Choose Death!

Doesn't that sound like an uplifting message for a license plate?

According to Fox News, apparently a federal judge in North Carolina feels the license plate displayed above is unconstitutional.  US District Court Judge James Fox has ruled the license plate violated the first amendment because North Carolina does not offer a similar product with an opposing view point. Here's a sample for them!

I'm sure that they won't have any trouble putting this on a license plate.  Again, I show my ignorance of the first amendment because, doggone it, I just cant find the opposing viewpoint provision. I see the part that talks about congress shall make no laws establishing a religion, but absolutely nothing about that says a state cannot put a slogan on a license plate.  Particularly one that has nothing to do with religion.  

So by this logic, a state would not be able to have a license plate that says "Say No to Drugs!" unless it offered one as well that looks something like this:

I just want to make sure that I have it straight...

IRS to Pastors: You Can't Preach That!

I know it will come as a shock to our devoted SACSTW readers, but once in a while there is an important issue to this country of which I am totally ignorant.  It doesn't happen often, but this was one that had slipped by my notice.  Having attended quite a variety of churches over my 47 years, I had noticed that in most cases, pastors rarely get very political from the pulpit.  I erroneously thought that this was by convention and that in general pastors were just concerning themselves with spiritual as opposed to earthly matters.

Nope.  That's not it.  There is a provision of the 1954 tax code that federally prohibits pastors from making political endorsements.  The provision reads:

Tax-exempt organizations are “absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office.”

Hmmmm...  To me that sounds like a violation of a couple of sections of the first amendment.  Just the minor ones about free speech and freedom of religion.  Where are all the separation of church and state apologists on this one?  Isn't this one of the holy tenets of the left?  Oh, that's right.  We can't have any mention of Christianity in the government, but there's no problem with the government telling churches what they can and can't do or even more disturbingly what they can and can't say.

However; not every church is toeing the line.  According to a Fox News story:

"More than 1,000 pastors are planning to challenge the IRS next month by deliberately preaching politics ahead of the presidential election."

This is not the first time churches have challenged the IRS on this.  From a PBN story earlier this year, Bishop Daniel Jenky of the Roman Catholic Diocese in Peoria, Illinois had this to say in one of his homilies:

“Hitler and Stalin, at their better moments, would just barely tolerate some churches remaining open, but would not tolerate any competition with the state in education, social services, and health care,” he said.

“In clear violation of our First Amendment rights, Barack Obama – with his radical, pro-abortion and extreme secularist agenda, now seems intent on following a similar path,” the homily says.

"Now things have come to such a pass in America that this is a battle that we could lose, but before the awesome judgment seat of Almighty God this is not a war where any believing Catholic may remain neutral.”

“This fall, every practicing Catholic must vote, and must vote their Catholic consciences, or by the following fall our Catholic schools, our Catholic hospitals, our Catholic Newman centers, all of our public ministries – only excepting our church buildings – could easily be shut down.

“Because no Catholic institution, under any circumstance, can ever cooperate with the intrinsic evil of killing innocent human life in the womb.”

I'd like to buy that guy a beer.

Like the pastors and priests who will be defying the federal government on October 7, I REALLY hope the IRS takes action against them.  I would love to see this in front of the Supreme Court.  Of course, that is only if Chief Justice John Roberts has been taking his meds.

Have a happy Thursday everyone!

Atheists Want to Starve Children!

This would be the New York Times headline if you replaced "atheists" with "Christians" 

According to multiple news sources, the Wisconsin based Freedom from Religion Foundation, or FFRF (I find it ironic that their acronym sounds just like the noise I make when I've eaten too much spicy food), has sent a letter to the superintendent of Walker County Schools in Georgia demanding an investigation into the behavior of Ridgeland High School football coach Mark Mariakis.

Coach Mariakis has been holding forced baptisms in the team whirlpools and branding all his players with the image of the cross and the words "John 3:16".  Wait, I'm sorry.  I must have read that wrong.  Apparently, local churches of varying denominations have been providing dinners for the football team on game-days. Whoa!  This guy makes Jerry Sandusky look like a saint.  He's allowing churches to feed his players for free????  The monster!

