Hugh Hewitt has now criticized me twice (at least) for raising a simple question earlier this week: Why aren’t evangelicals more concerned about the fact that Harriet Miers ran the Texas lottery? Memo to HH: Of course I recognize that evangelicals make up a diverse group with varied opinions on the merits and morals of gambling. But a large number of them also oppose it passionately. Earlier this year, Jim Dobson, Chuck Colson, and more than 200 other religious leaders signed an open letter that called gambling a “menace to our national welfare.” Well, what’s the Texas lottery if not state-sponsored gambling? (Go here for more evangelical perspectives on lotteries.) Miers’ public record is thin, but the Texas lottery is part of it. Perhaps she disagrees with Dobson and other evangelical leaders on whether governments should be in the gambling business. Perhaps she even took the lottery job, as Hewitt suggests, “with the aim of improving it” (whatever that means). I would certainly like to know more. I just wish Hewitt didn’t consider the question inconvenient.