Posted on 08/23/2015 3:42:49 PM PDT by Impala64ssa
...But Fans in Stands Have an Answer for That Ruling
A Mississippi school district had just been through some serious gavel pounding from a federal judge — including a $7,500 fine — and didn’t want any more problems.
U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves gave Rankin County School District the word on July 10, saying it promoted Christianity during school hours after it agreed to stop. So Reeves fined the district $7,500 and again ordered it to stop sponsoring prayers at graduations, assemblies, athletic competitions and other school events, WLBT-TV reported.
“That means administrators, teachers and staff of the Rankin County School District may not participate in any religious activity, or solicit or encourage religious activities at school or while performing duties as a RCSD employee,” Reeves added.
So when the district learned that Brandon High School’s marching band was planning to play the Christian hymn “How Great Thou Art” during halftime at Friday night’s football season opener, it was decided that was too close to the judge’s ban and the performance was cancelled.
But that didn’t stop dozens of parents and students and fans from performing ‘How Great Thou Art” on their own
"It bothers me because you look at the schools and all of the school shootings and all the bad things that are happening, and wonder why,” parent Kimberly Moore told WLBT. “It’s because we’re allowing evil to step in.”
“I don’t fault our school district because I know they are trying to do what’s right as a community and for the school,” Moore added. “But … in another I’m like we gotta take a stand on behalf of Christ.”
If the District takes any Federal money, ==
Federal Money?
That’s the peoples’ money, taken by the Feds to be ‘given’ back.
(Unless it is Monopoly Money, freshly printed with no backing.)
What you are saying is the general perception.
However, rhetorically, are Federal Reserve Notes “Federal,” as in U.S. Government issued?
Furthermore, if in some weird universe history were changed, and “Federal Reserve Notes” were actually issued or originated from the U.S. Federal Government, does this mean that all circulation and pay in “Federal” Reserve Notes throughout the U.S. should result in the elimination, by default, of all religious activity since “Federal” Reserve Notes are the only “Legal [Tender]” instruments of monetary value to donate, tithe, or exchange for various services offered by religious organizations?
Of course not! It is highly unlikely this is what you are saying.
At the end of the day, the policy bias emanating from the Federal Government (and government in general) is just that. It is a bias.
To top it off, how can any bias exist without its own “beliefs” (faith) and ideological motivation?
What we have been and are truly witnessing here and now, are the beliefs (ultimately faith) and the natural sequence of totalitarian ideologies of those who appose God being forced upon all of society.
As humanism (or faith in man) gave birth to religious persecution in pre-WWII Germany and during Bolshevik Russia, this same bias is now literally being foisted on American society by brute force and coercion where necessary.
A long time, for He is patient.
Not forever.
Additionally, where does the Federal Government get it’s own revenue...
While the truly non-federal Federal Reserve Bank extends the credit and prints the notes circulated throughout society, the Federal government gets its revenue (money) from the taxes we pay.
Point #1. Federal Reserve Notes don’t ultimately belong to our Federal government, they belong to the Federal Reserve Bank with interest. At least that is how it was set up.
Point #2. The money paid back to the Federal Reserve Bank by the Federal government is raised through Federal taxes. It derives mostly from the federally mandated income tax.
As such, the money itself which the government redistributes to school districts across the U.S.A., is derived by mandate from the same individuals whose religious freedom they are trampling.
They are quite literally taking and then using the individuals money to eliminate that same individuals basic freedoms.
Figgers
Appointed by Obama
Negroid race
Pity
The so-called Incorporation Doctrine, which should be renamed the Corruption Doctrine, which the feds use as an excuse for federal tyranny, and has no valid constitutional basis.
Neither the federal judiciary nor the federal legislature may constitutionally interfere with state, local or individual freedom of religious exercise nor freedom of speech.
I agree with you on the first point, but not on the 2nd point if I understood you correctly. Please allow me to explain.
Regarding the first point, not only does the 14th Amendment’s “privileges and immunities” language indicate that the northern states had committed all the states to respect all the Constitution’s enumerated protections, including the few not listed in the Bill of Rights, but also consider the following.
The post-Civil War congressional record shows that John Bingham, the main author of Section 1 of the 14th Amendment, had clarified that the 14th Amendment applied ALL constitutionally enumerated protections to the states, not just those listed in the Bill of Rights.
