Sharlet: Daschle defeater John Thune cites spiritual influence of a man who cites spiritual model of Osama Bin Laden. In this Q&A Christianity Today conducted with Senator Thune (R, SD), he says that the “C Street ministry” of Doug Coe helped keep him on the Christian path when he was a Representative. As it happens, I’ve witnessed that “ministry”; here’s what I wrote about it in Harper’s: “The day I worked at C Street I ran into Doug Coe, who was tutoring Todd Tiahrt, a Republican congressman from Kansas…. ‘We gotta take Jesus out of the religious wrapping,’ [Coe said.] ‘All right, how do we do that?’ Tiahrt asked. ‘A covenant,’ Doug answered…. ‘Like the Mafia,’ Doug clarified. ‘Look at the strength of their bonds.” He made a fist and held it before Tiahrt’s face…. Coe listed other men who had changed the world through the strength of the covenants they had forged with their ‘brothers’: ‘Look at Hitler,’ he said. ‘Lenin, Ho Chi Minh, Bin Laden.'”