Anti-God Insanity – Court Rules No Prayer In Public

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” 1st Amendment, United States Constitution

Obviously, prohibiting the free exercise thereof is perfectly Constitutional according to our Godless court systems and depraved judiciary, especially if you are a coach and do something as outrageous as bowing your head or taking a knee while your team prays before a game.

God is going to laugh at this nation in the day of our calamity for our brazen rejection of Him and His Ways and Laws in a nation so bereft of wisdom, it’s frightening.

Court: E. Brunswick football coach can’t kneel, bow head as team prays

The East Brunswick school board was within its rights to tell a football coach he cannot kneel and bow his head as members of his team have a student-led pre-game prayer, a federal appeals court ruled today.

The ruling from the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia reversed a lower-court ruling made almost two years ago.

All three members of the three-judge panel wrote their own opinions on the issue, which pits the right to free speech against the freedom from official establishment of a religion.

The judges agreed the East Brunswick Board of Education’s policy barring school staff from joining in student-led was constitutional. But the judges differed on what exactly a coach should do when his team prays.

From the time Marcus Borden became the Bears’ coach in 1983, he was deeply involved in team prayers; for a time, he even led them. In 2005, school officials received complaints that he was leading prayers and asked him to stop participating.

He sued the school board seeking to be allowed to bow his head and kneel when students led their own prayers. A lower-court judge found that should be allowed.

The East Brunswick Board of Education appealed Cavanaugh’s ruling, saying that by taking a knee and bowing his head, Borden was endorsing religion whether he mouthed the words with his players or not.

The appeal was taken over by Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a Washington, D.C., group that opposes prayer in schools.

“We find that based on the history of Borden’s conduct with the team’s players, his acts cross the line and constitute an unconstitutional endorsement of religion,” the judges wrote in the ruling. “Although Borden believes that he must continue to engage in these actions to demonstrate solidarity with his team…we must consider whether a reasonable observer would perceive his actions as endorsing religion, not whether Borden intends to endorse religion.”

Ronald Riccio, the Morristown-based attorney representing Borden, said he plans to appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“The supreme court should hear this case because so far, there have been four judges who rendered an opinion that’s different from the other’s decision. There are decisions around the country that go both ways. This is primed for the supreme court,” he said.

No Risk Freedom: Nanny State Government Will Control Everything – From Housing To Religion

Another thought-provoking essay by Mark Steyn.

Let’s have a free market for housing and religion

By Mark Steyn

Last week the Bush administration decided to “freeze” for five years the interest rates of certain types of mortgages. You’ve probably caught the tail end of news stories about “subprime” home loans, lots of foreclosures, etc. Never a happy moment when the bank takes the farm.

So now the government has stepped in and said that, if you fall into a particular category of adjustable-rate mortgage (ARMs, in the biz) and you’re worried that it’s getting way too adjustable, don’t worry: The Nanny State is about to readjust it well inside your comfort zone. By fiat of the Treasury secretary, your adjustable-rate mortgage is henceforth an unadjustable adjustable-rate mortgage. These new UNARMs will spread their healing balm across the land until it’s safe enough for the housing “market” to once again be exposed to market forces.

The government has, in effect, nullified the terms of legal contracts mutually agreed by both parties — borrower and lender, Mr. and Mrs. Joe Schmoe and the First National Bank of Pleasantville.

This is a pretty remarkable act by a “conservative” administration. The government’s general absolution for imprudence by both borrower and lender doesn’t seem a smart move — for the U.S. credit markets, for real estate, for responsible borrowers for future homeowners, or for state and municipal taxpayers whose governments are being encouraged by Washington to bail out home “owners” by issuing tax-free debt.

Democrats bemoan the lack of “affordable housing” while simultaneously demanding government rescue home “owners” with unsustainable mortgages. But saving the latter obstructs the former: the principal benefit of a property-bubble correction is, after all, much more “affordable housing.”