"Mr. Speaker, that the scope and meaning of the limitations imposed by the first section, fourteenth amendment of the Constitution may be more fully understood, permit me to say that the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States, as contradistinguished from citizens of a State, are chiefly [emphasis added] defined in the first eight amendments to the Constitution of the United States." — John Bingham, Appendix to the Congressional Globe
Regarding your 2nd point, please consider the following. Section 5 of the 14th Amendment gives Congress the specific power to protect our constitutionally enumerated protections from abridgment by the states. So contrary to the 1st Amendment prohibiting Congress altogether from making laws dealing with our 1st Amendment protected freedoms, please consider the following.
In cases like marching bands playing hymns, the 14th Amendment now gives Congress the power to make laws dealing with our 1st Amendment protected rights, and and all other constitutional rights as well including the 2nd Amendment, but only to protect such rights from abridgment by the states.
In fact, the Supreme Court had reflected on Congress’s 14th Amendment power to strengthen our enumerated rights as the following excerpt shows.
“3. The right of suffrage was not necessarily one of the privileges or immunities of citizenship before the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, and that amendment does not add to these privileges and immunities. It simply furnishes additional guaranty for the protection of such as the citizen already had [emphasis added].” —Minor v. Happersett, 1874.
The bottom line is that the judge referenced in this thread is doing just the opposite of what the federal lawmakers who proposed the 14th Amendment had intended imo, the institutionally indoctrinated judge wrongly legislating restrictive “laws” from the bench.
I’m sick of Cochran and Wicker!
This is a VERY minor victory.
When judges fear for their livelihoods, and their lives, after making rulings like this, then we've won.
Consider that while routinely repudiating (with fines) religious liberty in the U.S., and at the same time Christians throughout the U.S. are being targeted by government, courts, IRS, entertainment, and academia at will and without recourse, this same bias has and is simultaneously:
Literally giving hundreds of millions of dollars to help build Mosque’s and replace minarets around the world, paying for hundreds of thousands of muslims to immigrate to the U.S. annually, (while denying truly persecuted “Christian” populations from the same regions any access), and is now going to literally give billions of dollars to a militant and currently bloody Shia Iran.
It is a bias which has given hundreds of billions of dollars to propel the truly short sited, ignorant, and false narrative of man-caused-global-cooling-warming-climate change, in a real and universal effort to motivate societies around the world to willingly give up their own freedoms in exchange for government sovereignty to save us from ourselves, while relying on taxes to accomplish the objective of subjugation.
It is a bias which for over a generation has routinely paid out hundreds of billions of dollars of federal (tax payer) money to the anti-Christian entertainment industry, community organizer organizations, and academics to help further the agenda of creating a society of sheep from a society of independent minded individuals with moral boundaries.
How could any remotely historically literate individual even question what the bias of government and “progressivism” is, and what it is trying to accomplish?
So it’s ok for our federal government to give hundreds of billions of dollars to religious organizations and governments who seek to subjugate us or eliminate us, and its ok for the federal government to spend hundreds of billions of dollars in an effort to marginalize and in time eliminate Christianity.
In light of the late and largely successful efforts in attacking our constitution and God given freedom, and the militant attacks against Christianity (1st Amendment)coming from government itself, who has already proven to be more dangerous - freedom loving and responsible Christians, or government?
It is clearly alright for our government to dump vast amounts of federal (tax payer earned) money into religious organizations and governments around the world.
Is it really a dichotomy, when religious governments self-declare the U.S., our beliefs, and our way of life as their arch enemy, while simultaneously our own government declares Christianity and its many differences and organizations as the enemy?
While we are certainly not going around looking for fight or to make enemies (the opposite is true), we are now the declared common enemy of both, as the nature of both belief systems, whether it be Islam or Humanism are historically totalitarian in nature.
Think Early Church under horrific wide spread persecution of Rome, the French Revolution, Bolshevik Revolution, pre-WWII Germany, the mostly successful efforts of Mao in China to eradicate Christianity, or Christians throughout the Middle East today.
In the West, it is now entertainment to mock all things “Christian” period, similar to the cartoons mocking Christians and Jews before their extermination in pre-WWII Germany. It then leads to more and more wide spread isolation and attacks. This is how it starts.
No one wanted or wants to associate or do business with individuals or groups being mocked by society at large or who are outcast for their beliefs. Its Phsyc 101
This is what the government is trying to do here and now, through its continuous efforts to silence our population and eliminate their beliefs.
