[RobbyS]

I've never seen that specific quote posted before. It does show how Hugo Black was an ideologue who did not scruple to quote Jefferson out of context.

[Amendment10]

There's a "little bit" of material to discuss concerning the Court's misrepresentation of Jefferson so I'm claustrophobic in these length-limited posts. Please allow me to be grouchy and bear with me with a religion-specific Jefferson example of the 10th A. protected powers of the states.

"I consider the government of the United States as interdicted by the Constitution from intermeddling with religious institutions, their doctrines, discipline, or exercises. This results not only from the provision that no law shall be made respecting the establishment or free exercise of religion, but from that also which reserves to the states the powers not delegated to the United States. Certainly, no power to prescribe any religious exercise or to assume authority in religious discipline has been delegated to the General Government. It must then rest with the states, as far as it can be in any human authority." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Miller, 1808. http://tinyurl.com/nkdu7

[Amendment10]

The people have forgotten that the states had the power to address religious issues before they established the federal government and its Constitution. The Founders had shrewdly reserved this power uniquely to the states via the 1st and 10th Amendmets as evidenced by the Jefferson extracts that I have already posted. Here is another Jefferson extract which emphasizes that government power to legislate religion was reserved uniquely to the states.

"Our citizens have wisely formed themselves into one nation as to others and several States as among themselves. To the united nation belong our external and mutual relations; to each State, severally, the care of our persons, our property, our reputation and religious freedom." --Thomas Jefferson: To Rhode Island Assembly, 1801. ME 10:262

[hinckley buzzard]

Hugo Black's own son acknowledged that the old Klansman from Alabama had retained his anti-Catholic biases all his life. According to his clerks, he did not even research the founding debates on the religion issue until after the flood of criticism directed at his Everson opinion. While the case nominally supported parochial schools, the holding was considered less significant than the hostile tone of the explanation and the distorted hsitory.