One of the great strengths of the United States is that property is not, by comparison with other developed nations, an overspeculative enterprise. Most of us buy a house, and it increases respectably in value but not spectacularly. In Britain, by contrast, you buy a basement flat in a rundown slum for a quarter-million pounds, put a cat flap in the back door and sell it as “extensively remodeled” for a half-million pounds.

I write often about the demographic decline in Europe — the lack of children — but quite a bit of that has to do with the space constraints. If you’re living in a small apartment, as many Germans do, do you really want three kids clogging up the joint?

America is one of the cheapest places in the developed world to buy a four-bedroom house on a one-acre lot. A few years back, I noted that a three-bedroom, air-conditioned home in Crawford, Texas, cost $30,000, but, if that sounds a bit steep, you could get a couple of acres and a double-wide for about a fifth of the cost. And a rather sour leftie said, well, what do you expect? Bush moves in, and there goes the neighborhood. Well, if that’s the case, you’d think he’d be applying the Crawford Effect and depressing the property market nationwide instead of artificially obstructing its operation.

One shouldn’t overstate the administration’s actions: in Zimbabwe, the government seizes your property; in the United States, the government seizes your property contract and then hands it back to you all fluffy and painless.

Comment: Unless of course the local government wants your property to put up condos and strip malls for windfall tax profits – then, as the KELO case in SCOTUS proves – the government can take your property and defy the Constitutional requirement of just compensation by redefining market compensation to whatever compensation the government feels like giving you.

Yet out on the campaign trail no candidate initially seemed very bothered by it. Musing on various ninnyish programs being mooted by candidates of both parties, Fred Thompson said the other day, “I don’t think that it’s the primary responsibility of the federal government to tell you what to eat.” It’s apparently not the primary responsibility of the government to tell you to suck it up (which is what columnist Michelle Malkin proposed as an alternative outreach plan to troubled mortgage holders). “The fact of the matter is we got an awful lot of knowledge,” Sen. Thompson continued. “Sometimes we don’t have a whole lot of will power, and I don’t know of any government program that’s going to instill that.”

There don’t seem to be a lot of takers for small government out on the hustings this season. We were told by plenty of experts that this would be the year in which the Christian right would be rendered politically irrelevant: Nominating Rudy Giuliani (a pro-choice candidate positively Chiracesque in his sexual habits and the taxpayer funding thereof) would leave the religious right out on the fringe. Instead, the evangelicals found a candidate, destabilized the race, and we’ve spent the past couple of weeks talking about nothing but religion. Mike Huckabee’s declaration in his Iowa advertising that he is a “Christian leader” seems a barely coded dig at Mitt Romney’s Mormonism, and Mitt’s big speech Thursday was his own attempt to put the Mormon question to bed.

As far as Christian conservatives are concerned, Gov. Huckabee is obviously a sincere Christian. But he doesn’t seem to be any kind of a conservative — not if you look at his record on domestic policy.

As for Gov. Romney, one of the most interesting passages of his speech was his contrast of America’s faith with Europe’s: “I’m not sure that we fully appreciate the profound implications of our tradition of religious liberty,” he said. “I have visited many of the magnificent cathedrals in Europe. They are so inspired … so grand … so empty. Raised up over generations, long ago, so many of the cathedrals now stand as the postcard backdrop to societies just too busy or too ‘enlightened’ to venture inside and kneel in prayer. The establishment of state religions in Europe did no favor to Europe’s churches.”

That’s very true. As America demonstrates, faith thrives in a free market. In Europe, the established church, whether formal (the Church of England) or informal (as in Catholic Italy and Spain), killed religion as surely as state ownership killed the British car industry. When the Episcopal Church degenerates into wimpsville relativist milquetoast mush, Americans go elsewhere. When the Church of England undergoes similar institutional decline, Britons give up on religion entirely.

Instead of a state church, Europe believes in the state as church — the all-powerful beneficent provider of cradle-to-grave welfare.

“Freedom requires religion,” said Mitt Romney, and, whether or not one agrees, in Europe big government has led naturally to small religion — a point Gov. Huckabee might want to ponder. I would rather we talked less about religion in America (which can take care of itself) and more about government, which seems to be trending in an alarmingly European direction, Democrats and Republicans disagreeing merely on the speed at which we’ll get there. Yet the two are explicitly connected.