Our beliefs and individual freedom are simply and naturally diametrically apposed to their goals of societal subjugation and sovereign government.
Play the song....change 1 note at the end.....not the same song....no problem.
If it forbids the hymn then it is teaching the God-centered students that religion must be hidden away like some form of bathroom activity. ( **Not** a neutral lesson.)
If they allow the hymn then the government is promoting and establishing a God-centered worldview that is offensive to those with a godless religious worldview. ( Also not a neutral action by the school.)
Solution: Begin the privatization of all K-12 schooling.
Please read the rather lengthy but worthwhile analysis below which includes excerpts by one to the most renown constitutional authorities of his time, Robert Bork. The issue and proof of original intent is not that of the writer but that of the ratifiers and why this incredible expansion of federal power is unconstitutional, unwarranted, and unwanted.
Q: What is the basis for saying that the framers of the 14th Amendment intended it to apply only to former slaves?
A: - The historical context of the post-civil war reconstruction period to instate the former slaves as full U.S. citizens with full rights as others.
- The legal context of this being the middle of the three reconstruction amendments.
- The lack of clear text that proves specific provision of unparalleled and massive expansion of federal power which would have been completely out of place from the purpose of these post-civil war reconstruction amendments and would have produced much evidence, of which there is none, of debate and discussion about such a radical departure from American governance, as noted below.
- The weight of the probative value of accuracy and precedent in a SCOTUS case decided four years after the amendment was ratified versus 131 years later.
- The intent of the ratifiers, not the drafters. Thomas’ argument rests on the drafters’ intent to apply Corfield v. Coryell rights. But as noted below, there is scant evidence this was intended by the ratifiers and it is the intent of the ratifiers, not the drafters, that counts.
Judge Robert Bork, the generally recognized leading scholar on Constitutional Law of his time and most notably focused on original understanding and intent in construction, said this about the fourteenth amendment:
"The fourteenth amendment was adopted shortly after the Civil War, and all commentators are agreed that its primary purpose was the protection of the recently freed slaves. As we have seen, of the amendment's three clauses, two have been pressed into service of judicial imperialism - the due process and equal protection clauses - while the third, the privileges and immunities clause, has remained a cadaver that it was left by the Slaughter-House Cases. It is this corpse that [former dean of the Stanford law school] Ely [and apparently now Justice Thomas] proposes to resurrect.
"The due process clause will not do as a warrant for the creation of new constitutional rights because, as Ely notes, it is simply a requirement that government not do certain things to people without fair procedures, not a statement of what things may not be done. The fifth amendment's due process clause, which applied only against the federal government, was later copied in the fourteenth amendment, which applied to the states. 'There is general agreement that the earlier clause had been understood at the time of its inclusion to refer to lawful procedures. What recorded comment there was at the time of replication in the fourteenth amendment is devoid of any reference that gives the provision more than a procedural connotation' (J. Ely, Democracy and Distrust (1980) at 105-16). That is true, and it is more than enough to condemn the hundreds of cases, stretching from Dred Scott to today, in which the courts have given the due process clause substantive content in order to read their own notions of policy into the Constitution.
"Ely's attempt [and apparently Thomas' proposed attempt] to make the privileges and immunities clause do the work that has been improperly assigned to the due process clause is, however, unsuccessful. He points out that 'there is not a bit of legislative history that supports the view that the Privileges or Immunities Clause was intended to be meaningless' (Id. at 103). That is hardly surprising. One would not expect ratifying conventions to enact a constitutional provision they intended to mean nothing. But that hardly solves the problem, and the problem is that we do not know what the clause is intended to mean.
"Bingham and Howard meant these additional rights [taken from Corfield v. Coryell]. That the ratifiers did is far less clear. Certainly there is no evidence that the ratifying convention intended such power in judges, and it is their intent, not the drafters’, that counts. Nor is it easy to imagine the northern states, victorious in a Civil War that lead to the fourteenth amendment, should have decided to turn over to the federal courts not only the protection of the rights of freed slaves but an unlimited power to frustrate the will of the Northern states themselves. The only significant exercise of judicial review in the past century had been Dred Scott, a decision hated in the North and one hardly likely to encourage the notion that courts should be given carte blanche to set aside legislative acts.
"Had any such radical departure from the American method of governance been intended, had courts been intended to supplant legislatures, there would be more than a shred of evidence to that effect. That proposal would have provoked an enormous debate and public discussion.
