Mr. Salazar, Tear Down This Cross

The Weekly Standard ^ | October 26, 2009 | Jonathan V. Last

[antiobamacare]

The government is paying the ACLU to remove war memorials

In 1934, a small band of veterans of the First World War gathered at Sunrise Rock, an outcropping of stone in the Mojave Desert. There they raised a modest, handmade white, wooden cross, about five-feet high. At the foot of the cross they placed a plaque that read, "The Cross, Erected in Memory of the Dead of All Wars. Erected 1934 by Members of Veterans of Foreign Wars, Death Valley Post 2884."

Many of these men had moved to Death Valley following the Great War on the advice of doctors, who thought the warm, arid climate would help their injuries heal. For the most part, they lived a humble existence: Some took up mining; some built small ranches. John Riley Bembry was typical. Born in 1899, he had been a medic in the war and then dabbled in prospecting, living in a shack made of wood planks and corrugated aluminum seven miles from Sunrise Rock. He was a man of little religious conviction, but he agreed to look after the memorial.

[UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide]

“From time to time, Congress has tried to amend this act so as to exempt Establishment Clause suits—after all, defendants suffer no damages in such cases—but such attempts have never become law.”

In that case, they shouldn’t even have “standing” in court, since standing is such a big judicial copout these days.