are equally confused by the choice.  They won't be able to paint him as some kind of left-wing elitist or a limousine liberal in 2012 if Obama keeps doing things like this.  Obama is opening up a new front on the political battlefied, and is trying to steal away the Republicans most reliable voter base, Evangelicals.  Evangelicals went about 75-25 for McCain in November.  Obama is trying to shrink that gap.  If Obama can start stealing away Evangelicals, the Republican Party might implode.  They can't play the culture war card as effectively if Obama neutralizes it before it even gets out of the gate.

From a social standpoint, this is the kind of thing that while it may not immediately change anything at least creates a new kind of political and social dialog.  And Rick Warren is the perfect guy for the job.  He has an aggressive humanitarian agenda alongside his social agenda.  "You don't have to see eye to eye to walk hand in hand," he said in a speech to a group of Muslims in California.  It remains to be seen if this will change anything, but it is decisions like this that have the potential to change things.

I give Obama an A+ on the choice.  Even if it is completely a political charade, Obama is painting himself as a uniter rather than a divider by angering members of his own party (independents and even Republicans can respect that).  He is also opening a new front against the Republican Party, religion.  Republicans have essentially owned religion as a political issue, and Obama is trying to take it away from them.  This is pure genius on Obama's part, and that is not even considering the fact that this very well could be the kind of thing that makes America a less divided place.

Obama has essentially taken the Karl Rove playbook, flipped it upside down, and made it work for him even more effectively, since he is relying on uniting rather than dividing as Rove did.  Rove had a "You only need 51% to win strategy" whereas Obama is aiming for 60%.  Bravo to Obama.  So far he has been one of the cleverest political minds of this century.  I would been genuinely frightened if I was a member of the Republican National Committee.

Honestly, when Obama was campaigning on being very non-partisan I thought he was just "Blowing smoke up my butt" but his cabinet postings seem to indicate that he is not as much of a hard-line Democrat as his voting history would suggest ...

I could be wrong, but I think Obama may have been very honest when he said the choice of Rick Warren was because he wanted to demonstrate that people could find common ground and work together to make things better.

I see it as a slap in the face of the gay people who supported him in California.

It was bad enough that Obama's election is what drove the Prop 8 vote over the top...

Obama really owes them if you ask me and should push hard for a gay marriage bill even if he can't get it done.

You forget that Obama explicitly said throughout the campaign that he doesn't support gay marriage.  He is for civil unions, etc.  Though he did say the Prop 8 was a terrible mistake and that it was discriminatory and divisive.

I am in the same boat with you, I am a strong advocate of gay marriage.

But its just too hot of a political football right now for Obama to handle.  And honestly it is the kind of issue that only the Supreme Court could effectively solve anyways.  Once something gains Constitutional protection, it isn't going anywhere.  A statute can be repealed in a heartbeat.  Its about the flimsiest protection you can get.

You yourself however stated that Obama really was for gay marriage and that's just what democrats say to get elected.

If he could get a national law passed for it... it would stay around for a while since it could likely be stalled out.

His first 6 months in office Obama should be able to pass pretty much anything.  Even a gay marriage bill.

Aside from which, even if he really was against gay marriage... this is still a giant slap in their face... when I mean... i bet you'd be hard pressed to find a demographic that broke more for Obama then gay people.

I am about 95% confident that Obama is for gay marriage deep down, but he is fairly religious.  Not to mention he is black.  For all I know he actually could be against it and he isn't just lying.

Forcing something like that on the American people would go completely against what Obama ran on though (governing from the middle, and the middle doesn't want gay marriage).  It would also reignite the culture wars and allow the Republicans to tar and feather Obama.

Obama would waste all his political capital and come off as an elitist if he forced a gay marriage bill on the country, or even if he passively let Congress do it.  It would be like dropping an anchor right through the middle of the Democratic Party.

Obama is biding his time and accumulating political capital.  He has successfully moved the country slightly more towards the left (75% of Americans want the government to change the way our healthcare system works, and 87% of the country wants the government to offer more cheap/free healthcare for children).  He is doing what it takes to build a lasting majority (which also means appointing more judges to the Supreme Court). 

I'm not saying it is right to let the Supreme Court take the heat for making a decision like this, but that is really the only way to make something like gay marriage permanent.  If Obama pushed a bill through Congress legalizing gay marriage, what would stop the next Republican congressional majority from repealing it?  And Obama would make it even more likely to happen by wrecking the Democratic Party like that.

Obama is making the right choice to maintain power and to give the American people what they want.  Politics isn't always about doing what is morally "right".  And a majority of Americans don't think gay marriage is morally "right", so its hard to say you have the moral high ground.

You don't have to convince me that gay marriage is something that should be constitutionally protected, but Obama is making the wisest decision he can make.  Reigniting the culture wars would contradict everything he ran on.

That still doesn't make it right for him to pal around with one of Prop 8's biggest supporters.

I mean it's just an outright low blow and has to be pretty disfranchising.

It's sad when you have to tolerate a beating just because you think the other side would be worse to you.

You said you wondered why there were so many Log Cabin republicans....

This is why.  Neither side is ever going to do anything for them since we've long past the days where polticians made moral stands against popular opinion.

I think you're both right. I wish it wasn't such a slap in the face of the gay community, but I think the amount of evangelical votes he can steal will be infinitely higher than the amount of gay voters he'll turn to the Republican party (zero). And it does give him a lot of aisle-crossing credibility.

I completely agree with you.  Gay people are the new blacks.  But just because you are "palling around" with someone doesn't mean you support everything they say.  Should Democrats who support gay marriage never associate with Republicans who don't?  That creates more problems than it solves.

It is disenfranchising to gay people, I completely agree, and it is unfair to them.

But what you are suggesting could make it take even longer for gay marriage to become a reality.  Even if Obama managed to pass a law that made gay marriage legal (which he may not even agree with), it could easily be repealed.  If Obama wants to effectively do this (assuming of course he does), the Supreme Court is his most effective route.

Souter, Kennedy, and Ginsburg will probably all retire within eight years, especially because a Democrat is President.  They are the oldest justices, and are reliably to fairly liberal.  Scalia is 70 years old, which means even he may kick the bucket within the next 8 years, and if not then likely within the next 4.

If Obama or a Democratic successor could replace the three liberal judges with three more liberal judges and also fill Scalia's seat with a liberal, the court would likely advocate constitutional protection of gay marriage by a 5-4 or 6-3 decision.  A decision like this can take decades to reverse, and the longer it is around the less likely it will be reversed.

What you are advocating isn't necessarily in gay people's best interests.  Gay marriage would become an even bigger hot button issue than it is now, and the American public might revolt if it was pushed down their throats.  Republicans would run on repealing gay marriage next election, which would put us back to square one.  It might even put us further back than we are now since the American public would be so enraged that the Democratic Party decided to impose this upon them.

Even if Obama made the "morally right" choice, he might ruin gay people's chance of ever being able to marry.  Is that what is best for gay people?  Sometimes you have to bide your time on an issue like this and not jump all over it like a frat boy all over a sorority girl.

I am uncertain if Souter will retire. He is the youngest of the liberal bloc of the SC. Stevens and Ginsberg will probably retire during Obama's first term. The most intriguing possibility is who will replace Kennedy; he votes equally with the conservative and liberal blocs. Whoever replaces Kennedy could be the deciding vote on many important cases.

OT-It was a shrewd selection by Obama. It shows he is willing to tolerate people whose views are divergent from his, but this is a relatively unimportant selection. Liberals may be vexed with the choice of Warren, but revolting against Obama because of whom he picked to deliver the invocation would be a silly action.