"We know there is no evidence that the ratifiers imagined they were handing ultimate governance to the courts. We know that a constitutional revolution of that magnitude would have provoked widespread and heated (to put it mildly) discussion but there is no record of any such discussion. The rather sweeping mandate must be judged counterfeit” (R. Bork, The Tempting of America (1990), excerpted at 180-83).
And, therefore, in reference to Justice Miller’s opinion in the Slaughter-House Cases, Bork says, “ Miller was following sound judicial instinct: to reject a construction of a new amendment that would leave the Court at large in the field of public policy without any guidelines other than the views of its members. [ ] In a word, the history of the fourteenth amendment gave judges no guidance on any subject other than the protection of blacks. Beyond that, the Justices had nothing more to apply than their personal views. That, Miller thought, was reason enough to confine the amendment almost entirely to the subject of race” (id. at 37-38).
Q: What does Bork say about the meaning of Privileges and Immunities of US citizens, as the terms were understood in the late 1860s?
A: Well, if you are asking about the general understanding of the P&I Clause before the 14A, Bork says, "Most people have always thought that the article IV clause simply prevented a state from discriminating against out-of-staters in favor of their own citizens" (R. Bork, The Tempting of America at 181).
If you are asking what the P&I Clause was intended to mean in the 14A, Bork says this about the P&I Clause: "One would not expect ratifying conventions to enact a constitutional provision they intended to mean nothing. But that hardly solves the problem, and the problem is that we do not know what the clause is intended to mean.”
So his point is judges should not insert their own personal moral viewpoints of what THEY think a clause should mean where they have no guidance from original understanding of the text. He therefore approved Justice Miller's judicial restraint and "sound judicial instinct" in doing just that.
Bork is inferring that, the history of the definition of P&I notwithstanding, there is not enough evidence to understand what and why they put P&I in the 14A. But there is PLENTY of reason conclude that no constitutional revolution was intended by the 14A. It seems that P&I in the 14A is a moot point that Thomas wants to resurrect to give "justifiable" life to the utterly discredited incorporation doctrine. Justice Miller saw that P&I in the 14A added nothing to P&I in Article IV, so it was a moot point as far as he was concerned.
I agree with Bork and Miller and believe simply that the ratifiers were trying to put former slaves on equal footing with all U.S. citizens. Just guessing (something Bork, admirably, was loathe to do which is why he might have been one of our greatest Justices if he had been given the chance), my sense is the ratifiers were simply wanting to confirm that states could not discriminate against black out-of staters. In that sense, P&I in the 14A doesn't add anything, only confirms the full citizenship status of former slaves. But that's my opinion only, not a constitutional basis for construction. I sense it's probably Bork's also, but he was disciplined and discrete enough to keep his personal opinions separate from valid constitutional construction.
Anyway, the argument is not about the historical definition of P&I. It is about what and how it was intended to mean and be used in the 14A. The P&I of Article IV is not so much about what P&I itself is so much as the P&I in one state is valid for out-of-staters. Beyond this is a "fundamental" flaw some have of understanding a basic presumption of the Constitution.
The original body of the Constitution doesn't name specific "rights" or P&I's. It is well understood that those rights named in the so-called "Bill of Rights" were listed only to appease the anti-federalists so the Constitution could be ratified. Whatever rights, powers, and liberties not delegated to the federal government by the Constitution or forbidden to the states by it belongs to "the States and the people respectively." The ninth and tenth amendments confirm that.
So the effort to define P&I is inconsistent with the whole presumption of the Constitution, that as far as the Constitution is concerned, all rights not delegated or forbidden belong to the states and the people. They don't have to be listed nor should they be listed because as far as the Constitution is concerned those rights and P&I's are none of the feds business. Only discrimination of P&I by one state upon non-state citizens is a concern of the federal government.
There is no proof of what the ratifiers intended by P&I. One’s conjecture is as good as another. Mine is that the ratifiers meant nothing more than to confirm former slaves had the same P&I as understood in Article IV among the states as any other U.S. citizen. In the sense of probability, mine is much more likely because the other argument would have resulted in a Constitutional revolution of which there would have been some record of the debates and discussions that would have ensued. We know no such record exists.
However, I don't really see how can can agree that the "Incorporation Doctrine" is really the "Corruption Doctrine" if you believe the Incorporation Doctrine to be valid as you seem later to indicate.
