Free Republic

Former House Speaker Tip O'Neill famously observed, "All politics is local." We have a particularly sharp example in an upcoming school board election in Douglas County, Colorado that has far-reaching national implications. At issue is the Blaine Amendment, which appears in constitutions of 38 states. The Blaine Amendment prohibits appropriation of public funds to any religiously affiliated institution. Each state has its own wording for this provision, but the bottom line is the same in each state -- no public money for anything having to do with religion. The Blaine Amendment issue at the center of the upcoming school board...

Not until 1876 were the religious clauses of the First Amendment revisited. In that year, James G. Blaine, then Speaker of the House of Representatives, proposed the Blaine Amendment, which would have extended the religious establishment prohibition of the First Amendment to the states. [It] failed in the Senate... -SNIP-

Today's school-choice proponents are fighting not only teachers unions but a legacy left by some of their ancestors: the Blaine Amendments in 37 state constitutions. "Whoever digs a pit will fall into it, and a stone will come back on him who starts it rolling." That slapstick humor from the book of Proverbs has rarely been better illustrated than in the current drive for school choice. Pro-voucher Protestants excited by the Supreme Court's late-June green light have now run into stop signs placed in state constitutions by some of their ancestors a century or so ago. Those stop signs are...