It appears that the most recent articles are stepping back from all out lying and presenting a more accurate approach.
here’s a recent NYT
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/19/odonnell-questions-church-state-separation/?partner=rss&emc=rss
does include the accurate Coons 1A.
this link has the short 30 second audio of the relevant part.
Coons clearly says “Government” and not “Congress”
Beow is comment 190 in the NYTimes article to which you linked. It took 190 comments for someone finally to state clearly the point she had in mind but failed to make. There were a handful of people defending her up to this point, but 95 % of the comments ridicule her.
This is what we are up against. Most people do not understand the distinction between separation and non-establishment or that federal non-establishment did not affect state establishments.
Comment 190 makes these points well. What O’Donnell needed to do was to make these points concisely and clearly instead of asking rhetorically, “Are you saying that’s in the Constitution?”
If she had actually positively stated her underlying, real point, she would have come away as having taken him to the woodshed constitutionally. Instead, she opened the way to being portrayed in these and other comboxes as ignorant of the Constitution. She actually knows the Constitution better than Coons and better than the law students in the audience. But she missed her chance to demonstrate that.
It’s sad. I know it’s hard to think tactically on your feet but she had three chances to “teach” him and three times she resorted to rhetorical questions to which she knew the obvious rhetorical answer but to which neither Coons nor her audience nor 95% of Americans know the answer.
RHETORICAL QUESTIONS DON’T WORK IF THE TO-THE-QUESTIONER OBVIOUS ANSWER IS NOT OBVIOUS TO THE LISTENERS.
Here’s comment 190. Comments are now close. Read the other comments and weep for our Republic. And for Christine O’Donnell. I hope she wins despite this. But it was a huge lost opportunity.
xton1
San Francisco
October 19th, 2010
3:14 pm
I cannot believe the historical illiterates and Christian bashers on this site. Most states in early America had established churches in their constitutions, many survived till the end of the 20th Century. The First Amendment originally limited only federal government, not state governments, and contains two clauses on religion: Establishment Clause and Free Exercise Clause. For over 200 years the New England Primer was used in schools through out America to teach them to read, be good American citizens, and taught Catholicism. This was, and I believe still is, Constitutional.
It is a bad analogy to use the term “a wall of separation” in discussing the First Amendment, for it is used like a sledge hammer to attack religious freedoms and Christianity. When Jefferson used it in his letter to a Baptist minister, he meant it as a one way obstacle, meaning that Government should never influence religion, but religion should be allowed to influence government.
It is un-Constitutional and against the Free Exercise Clause to stop prayer in schools, preventing Nativity scenes on public property, or stopping Christians from using rooms in schools after hours for religious practices.
The whole attack on Christianity is Socialist, because Christians put God above all and believe in the sovereignty of the individual; whereas, socialist believe is that the State is all powerful and that people are mere cattle that need to be controlled.