Europe’s religious decline derives in part from the state’s usurpation and annexation of so many of the other supporting structures of society, including the church. I am in favor of a free market in religion and a free market in housing, but right now I’d like a conservative candidate with a clear-headed commitment to both.

Unfortunately in America, a growing majority no longer have faith in their church, instead they have shifted responsibility to the government, which will replace the church in charity and as arbiter of liberty.

Such is the path of tyranny.

For States of men in power will suffer no rivals of allegience, whether to God or anthing else.

Religion becomes faith in the state, and the state becomes the religion. Something you are witnessing happen right before your very eyes.

Banning Roadside Memorials – Can Arlington National Cemetery Be Far Behind?

The Secularists never stop, and it’s a battle they will wage until all public view of God is removed from society.

The question remains, will Christians just let them without a fight?

Well, not in Utah, thank the Lord.

Families of Fallen Utah Highway Patrol Troopers Fight Atheist Group Over Roadside Cross Memorials

If a national atheist organization has its way, a series of 12-foot-tall memorial crosses that adorn Utah’s highways will be taken down.

But not if the families of the people those crosses honor — state Highway Patrol troopers killed in the line of duty — have anything to say about it.

American Atheists Inc. has filed a federal lawsuit, arguing that the 13 white, steel crosses represent the death of Jesus Christ and therefore violate the First Amendment to the Constitution, which prohibits government establishment of religion.

But the families of the fallen heroes say otherwise. They say the crosses, which bear the names and badge numbers of the troopers, were built strictly as memorials.

…”I think it’s ridiculous that a small group of offended atheists would seek to stop the family of slain troopers from honoring their loved ones as they see fit,” said Byron Babione, senior legal counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, which represents the Utah Highway Patrol Association.

The New Jersey-based American Atheists filed suit in 2005, arguing that the crosses symbolize Christianity and break state and federal laws against roadside memorials.

Isn’t it amazing how an Atheist Org out of New Jersey thinks it needs to meddle in the affairs of those citizens in Utah??

I’m sure that scouring the land there in Utah – they were able to find ONE SHMOE who was willing to complain so the full weight of Northeastern Scularists can be brought to bear on memorials in Utah.

“They know very well that the cross is a Christian symbol,” said Dave Silverman, spokesman for the group. “They are breaking the law by putting up memorials for fallen heroes.”

The Utah Highway Patrol Association, a private organization, designed and constructed the memorials with private funding in 1998. Private citizens can memorialize troopers who died in the line of duty, under Utah state law, Babione said.

“There’s nothing unconstitutional here because the memorials cost taxpayers nothing,” he said.

But Brian Barnard, a lawyer representing American Atheists, said the memorial is a Roman cross, which symbolizes Christianity.

“The use of those crosses constitutes and endorses Christianity,” Barnard said. “Although it’s an acknowledgement of the death of these troopers, it is also an endorsement of Christianity.”

Barnard said the highway association downplays the significance of the cross, claiming it is a secular symbol.

I think it does not help to give the Secularists ammo and make statements like that which will turn the argument into whether a cross is a Christian symbol or not. Everyone is aware that the cross symbolizes both faith and death as a marker. I think it would serve their interests better to simply say that it is indeed a cross – that is universally recognized as a memorial symbol that has both religious and cultural significance. Argue the point over whether having a memorial to fallen officers is an establishment of a state-run church rather than arguing over whether the cross is religious or not.

“There’s no question at all that these highway patrol troopers should be honored,” Barnard said. “We should all pause and thank them. But that can be done in a way that does not emphasize religion.”

The group is seeking the removal of the crosses and one dollar in monetary damages.

U.S. District Judge David Sam recently heard arguments in the case and will rule soon on the legality of the crosses.

If the secularists succeed in getting the Courts to ban these memorials, it will be a giant step in the high prize of getting rid of all the white cross memorials in our National Cemeteries.