If you are asking what the P&I Clause was intended to mean in the 14A, Bork says this about the P&I Clause: "One would not expect ratifying conventions to enact a constitutional provision they intended to mean nothing. But that hardly solves the problem, and the problem is that we do not know what the clause is intended to mean.”
Regarding point 1, who cares what I think?
Again, John Bingham, the main author of Section 1 of the 14th Amendment, had clarified that the “privileges and immunities” referred to in that section basically included all of the personal rights expressly protected by the Constitution, most of these rights listed in the Bill of Rights. Here’s the excerpt from the congressional record again.
"Mr. Speaker, that the scope and meaning of the limitations imposed by the first section, fourteenth amendment of the Constitution may be more fully understood, permit me to say that the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States, as contradistinguished from citizens of a State, are chiefly [emphasis added] defined in the first eight amendments to the Constitution of the United States." — John Bingham, Appendix to the Congressional Globe
So for all I know, “ignored" 19th century justices invented the constitutionally baseless selective incorporation doctrine to get a little attention.
Also, I think that I see the possible source of confusion between the privileges and immunities mentioned in Clause 1 of Section 2 of Article IV and the ones mentioned in Section 1 of the 14th Amendment. More specifically, the ones mentioned in Article IV refer to privileges and immunities in state constitutions and codes, many such rights based on the express rights listed in federal Bill of Rights.
Regarding lesser known privileges and immunities peculiar to a given state, consider this example. A young man who has just turned 18 wants to celebrate by getting drunk. The issue is that since the minimum drinking age in the state where he is domiciled is 21, he needs to go to a state where minimum drinking age is 18 so that he can celebrate.
Regarding point 2 which I have already addressed in my analysis of point 1, given Bingham’s simple explanation of privileges and immunities in the congressional record, I wish that I knew what Judge Bork was basing his statement concerning confusion about privileges and immunities in the context of the 14th Amendment on.
Well, two of the take-aways from all this as far as I’m concerned is
1) It is not the intent of the author of the amendment that matters, but the intent of the ratifiers. It appears Bingham, the author, wanted to expand federal power over the first eight amendments. But as Bork points out, that would require such a radical departure from the original Constitutional intent and American way of life, that there would have been heated debate and there is no such record of such a debate. The ratifiers’ silence favors therefore Miller’s narrow construction in Slaughterhouse of the 14A as a reconstruction amendment limited to ex-slaves.
2) The same is true with the P&I clause. Since it is not known what the ratifiers intended, it must be treated as a simple confirmation of ex-slaves citizenship rights the same as Clause 1 of Section 2 of Article IV.
As the Supreme Court had indicated out, federal power to protect all constitutionally enumerated privileges and immunities by stopping the states from abridging such rights which Section 1 of the 14th Amendment prohibited the states from doing was intended to have the effect of strengthening such rights.
“3. The right of suffrage was not necessarily one of the privileges or immunities of citizenship before the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, and that amendment does not add to these privileges and immunities. It simply furnishes additional guaranty for the protection of such as the citizen already had [emphasis added].” —Minor v. Happersett, 1874.
The problem is that we now have a corrupt federal government that is not lifiting a finger to strengthen such rights. This is exemplified by 1st Amendment protection of religious expression now being wrongly ignored by pro-gay activist states that are using PC, constutitionally unenumerated protections for the gay agenda to trump constitutionally enumerated religious expression.
I thought you said that schools don't teach anything?
Again, nobody knows what the ratifiers meant by the P&I clause in the 14A and as such, SCOTUS has no legitimate constitutional basis for such expansion of federal power. But once this unconstitutional "Corruption Doctrine" began in trickles, sooner or later the dam broke and we got the feds interfering with every area of our lives including banning prayer and the Bible in schools, forced integration, prohibiting state anti-abortion and anti-gay laws and on and on.
Unconstitutional federal acts are, by definition, acts of tyranny and must be resisted at every level.
Why do you keep on saying that nobody knows what the P&I clause in Section 1 of 14th Amendment means when the congressional record shows that John Bingham, the main author of Section 1, had clarified P&I as being all constitutionally enumerated personal rights, most of these rights found in the Bill of Rights which we are familiar with?
"Mr. Speaker, that the scope and meaning of the limitations imposed by the first section, fourteenth amendment of the Constitution may be more fully understood, permit me to say that the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States, as contradistinguished from citizens of a State, are chiefly defined in the first eight amendments to the Constitution of the United States [emphasis added]." — John Bingham, Appendix to the Congressional Globe
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