| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"" |
| Date: |
22 Jul 2007 12:04:43 PM |
| Object: |
Bush's church-state mess takes liberties with ours |
Bush's church-state mess takes liberties with ours
http://www.sptimes.com/2007/07/01/Columns/Bush_s_church_state_m.shtml
By ROBYN BLUMNER
Published July 1, 2007
When President Bush finally leaves office in January 2009, he will leave
behind many legacies. One will be a nation stripped of its moral bearings.
Where once we did not torture and were a nation of laws, that is no longer
true. Bush will also leave us in far reduced international standing and
with a disabled military. And he will leave an exhausted treasury with a
national debt of many trillions of dollars more than he found it.
In additional to all that, Bush will leave us with a system of church-state
entanglements on an epic scale. By pouring billions of dollars into
religiously affiliated social service providers, Bush will have
accomplished precisely what the nation's founders warned against: a process
by which people of many faiths and none at all are forced through
compulsory taxation to underwrite other people's religious activities.
A group of freethinkers called the Freedom from Religion Foundation based
in Wisconsin took action against the administration's faith-based policies.
The foundation and three leaders of FFRF, as taxpayers, sued the director
of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives as well
as the heads of eight additional faith-based offices - all created by Bush
through executive fiat. The suit alleged that these agencies were using tax
dollars to advance and promote religion.
It is pretty clear that the faith-based agenda of the Bush administration
has been to do precisely what FFRF alleges. The regional conferences that
the faith-based offices hold have had the feel of revival meetings where
participants have been so whipped up they've been known to speak in
tongues.
The Government Accountability Office issued a report in 2006 finding that
the faith-based recipients of federal grants are not sufficiently policed
to ensure that they don't discriminate in their services on the basis of
religion. It found that some grantees engage in overtly religious
activities, such as praying, while providing government-funded social
services.
The suit could have put all the unconstitutional activities of the
administration's faith-based agencies under a microscope. But first the
litigants had to get past the Bush-packed U.S. Supreme Court. Something
they could not do.
Lost in all the attention that other end-of-term cases received, Hein vs.
Freedom from Religion Foundation Inc. was as momentous as any. The 5-4
ruling with the majority consisting of the conservatives on the court,
including Bush's two appointees, will help insulate Bush's faith-based
agenda from legitimate legal challenge. The justices kicked FFRF out of
court as well as any taxpayer who wants to object to executive branch
expenditures on religious activities. They said that taxpayers don't have
standing to sue.
The notion of standing is grounded in the limited jurisdiction of our
nation's federal courts. Only where a litigant suffers a cognizable injury
may a suit be brought. This keeps the courts from postulating on
hypothetical harms.
In general, taxpayers do not have standing to sue the federal government
when they object to the way their tax money is used. The injury is
considered too amorphous. But nearly 40 years ago the U.S. Supreme Court
recognized that the Establishment Clause, our guarantees of church-state
separation, is different. The high court noted that there are deep
historical roots associated with the injury inflicted when citizens are
forced to support church activities and beliefs they do not share.
James Madison's famous Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious
Assessments declared that no government in a free society may "force a
citizen to contribute 3 pence only of his property for the support of any
one establishment" of religion.
Being compelled to support others' faith was a wrong that the founders well
understood. To them, the religious wars and mass slaughter that came in the
wake of the Reformation were relatively fresh. Some had progenitors who
were part of the migration from Europe escaping religious tyranny. They
also saw the way minority religious groups in the colonies such as Quakers
and Baptists chafed at state-collected religious taxes.
For this unique and historically portentous harm, the court in 1968 granted
aggrieved taxpayers the ability to get into court and object.
But the court in 2007 has shut the courthouse door with a slam. The
majority made some nonsensical distinction between the 1968 case that
involved a congressional appropriation, and the fact that FFRF was seeking
to challenge a discretionary expenditure of the executive branch. The
four-member dissent accurately summed up the distinction as lacking any
basis in "logic or precedent."
There is now a four-member conservative plurality of the Roberts court that
is openly hostile toward those who seek to keep their tax money from
flowing into religious coffers. The dismantled wall between church and
state will be just another one of Bush's disastrous legacies.
**************************************************************
You are invited to check out the following:
The Rise of the Theocratic States of America
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/theocracy.htm
American Theocrats - Past and Present
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/theocrats.htm
The Constitutional Principle: Separation of Church and State
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html
[and to join the discussion group for the above site and/or Separation of
Church and State in general, listed below]
HRSepCnS · Hampton Roads [Virginia] SepChurch&State
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HRSepCnS/
[Its not just Hampton Roads folks who are members, there are members from
all over the US and a couple from overseas as well]
***************************************************************
.. . . You can't understand a phrase such as "Congress shall make no law
respecting an establishment of religion" by syllogistic reasoning. Words
take their meaning from social as well as textual contexts, which is why "a
page of history is worth a volume of logic." New York Trust Co. v. Eisner,
256 U.S. 345, 349, 41 S.Ct. 506, 507, 65 L.Ed. 963 (1921) (Holmes, J.).
Sherman v. Community Consol. Dist. 21, 980 F.2d 437, 445 (7th Cir. 1992)
.. . .
****************************************************************
USAF LT. COL (Ret) Buffman (Glen P. Goffin) wrote
"You pilot always into an unknown future;
facts are your only clue. Get the facts!"
That philosophy 'snipit' helped to get me, and my crew, through a good
many combat missions and far too many scary, inflight, emergencies.
It has also played a significant role in helping me to expose the
plethora of radical Christian propaganda and lies that we find at
almost every media turn.
*****************************************************************
THE CONSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLE:
SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html
****************************************************************
.
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| User: "ike milligan" |
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| Title: Re: Bush's church-state mess takes liberties with ours |
22 Jul 2007 10:34:59 PM |
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<buckeye-elo@nospam.net> wrote in message
news:kf37a3ts7verdbo0d2d2mml3gjfnca6phc@4ax.com...
Bush's church-state mess takes liberties with ours
http://www.sptimes.com/2007/07/01/Columns/Bush_s_church_state_m.shtml
By ROBYN BLUMNER
Published July 1, 2007
When President Bush finally leaves office in January 2009, he will leave
behind many legacies.
Assuming he does leave. Why not impeach now and start the ball rolling?
.
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