Posted on 06/26/2002 4:03:14 PM PDT by vannrox
Please excuse this "vanity" post. I am wondering if it is legally possible to impeach or punish or censor the 9th Circuit Judges who ruled on this massively unpopular decision. Can Congress or the Senate do anything? What about the Judicial Branch? What about the Supreme Court? What about the White House?
I'm searching for ideas here. Te end result will be an action plan presented to key Conservative Venues.
Hmmm...And if, perchance, the Constitution is amended to include the phrase, "under God", what will the recourse of fundamentalist atheists be?
At least I THINK it's preposterous.
The Declaration of Independance ... I never said it was in the Constitution, but the DI is the founding of our country.
I understand your views, but I believe that our country WAS founded to be a God-fearing country, and that while no ONE religion was to be preferred or condemned by the government, clearly our entire judicial system is based on the Ten Commandments. By taking God out of everything "public", we are in essence saying that any religion BUT monotheism is accepted.
No matter. The commonality of a belief in a supreme being, in a divine Creator, was and is far more important than the specifics of a Being the nature of whom no two religious faiths can agree upon.
I am a "Mormon." I believe in a God who is a perfected and exalted Man, with a body of flesh and bone.
My friends here of the various Christian sects believe in a God who is a spirit, whose "center is everywhere, and whose circumference is nowhere."
And there are a myriad interpretations in between, and to either side.
That is NOT the point. The point is that WE ARE ONE NATION UNDER GOD.
We derive our natural rights FROM a divine Creator. His nature, in this case, is not relevant to those facts.
It is a pity that we religionists, who have such widely differing views on the nature of God, can nevertheless find comfort in a simple acknowledgement of Him; whereas someone like you who claims NOT to believe at all is SO THREATENED by that mere acknowledgement.
To me, you are anathema. You and those like you are living anomalies; you believe in NOTHING but chaos, and not even that, actually, because when you are dead even such a concept as "chaos" has no more meaning.
Yet you are so afraid of a WORD, of an IDEA.
The upshot of all this is, though, it is YOU who have declared war, time and time and time again. No one has tried to force you to believe anything. No one has tried to imprison you, or kill you, because you don't believe (and I will forbear from pointing out that your ilk have not been so obliging; godless, atheistic Communism has slaughtered more people in just these last hundred years for their refusal to bow down to their manmade idol, than all religion combined in the past two millenia).
Yet you insist on your assault on the merest public mention of belief. And you are such liars, too. No one has said "this God is the Christian God." As I've said, the Founders, many of whom--Jefferson, Madison, John Adams, e.g.--were NOT Christians, but Deists, were the ones who spoke most eloquently of God, and the Creator. But you will tout this fact of their being non-Christian on the one hand, but then attempt to blot out their words from the historical record with the other.
You are so pussilanimous, so worthy of everyone's disgust, NOT because you refuse to believe, but BECAUSE YOU INSIST ON A CONSTANT ASSAULT ON THE RIGHT OF OTHERS TO BELIEVE, AND TO EXPRESS THAT BELIEF.
This time, though, my friend, I really think you've gone too far. You have even some of your fellow-travelers like Tom Daschle making very ominous noises.
This will not stand, and you will find, I think, that in the end you will end up less well off than if you had left others alone.
Independence Day is coming. In my area, and I'm sure in many other areas, the fireworks display includes some sort of pre-fireworks programs. In my town, we have the 36th Army Band play a brief concert, have a few fireworks and cannons go off during the 'Overture of 1812' and then we have someone sing the National Anthem right before the fireworks begin.
The program has never included a recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance before. In light of the disgusting, anti-American decision by the 9th and in my patriotic desire to resist tyranny, I called the director of the fireworks display and suggested he add the Pledge to the program. He loved the idea and the reason behind it! So, in my town thousands of people are going to celebrate their independence on Independence Day by asserting it and reciting the Pledge on city property at a city-sponsored event. You can rest assured that we will emphasize the "under God" portion of the Pledge.
