ACLU sues Rowan County board over prayers- North Carolina

RALEIGH, N.C. — A civil liberties group is suing a North Carolina county that uses Christian prayers to bless its meetings.

The complaint filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court by the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina names the Rowan County Board of Commissioners as plaintiffs. The lawsuit accuses the board of violating the First Amendment provision ordaining the separation of church and state by routinely praying to Jesus Christ to start its meetings.

FIRST AMENDMENT: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

First, there is no mention anywhere in the 1st Amendment about "separation of church and state" . . . nowhere.

Second, there IS mention, quite clearly, of "freedom of speech."

Third, there IS mention of the right of the people peaceably to assemble.

Fourth, the first line of the 1st Amendment clearly says, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" Since Congress (I would think that is the lower house of Congress) has NEVER made a law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, that the whole argument is totally stupid and extremely annoying.

I can't believe that this crap still goes on. Just where did Congress make a law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, and when.

And just what in the hell does this have to do with a town meeting somewhere?

“What if the ACLU filed a suit and nobody gave a big rat’s behind?”

What if we the people just start ignoring the pronouncements of the liberal judges? After all our Presidents seem to choose which laws they will execute. Bush ignored immigration law. Obama and Holder selectively enforce the law. Obama is currently late with his budget, a violation of law.

If the ACLU wins its suit and the Board of Commissioners continue to pray, what will the court do do enforce its ruling? Let Holder and his goons be shown on television dragging county commissioners off to jail for peacefully praying. Until state and local officials are prepared to say no to the federal courts, and federal regulators, our freedom will continue to be eroded. It is time for peaceful disobedience.

I don't know what's worse, ACLU lawyers who unthinkingly parrot the Supreme Court's PC interpretations of the Establishment Clause, or Christian patriots who evidently don't know the Constitution and its history well enough to put dunce caps on lawyers for doing so.

More specifically, regardless what FDR's activist justices wanted people to think about Thomas Jefferson's "wall of separation" and the Establishment Clause, the real Thomas Jefferson had clarified the following about 10th Amendment-protected state power to regulate our basic rights. The Founding States had made the 1st and 10th Amendments in part to clarify that the states had reserved government power to regulate (cultivate) religious expression to themselves, regardless that they had made the 1st Amendment in part to prohibit such powers entirely to Congress.

"3. Resolved that it is true as a general principle and is also expressly declared by one of the amendments to the constitution that ‘the powers not delegated to the US. by the constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively or to the people’: and that no power over the freedom of religion, freedom of speech, or freedom of the press being delegated to the US. by the constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, all lawful powers respecting the same did of right remain, & were reserved, to the states or the people: that thus was manifested their determination to retain to themselves the right of judging how far the licentiousness of speech and of the press may be abridged without lessening their useful freedom, and how far those abuses which cannot be separated from their use should be tolerated rather than the use be destroyed; (emphasis added) …" --Thomas Jefferson, Kentucky Resolutions, 1798.

The reason that we're now self-made slaves to perversions of the Establishment Clause by activist justices as a consequence of ignorance of the Constitution is the following. Even though Section 1 of the 14th Amendment expressly applies only the Constitution's priviliges and immunities to the states, FDR's activist justices argued that 14A also applies the 1st Amendment's prohibitions of specific power on Congress to the states. This is evidenced by the followig excerpt from Cantwell v. Connecticut.

"The First Amendment declares that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. The Fourteenth Amendment has rendered the legislatures of the states as incompetent as Congress to enact such laws. The constitutional inhibition of legislation on the subject of religion has a double aspect." --Mr. Justice Roberts, Cantwell v. State of Connecticut, 1940.

The problem with the excerpt from the Cantwell opinion is this. Outcome-driven justices wrongly ignored that John Bingham, the main author of Section 1 of 14A, had officially clarified, on several occasions, that 14A took away no state powers.

"The adoption of the proposed amendment will take from the States no rights (emphasis added) that belong to the States." --John Bingham, Appendix to the Congressional Globe, 1866. (last paragraph of first column)
"No right (emphasis added) reserved by the Constitution to the States should be impaired…" --John Bingham, Appendix to the Congressional Globe, 1871. (first or second paragraph of first column, depending on how you count paragraphs.)
"Do gentlemen say that by so legislating we would strike down the rights of the State? God forbid. I believe our dual system of government essential to our national existance." --John Bingham, Appendix to the Congressional Globe (second paragraph from bottom in third column)

So Bingham essentially clarified that, regardless of 14A, the states still have the 10th Amendment-protected power to regulate religious issues, and other 1A-protected rights, powers which "atheist" Jefferson had acknowledged that the states have, as long as the states regulate our basic rights within reason.

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