Posted on 07/17/2017 10:28:24 AM PDT by detective
Racisss!
Hasn’t this situation been litigated before? The Marxists have been arguing to get prayer out of local govt, schools, etc for all my life. Seems like we have won these cases before. Is this really the first time this has gotten this far?
I do believe that the enemy is just trying to gum up the works with as much as it can regardless of whether or not the issue has already been heard and decided.
To likewise extend the logic, what's next may be a ruling by a fed court that it is unconstitutional for any local or federal arm of government to play the national anthem at public gatherings because it too includes the words you cite: “In God We Trust”
May ALL Court Judges of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit who issued a 10-5 be required to ride the Iron Stallion from movie “The VIKINGS”.
That's the problem. Rowan County only allowed board members to lead prayers prior to the meeting and only Christians were on the board. No Jews, Hindus, Muslims, or any other faith. So all prayers offered were Christian in nature and that's why it was ruled unconstitutional.
Who says it’s a “prayer,” anyway? Why isn’t it a “speech” or “performance art”?
“What’s next? Appellate court declares all US money unconstitutional because it says “ In God We Trust”.
Certainly a possibility.
These clown judges need to be impeached. They have no knowledge of the Constitution.
Any criminal that was had to swear on a Bible and swear an oath (so help you God) immediately released.
I remember that case although not the details. I read Scalia’s words. It was about some small city or county meeting starting with a prayer, IIRC an east coast or NE state. And SCOTUS said it was constitutional.
So we have a judiciary gone totally wild and rogue.
Nazgul.
https://www.senate.gov/reference/office/chaplain.htm
I wonder whether the US Senate Chaplain, Reverend Barry C. Black, knows that his job is unconstitutional and has been since the first US Senate met in April of 1789.
What about the US House Chaplain - Reverend Patrick J. Conroy?
Freedom is a commodity bought with blood.
The tyranny of lawyers can only be conquered by a revolution
The Rowan County Board of Commissioners. Hence the suit.
Read the Court Decision. The Rowan County Board does not use a chaplain. It does not invite clergy from the community to give the prayer. The prayer is given by the elected officials themselves. The court ruled that constitutes a violation of the Establishment Clause.
Agree or disagree with the court, nothing in that decision says that the use of chaplains or the opening of legislative sessions with a prayer is in and of itself unconstitutional. But the manner in which is was being done in Rowan county was.
I think that is entirely too subtle a point to be an accurate representation of the meaning of the establishment clause. The court got it wrong.
“Read the Court Decision. The Rowan County Board does not use a chaplain. It does not invite clergy from the community to give the prayer. The prayer is given by the elected officials themselves. The court ruled that constitutes a violation of the Establishment Clause.
Agree or disagree with the court, nothing in that decision says that the use of chaplains or the opening of legislative sessions with a prayer is in and of itself unconstitutional.”
“Both houses of Congress allow members to deliver an opening invocation. The congressional record is replete with examples of legislators commencing legislative business with a prayer.”
The concept that prayer is only constitutional when delivered by a designated outside chaplain is utter nonsense and hopefully will be reversed upon appeal.
This decision has nothing whatsoever to do with the constitution. This is simply an attack on people of faith by the courts. It is simply an attempt to undermine freedom of religion. It is similar to attacks on freedom of speech and 2nd amendment right to bear arms.
Look at the plaintiffs in the case:
Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the American Humanist Association, The Anti-Defamation League, and the Freedom from Religion Foundation.
This is an attack on Christians and all people of faith.
"The United States Court of Appeals [??? emphasis added] for the Fourth Circuit issued a 10-5 decision on Friday ruling that Rowan County, N.C., county commissioners cannot begin official sessions with prayer, ..."
FR: Never Accept the Premise of Your Opponent’s Argument
From related threads …
I don’t know what the law schools are teaching, but it’s evidently not the federal government’s constitutionally limited powers as the Founding States had intended for those powers to be understood.
So with all due respect to mom & pop, please consider the following.
As a consequence of parents not making sure that their children are being taught the difference between legislative, executive and judicial powers, we now have the following major constitutional problem.
Regardless that the Founding States made the federal Constitution to prohibit Congress from making laws dealing with religious expression and free speech, anti-Christian factions long ago seem to have discovered that they could effectively repeal the 1st Amendment (1A) by doing the following.
Given voters who don’t have a grip on legislative, executive and judicial powers, all that anti-Christian factions needed to do was to encourage activist judges to effectively legislate politically correct, anti-religious expression laws from the bench, such judges actually stealing unique, 10th Amendment-protected state powers to address religious issues by doing so.
Sadly, regardless that Congress has the constitutional authority to deal with such judges, since corrupt Congress wrongly remains silent when judges water down first amendment protections, low-information citizens who value religious expression probably get the wrong impression that this is how the system is supposed to work and prematurely give up fighting the system for their rights.
Noting that patriots need to make sure that there are plenty of Trump-supporting candidates on the primary ballots for the 2018 elections, candidates who will send a bunch of judges home if elected, the rest of this post, borrowed from other threads, gives an idea how the country got into anti-Christian, separation of church and state political correctness.
—————
Let’s start this discussion by showing how FDR’s thug justices misrepresented “atheist” Thomas Jefferson and his “wall of church and state separation” with respect to the Founding States' intentions for the 1st Amendment’s (1A) prohibition on Congress’s power to regulate religion.
It turns out that the real Thomas Jefferson had explained that the states had made 10A in part to clarify that the states had retained uniquely to themselves the power to address religious issues, regardless that the states had made 1A in part to prohibit such powers entirely to Congress.
