Free Republic

By Burt Prelutsky Over the last several years, a time of year that was traditionally a period of goodwill and universal brotherhood, when even actual brothers somehow managed to set aside sibling rivalries for a month or so, Christmas has become an annual battleground between decent people and a relatively small number of secular leftists who insist on carrying on as if auditioning for the role of Scrooge. As many of you are no doubt aware, this year, Fort Collins got a jump start on the foolishness. The town fathers, by making every effort not to offend anyone, have, like...

Bush apologizes to Wiccan widow Published: Sept 2, 2007 at 10:16 AM WASHINGTON, Sept 1 (UPI) -- U.S. President George Bush apologized to a Nevada Wiccan who was left out of a presidential meeting with relatives of soldiers killed in combat. Rebecca Stewart, who sued to have the Wiccan symbol placed on her husband’s grave marker in a military cemetery, told The Washington Post the president called her to apologize. She said she explained to Bush the faith she and her husband shared. Sgt. Patrick Stewart was killed in Afghanistan in 2005. Stewart said she heard about the private meeting...

As I sat in the hearing room, I felt a cold chill – like the chilling effect this court-martial will have on our free speech. For this analogy to be accurate, however, I would need to be sitting in a freezer. At issue in the court-martial of Lt. Gordon James Klingenschmitt, chaplain for the United States Navy, is a name and the freedom to speak it. That name is Jesus. And, according to this week's ruling, the freedom to speak it depends on the context. Before I could go through the metal detectors to get to the courtroom, a Navy...

<p>Every year, the Frenchtown Elementary School in New Jersey presents an after-school talent show, open to kids from kindergarten through eighth grade. The performers can choose to play an instrument, dance, create a skit or select a song.</p> <p>This past school year, a second-grader decided to sing Awesome God. But during rehearsal, the teacher in charge, on hearing the title and lyrics, told the child that principal Joyce Brennan would have to approve that song. Brennan contacted the attorney for the school district.</p>

Gay rights vs. religious beliefs http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/editorial/15345126.htm Posted on Thu, Aug. 24, 2006 Commentary By Roger T. Severino Live and let live. A simple concept, to be sure, but can we apply it to the growing conflict between gay rights and religious beliefs? The answer increasingly seems to be no. Recently, Philadelphia ordered the local Boy Scouts of America chapter (the nation's third-largest) to renounce the national organization's ban on openly gay members or begin paying rent on its city-subsidized headquarters of 78 years. Some thought this issue was settled by the Supreme Court in 2000, when the Boy Scouts won...

University of Wisconsin ignores the law, refuses to recognize Christian student organizationshttp://alliancedefensefund.org/news/pressrelease.aspx?cid=3820 ADF attorney calls university officials to account for discriminatory actions Monday, August 07, 2006, 5:15 PM (MST) ADF Media Relations | 480-444-0020 MADISON, Wis. — The director of the Alliance Defense Fund’s Center for Academic Freedom sent a letter to University of Wisconsin officials today warning them about the illegality of their continued de-recognition of Christian student groups. "Christian student groups shouldn’t be treated differently from other student organizations,” said ADF Senior Legal Counsel David French, who wrote the letter. “The University of Wisconsin has decided to force...

Public Expression of Religion Act moves forwardhttp://www.recordgazette.net/articles/2006/07/28/news/05news.txt http://tinyurl.com/hp9ga Rees Lloyd, Banning-based attorney and Commander of American Legion District 21 (Riverside County), has been selected to testify on behalf of The American Legion before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution in support of passage of Senate Bill 3696, Veterans Memorials, Boy Scouts, Public Seals and Other Public Expressions of Religion Act of 2006 (“PERA). S 3696 (PERA), sponsored by Sen. Brownback (R-Kan), a companion bill to H.R. 2979 (PERA), sponsored by Rep. Hostetter (R-Ind.), would amend all relevant federal laws to eliminate the authority of judges to award taxpayer-paid attorney...

Five years ago, I wrote about threats made by the Internal Revenue Service against conservative churches for supposedly engaging in politicking. Today, the IRS is again attempting to chill free speech, sending notices to more than 15,000 non-profit organizations—including churches—regarding its new crackdown on political activity. But what exactly constitutes political activity? What if a member of the clergy urges his congregation to work toward creating a pro-life culture, when an upcoming election features a pro-life candidate? What if a minister admonishes churchgoers that homosexuality is sinful, when an initiative banning gay marriage is on an upcoming ballot? Where exactly...

© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com A federal court ruled a Florida county cannot prohibit a rabbi from holding prayer and worship services in his own home. Rabbi Joseph Konikov of Orlando was faced with two land-use ordinance violations filed by Orange County. "Americans have the right to meet in their homes for prayer or to study religious materials without government interference," said Rick Nelson, head of the American Liberties Institute, a group allied with the Alliance Defense Fund. In 2001, Konikov and his family were ordered by code enforcement officers to stop holding prayer meetings in their home, near Disney World, alleging...

...We need to restore the original definitions of "law," "establishment," and "religion" in the First Amendment. A monument or display could never be a "law," the mere posting or installation of it is not an "establishment," and the recognition of God by the public display of the Ten Commandments is not "religion." After all, the original definition of the word "religion" -- the duties we owe to our Creator and the manner of discharging those duties -- which was recognized by the Supreme Court years ago, acknowledged God and a higher law. ...[I]t should be clear that, as Justice Antonin...

