Posted on 04/16/2010 4:01:07 PM PDT by daniel1212
(CNSNews.com) - Conservative legal experts say a federal district judge in Wisconsin had no legal basis for declaring the National Day of Prayer unconstitutional – and predict the decision cannot stand.
“If the National Day of Prayer is unconstitutional, then the Constitution itself if unconstitutional,” Mathew Staver, president of Liberty Counsel and dean of the Liberty University School of Law in Lynchburg, Va., told CNSNews.com.
The judge agreed with the atheist group, and based her decision, in part, on the fact that atheists “feel” marginalized by the law, which directs the president to declare a National Day of Prayer.
Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), himself a former judge and one of the 31 congressmen who weighed in on the case, blasted Crabb, telling CNSNews.com that "it was obvious" the federal judge "had not received a very good education" in American history.
“The National Day of Prayer – or prayer itself – is older than the Constitution,” Staver said. “There is no question (this ruling) will be overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.”
In a decision released Thursday, U.S. District Judge Barbara B. Crabb in Madison,Wis., declared unconstitutional a 1988 federal law giving the president the authority to designate the first Thursday in May as the National Day of Prayer.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnsnews.com ...
In 1998, the FBI’s crime lab examined Jefferson's letter, uncovering words deleted by the president (nearly 30 percent of the draft) prior to publication. This, along with other evidence, indicates that Jefferson’s pledge to separate church and state was at least partly political motivated.
James H. Hutson, head of the library’s manuscripts collection, stated, "It will be of considerable interest in assessing the credibility of the Danbury Baptist letter as a tool of constitutional interpretation to know, as we now do, that it was written as a partisan counterpunch, aimed by Jefferson below the belt of enemies who were tormenting him more than a decade after the First Amendment was composed."[18]
Jefferson’s letter and the FBI’s restoration work are among the items in an exhibit at the Library of Congress called, "Religion and the Founding of the American Republic." The exhibit also notes that Jefferson began to attend worship services held at the House of Representatives two days after writing the letter, and that he permitted regular worship services to be held there, a practice that continued until after the Civil War, with preachers from every Protestant denomination appearing there. The Library of Congress exhibit records that
As early as January 1806 a female evangelist, Dorothy Ripley, delivered a camp meeting-style exhortation in the House to Jefferson, Vice President Aaron Burr, and a "crowded audience."...In attending church services on public property, Jefferson and Madison consciously and deliberately were offering symbolic support to religion as a prop for republican government. [19][20]
David Barton, Founder and President of WallBuilders, states that Jefferson voted that the Capitol building would also serve as a church building, praised the use of a local courthouse as a meeting place for Christian services, urged local governments to make land available specifically for Christian purposes, set aside government lands for the sole use of religious groups, assured a Christian religious school that it would receive “the patronage of the government”, proposed that the Great Seal of the United States depict a story from the Bible and include the word “God” in its motto, and agreed to provide money for a church building and support of clergy. And that like support of religion by the federal government militates against the extreme separatist position.[21]
Hamburger in his work The Separation of Church and State (2002), argues that the separation of church and state has no historical foundation in the First Amendment, the term being a catchphrase used by forces hostile to certain religions trying to limit their influence. He notes that 18th century Americans almost never invoked this principle. In addition, there was a distinction between "separation" and "disestablishment" - a distinction all the more significant because the Constitution's Religion Clauses do not mandate the separate of church and state, but they forbid the "establishment" of religion and guaranteed its "free exercise." [44]
It is perceived by some that outlawing formal religion results in replacing it with a functional ideological equivalent. Secularity as a condition of a non-ecclesiastical state may be distinguished with secularism as an ideology, with key Supreme court decisions being used to infer state favor toward the nonreligious, resulting in a "religion-free education" which "indoctrinates" the young into viewing secularism as the only frame of reference.[45]
Paul G. Kussrow and Loren Vannest ask, Is a religiously neutral public school education an oxymoron?, and see notable Supreme court Establishment Clause decisions (such as Engel v. Vatale, l962) as in essence creating "a legal fiction--a myth of religious neutrality." They argue that "Philosophy and religion blur when dealing with these basics, such as truth, while pointing to the ultimate questions and answers in life," and that, "Any discussion of a secular-religious distinction is self-refuting. For someone's values are always being advocated even in so called "neutral" settings."
Removing formal God (and morality) based religion from the public schools is seen to have the effect of supplanting it with Secular Humanism. This in turn promotes pantheism, the worship of nature with its evolutionary hypothesis, and the rejection of moral absolutes (especially those of the Bible), resulting in a dangerous ever-morphing morality and decline of beneficial traditional morality.[46]
Oh, the 'Rats came to that conclusion a long time ago — they just weren't telling anybody.
"Done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventieth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven and of the Independence of the United States of America"
Barbara Crabb = appointed to the bench by Jimmy Carter.
Time for a do-over.
But it is our reverence of the Constitution that has kept us from exterminating them. If they convince enough that it is irrelevant it will mean the loss of vastly more of them than it will of us...
The Godless Rats are emboldened by that POS in the White House
The Godless Rats are emboldened by that POS in the White House
Perhaps a counter attack can be mounted to target “religions” of the Left. Schools are celebrating or planning celebrations of “Earth Day”. “Earth Day” is nothing other than a pagan “religioius” celebration of the Earth or Gaia. If Christianity in all its forms and a National Day of Prayer are deemed in violation of the Constitution, we need to go after all the secular pseudo religions, secular humanism, “Earth Day”, “Global Warming”, etc. a “Day of Silence”, expose them for the “religions” they are, and sue to have them banned from the public square. Make it a concerted effort across all Federal Circuits. All that is needed apparently,is one Circuit to declare them in violation. Goose and Gander.
Oh. I guess they just did not know what they meant.
This could provide another way to combat national health care and energy restrictions. I'm sure enough people feel marginalized by the law....
:: The real issue is that what the judge is doing is disallowing a formal religion and replacing it with a functional one, as regards world view and morality, and by disallowing prayer based upon the premise that this would sanction religion, then what is being effectively sanctioned is atheism or agnosticism. For a gov. to not express appreciation or acknowledge an unseen but manifest host conveys that such is unworthy of recognition, or that it is evil for them to do so, or that no host exists. Together with atheistic evolution, the latter has become the officially sanctioned ideology, and which functions as religion. Either the Founders meant that atheism should be conveyed, or the consequences of the 1st Amendment was not foreseen by them, and or they sought to disallow a gov. sanctioned formal religion, while sanctioning general expressions of the common Christian faith, assuming its strength would continue, and the upholding of its morality. However, while Christianity was the “civil religion”, in a functional democracy the people can change what will be the basic ideology, and what we are seeing is the result of at least the more influential classes so doing.~~
See # 16. What they will not acknowledge is that one cannot disallow one basis for beliefs without replacing it with another, and that they have replaced even general expressions of the formal religion of Christianity, the most potent adversary to them, and replaced with a general ideology/world view that functions as religion.
Paganism is allowed some expression because it does not present a moral challenge, and as much as liberals want to deny it, and the laws it requires, man has a sinful nature, which is at war with God. Once you become born again, you see both sides more clearly.
By this reasoning the words
” ...endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights...”
are REALLY un-constitutional !
My reply should have been marked as sarcasm. I don’t think the “feeling put out” would be sufficient grounds.
However, the judiciary has added “environmentalistic/gaia worship” to be added their atheism.
Rest assured, i had no doubt it was sarcasm. And you are right about the rest. Roman 1.
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Last ping o' the night. I haven't read all of it. But obviously if a National Day of Prayer is unconstitutional, the Constitution is unconstitutional.
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