"3. Resolved that it is true as a general principle and is also expressly declared by one of the amendments to the constitution that -the powers not delegated to the US. by the constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively or to the people-: and that no power over the freedom of religion, freedom of speech, or freedom of the press being delegated to the US. by the constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, all lawful powers respecting the same did of right remain, & were reserved, to the states or the people: that thus was manifested their determination to retain to themselves the right of judging how far the licentiousness of speech and of the press may be abridged without lessening their useful freedom, and how far those abuses which cannot be separated from their use should be tolerated rather than the use be destroyed [emphasis added]; . . . " — Thomas Jefferson, Kentucky Resolutions, 1798 .
Although the 14th Amendment (14A) later expressly applied only the Constitution’s privileges and immunities to the states, FDR’s anti-state sovereignty, anti-Catholic justices wrongly (imo) argued that 14A also applied 1A’s prohibition on Congress’s power to make religion-related laws to the states. This is evidenced by the following excerpt from Cantwell v. State of Connecticut, 1940.
"The First Amendment declares that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. The Fourteenth Amendment has rendered the legislatures of the states as incompetent as Congress to enact such laws [emphasis added]. The constitutional inhibition of legislation on the subject of religion has a double aspect." --Mr. Justice Roberts, Cantwell v. State of Connecticut, 1940.
But what FDR’s activist justices wrongly ignored concerning the Cantwell excerpt is the following. The congressional record shows that Rep. John Bingham, the main author of Section 1 of 14A had clarified that 14A did not take away state powers.
"The adoption of the proposed amendment will take from the States no rights [emphasis added] that belong to the States." - John Bingham, Appendix to the Congressional Globe. (See bottom half of first column)
"No right [emphasis added] reserved by the Constitution to the States should be impaired . . ." —John Bingham, Appendix to the Congressional Globe. (See top half of 1st column)
"Do gentlemen say that by so legislating we would strike down the rights of the State [emphasis added]? God forbid. I believe our dual system of government essential to our national existence." - John Bingham, Appendix to the Congressional Globe. (See bottom half of third column)
Based on Bingham’s clarification that 14A preserved state powers, regardless what the Cantrell justices wanted everybody to think about the 1st Amendment’s prohibition of certain powers now applying to the states, the states still have the 10A-protected power, as Jefferson had indicated, to make religion-based laws, such laws now reasonably limited by 14A.
In fact, Justice Reed had noted that it was the job of judges to balance 10A-protected state powers with 14A-protected rights.
"Conflicts in the exercise of rights arise and the conflicting forces seek adjustments in the courts, as do these parties, claiming on the one side the freedom of religion, speech and the press, guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment, and on the other the right to employ the sovereign power explicitly reserved to the State by the Tenth Amendment to ensure orderly living without which constitutional guarantees of civil liberties would be a mockery." --Justice Reed, Jones v. City of Opelika, 1942.
But more powerful evidence of wrongdoing by FDR’s thug justices concerning their stifling of 10A-protected state power to legislatively address religious issues, power evidenced by the Jefferson excerpt above, is the following.
Based on the language in the Cantwell excerpt above, FDRs justices essentially used their politically correct interpretation of 14A as an excuse to effectively interpolate a constitutional amendment that prohibits the states from making religion-based laws, just like 1A prohibits Congress from making such laws.
Consider that such an amendment to the Constitution might read in part as follows.
"No State shall make any law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; . . ."
But here is the clincher regarding the Court’s dishonest argument in Cantwell that 14A “reasonably” applied 1A’s prohibition on religious powers to Congress to the states.
Several years after the ratification of 14A (1868), Representative James Blaine pushed for an anti-Roman Catholic amendment to the Constitution (1875) that began with the exact wording that the “hypothetical” wording above that FDRs thug justices seemingly based their statement in Cantwell on.
"No State shall make any law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; and no money raised by taxation in any State for the support of public schools, or derived from any public fund therefor, nor any public lands devoted thereto, shall ever be under the control of any religious sect; nor shall any money so raised or lands so devoted be divided between religious sects or denominations." —failed Blaine Amendment to the Constitution
So what FDR’s anti-Catholic justices probably didn’t want citizens to know concerning their tortured interpolation of 14A in Cantwell, claiming that 14A applied 1A’s prohibition on religious laws to Congress to the states, is that the pre-17th Amendment Senate had killed Rep. Blaine’s amendment in the Constitution’s Article V amendment process, thus completely discrediting imo, the Court's later politically correct interpolation of 14A with respect to 1A in Cantwell.
"The Constitution was written to be understood by the voters; its words and phrases were used in their normal and ordinary, as distinguished from technical, meaning; where the intention is clear, there is no room for construction and no excuse for interpolation or addition [emphasis added].” —United States v. Sprague, 1931.
Again, patriots need to make sure that there are plenty of Trump-supporting candidates on the primary ballots for the 2018 elections, candidates who will send a bunch of judges home if elected.
Not really. A chaplain or guest minister is not an elected official. The board of commissioners is. Whether it will be reversed remains to be seen. Originally the 4th Circuit upheld the lower court decision but the dissenting judge took it to the full court and they overruled them. I don't know if that's an indication of odds at the higher level, assuming it gets there.
Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the American Humanist Association, The Anti-Defamation League, and the Freedom from Religion Foundation.
Yes, the usual suspects.
Thanks for your comments.
You provide an excellent summary of some of the ways the courts have been used to undermine the rights and freedoms Americans enjoy.
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