Over the course of the past week, the Terri Schiavo case made headlines with its swift and unsuccessful journey through the federal courts. The string of court defeats might have left the impression that the case was doomed from the outset. Yet the litigation's failure may owe more to a poor tactical choice by the lawyers advising the Schindlers--Terri's parents--than to the case's underlying merits. The original Schindler complaint included a variety of federal constitutional and statutory claims. Each of them was weak at best, as was quickly reflected in federal district judge James Whittemore's ruling that the Schindlers had...

4 options on deity issue to be weighed By Roger Phelps, The Porterville Recorder A weighty decision on public prayer faces the Porterville City Council Tuesday. Wrestling with the sentiments of hundreds of demonstrators calling in recent weeks for resumption of official prayers naming Jesus Christ, the council could choose among four optional actions described in a report by the city attorney. One is to keep things the way they are, whereby Porterville invocations observe a court ruling that mentioning a specific deity in official prayer violates the establishment-of-religion clause of the U.S. Constitution. The case is Rubin v. City...

For more than two years, Rev. Jim Potter has fought Anderson County officials for the right to leave up a giant Christian cross he erected near I-75. On Monday, a judge sided with the county, ordering Rev. Potter to remove the cross. County officials argued that the cross, located on private property near exit 122, violated building and zoning regulations. But Rev. Potter said he believed that because of the significance of religious structures, his cross should be exempt from the zoning regulations. "I think it (the cross) should bring to knowledge the fact that Jesus Christ did die for...

If conservative and liberal church-state scholars agree on one thing, it is that the Supreme Court’s religious liberty jurisprudence is a disaster. No single rule exists to guide decision making. The various doctrines employed are, at best, inconsistent and, at worst, blatantly contradictory. Divisions on the Court run so deep that actions demanded by "free exercise" according to some Justices violate "no-establishment" according to others. The result is an ever shifting, case-by-case jurisprudence based on narrow factual questions that encourages neither the rule of law nor a robust protection of religious freedom.The history of contradictory decisions and doctrinal uncertainty could...

CIRCUITS SPLIT OVER PRISONERS’ RELIGIOUS RIGHTS Conflicting Rulings Point Toward a Challenge at the Supreme Court BY DAVID L. HUDSON JR. Setting the stage for a possible U.S. Supreme Court review, two federal appeals courts issued conflicting opinions on the constitutionality of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act within barely more than a week. The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Chicago, upheld the 2000 statute in its Oct. 30 ruling. Charles v. Verhagen, No. 02-3572. Meanwhile, the Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last week ruled the law unconstitutional. Cutter v. Wilkinson, Nos. 02-3270,...

Signaling growing antipathy toward Scripture on public property, a Texas woman is suing Harris County, demanding a King James Bible be removed from a monument near the entrance of a courthouse. According to a report in the Houston Chronicle, Kay Staley, who is both a real estate agent and a lawyer, cites what she sees as growing religious fundamentalism in society. "It's unconstitutional, and I expect our elected officials to follow the law," Staley, a member of the Houston chapter of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, told the paper. Bible monument unconstitutional? (Photo: Houston Chronicle) The tattered...

The ACLU and Americans United for the Separation of Church and State assert that they filed lawsuits against Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore out of concern that a monument of the Ten Commandments located in the Alabama state courthouse violated the First Amendment's prohibition against any law respecting the establishment of religion. But the monument has nothing to do with establishing religion. In reality, their lawsuits aim to prohibit Moore from exercising his First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion, which is an equally important clause in the First Amendment. So far, the federal courts have sided with...

A frieze depicting Moses holding two tablets with the Ten Commandments is fixed high above the justices' bench at the Supreme Court, one of several places the biblical law is represented in the marbled building. But those same justices this week rejected a request to allow a 5,300-pound granite marker with the Ten Commandments carved into it to stay in Alabama's Judicial Building. It's another illustration of the seemingly conflicting messages about how much religion can legally be in government. God is in the details -- even the grand designs -- of the republic. Some of the expressions of religion...

While everyone is focusing on the propriety of Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore's refusal to remove a Ten Commandments monument from his courthouse, we are giving the federal courts a pass -- and we mustn't. Undeniably, the federal constitution's Supremacy Clause makes the federal constitution and constitutional federal laws supreme over state constitutions and laws and binding on state judges. So should our analysis end here? That's what some conservative pundits are saying. The federal courts have ordered Justice Moore to remove the monument under authority of the United States Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land. The U.S....

I don’t know how many times it has been said but I am sure it is quite a lot. The assertion that the United States Constitution has verbiage specifically providing for a separation of church and state is a false one. At no time has there ever been any mention of the separation of church and state in the US Constitution. There was never even any discussion by the Framers of the Constitution to put verbiage in the Constitution regarding the separation of church and state. What the United States Constitution states in the First Amendment is, and I quote:...

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;" Judge Moore is about to be held in contempt of a court order demanding that he remove the statue of the Ten Commandments from in front of the courthouse where he has honorably served for years. This fact raises an interesting question, and exemplifies a blatant contradiction as well as our modern-day courts' insitence on trying to legislate from the bench. Our Congress is strictly and explicitly probitied by our Constitution from passing any laws prohibiting the free excercise of one's religion. If Judge...

Putting God Back in the Public Square by Roy S. Moore, Circuit Judge, 16th Judicial District, Etowah County, AL (reprinted by permission from IMPRIMIS,, the monthly journal of Hillsdale College) In his first official act, President George Washington did something that would be unthinkable today. He prayed in public! Specifically, during his inaugural address he made... ..fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the universe, who presides in the councils of nations, and whose providential aids can supply every human defect, that His benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the people of the United States...