Independence day is fast approaching. Many FReepers plan on attending various 4th of July events to include fireworks displays, etc. Get on the phone now and do as I did and get the full Pledge of Allegiance to be recited at the events in your area.
We have all heard the theory about how some levels of the judiciary "need to be isolated from the whims of public pressure, so they'll make the right- rather than the popular- decisions."
Well, here's proof why that's a failed theory- these guys need to be held accountable for their actions, like anyone else is. Maybe via election, so you can toss the bums out of office, or maybe by a review of peers- but there needs to be a way to reign in activist, or malicious, judges.
Amen! Teeth not only need to be put into judicial accountability, but judicial immunity needs to be repealed. Think about it--a judge is allowed to act with intentional malice while sitting on the bench and wearing his black robe. Judges, quite literally, are above the law. It will be a big step forward when judges are forced to live under the same laws that the rest of us are forced to live under.
My guess is that the two-word addition by Congress will be removed by the SC.
Legally, how could it not?
But that's okay. The DNC will give you a job. DU would love to hear from you too.
Go duct-tape the mouth of a Christian for your god. Enjoy youself.
Denying God will not make Him go away. Denying the role of faith in the founding of this country is wrong and I join many of my countrymen in calling for an end to pandering to the godless as if THEY are righteous.
If however the Legislature ever does impeach a Federal Judge clearly due to distaste or disagreement with his rulings for a particular case or a group of related cases -- and I do think that in extreme cases that needs to be able to be done -- if then the Supreme Court says "No that may not be done, you may only impeach a Judge for high crimes and misdemeanors," and sets aside the Legislative impeachment and removal order, why then that would be an exciting day!
That, I hope, would bring us to our national senses regarding Marbury and its limitations. The Supreme Court can not be the sole final judge of Constitutionality. In this case it IS the Legislature's uncontestable authority to make that impeachment.
The Supremes can throw an unConstitutional law, the Legislature can throw out a crazy or outlaw Judge. Neither is easy to do, both are ponderous procedures.
I'm not sure the Supreme Court will get a chance. The case is almost certain to be heard em banc by the entire 9th Circuit, and they might reverse the ruling. If they do, I doubt the SC would hear the plaintiff's appeal.
It would be an interesting case for the Supreme Court to hear. If they uphold yesterday's ruling, it would effectively ban the mention of God in anything relating to a government activity. That certainly would be consistent with the trend in decisions over the past few decades.
However, they could also take the opportunity to state that the Constitution doesn't require such an extreme prohibition, which would effectively reverse that trend. That would open up, once again, the controversies over Nativity scenes on government property, posting of the Ten Commandments, etc.
It would be an interesting case. If the Supreme Court upholds it, it's a slam dunk that IN GOD WE TRUST is unconstitutional as well. People can refuse today to recite the Pledge, but they can't refuse legal tender containing that phrase as satisfaction of debt. Similarly, the oath witnesses are required to take before testifying ("so help me God") would have to be immediately modified.
I am actually very happy that the court made this ruling yesterday because it forced the entire country to wrestle with these questions, and we need a final resolution as to whether the Government has to go to extreme lengths to avoid anything with even a vague religious connotation.
No. I take umbrage at the notion that a Federal court, by fiat, can arrogantly attempt to undo the underpinnings of this nation's founding.
If it will not offend you overmuch to do so, read the Declaration of Independence. You may burn the copy afterward, if you like, so that your children won't see it (I assume you fear their "contamination" upon seeing references to a Supreme Being, just as Newdow does).
Your newfangled attempt to pretend that none of that ever happened is reminiscent of nothing so much as Big Brother's daily rewriting of history in 1984.
But the TRUTH is that this nation was FOUNDED by men who believed in Deity, and they conceived this nation upon the approbation of Deity.
If you remove that, the entire thing fails, and as I posted earlier in a parody, we might as well allow the U.N. to decide what is to become of us.
You and others like you are arrogant, pompous fools, who cannot STAND to hear the majority opinion. It rankles you like nothing else, and you love your new-found "power" to change things so that you don't have to look at it any more--like Victorians draping the nude sculptures of ancient Greece so they wouldn't be offended.
You're just pathetic.
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