The FFRF purpose is to "protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church".  In a quote from a Fox News article, “Taking public school football teams to church, even for a meal, is unconstitutional,” wrote FFRF attorney Andrew Seidel. “This program is an egregious violation of the Establishment Clause and must cease immediately.”

For those of you who civics class was more than a year or two ago, here is the text of the first amendment of the US Constitution:

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.

Now as many times as I have heard "separation of church and state", I have never been able to find that text in the first amendment or anywhere else in the constitution for that matter.  The only thing I see is that congress isn't supposed to make any laws creating or establishing a religion.  I struggle to understand how allowing a variety of different churches to feed your football team has anything to to with congress making a law.  Maybe some of our liberal constitutional scholar (wow, is that an oxymoron or what?) readers can enlighten me.

Otherwise, I am left with only one conclusion.  Atheists want to starve our children. 

Why Did the Chicken Cross the Gays?

Because he wanted liberal politicians to violate the first amendment...

Add Ramen Noodle Emanuel to the list of liberal mayors wanting to ban Chick-fil-a from opening restaurants in his "fair" city.  Dan Cathy, the president of Chick-fil-a had the audacity in an interview to say that his company is unapologetically in favor of traditional marriage.  Unsurprisingly, this has the liberal and GLBT special interest groups with their undies in a very tight knot.

Interestingly, the obligatory calls for a boycott (which is well within their rights as consumers) is not enough for some.  No they need government officials using governmental power to bar a private business from opening because of religious opinions held by the business owners with which they disagree.

Now last time I was at Chick-fil-a, I wasn't required to kiss my wife to prove that I was heterosexual prior to purchasing a sandwich, so I'm not sure what grounds libs have for claiming discriminatory practices.  What I really hope is that Chicago and Boston are successful in barring Chick-fil-a in opening in their cities.  

I would love to see the Supreme Court get a hold of this one!  That is, as long as Chief Justice Roberts is able to kick that meth addiction before the case reaches him. 

San Fran Judge: US Flag Equivalent to Confederate Flag

OK

Not OK

According to Chief U.S. District Judge James Ware in the People’s Republic of San Francisco, wearing an American flag in an AMERICAN high school is racially incendiary and thus is not protected by the first amendment.

For those of you not familiar with the story, several “Anglo” students wore shirts with American flags on them on Cinco de Mayo.  They were threatened with suspension and sent home when they refused to change.  This was supposedly to protect them from the “Mexican-American” students.  (The use of Anglo and Mexican-American qualifiers was the judge’s, not mine.) Here is a link to the original story on Fox News.  My favorite quote from the original story was this doozy,  “Freshman Laura Ponce, who had a Mexican flag painted on her face and chest, told the Morgan Hill Times that Cinco de Mayo is the ‘only day’ Mexican-American students can show their national pride.”   I would respectfully suggest to Miss Ponce, that as a “Mexican-American”, you would show your “national pride” by painting an American flag on your face and chest.

Back to what is sure to be a hallmark of jurisprudence, Judge Ware’s decision…

As reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, the lawsuit filed by the students “accused school officials of violating the standard that the Supreme Court set in 1969 when it upheld students' right to wear black armbands to class, in a silent protest against the Vietnam War, and said schools can suppress student expression only when it threatens to disrupt the educational process.”  But Judge Ware had a response; he said “post-1969 rulings by federal courts have deferred to school officials' conclusions that certain types of student expression could endanger the speakers - for example, decisions by three appellate courts upholding bans on the Confederate flag in schools with histories of racial tension.”  So according to Judge Ware, wearing an American flag in the People’s Republic of California is as racially incendiary as wearing a Confederate flag in the south.

After reading this, I thought that surely this high school must be located in an East LA barrio.  Maybe school officials made the correct decision. I did some quick research on this “racially charged” high school and community.

Here is the information I found.  I’ll let you decide if this high school is located in East LA.

Live Oak High School Sports (not a complete listing):

• Cross Country
• Football
• Basketball
• Field Hockey
• Golf
• Tennis
• Volleyball
• Water polo
• Badminton
• Rugby

Morgan Hill, California demographic information:

• Population – 38,547
• Median household income - $95,968 ($37,000 above the state average)
• Median house or condo value:  $647,883 ($265,000 above the state average)
• Mean price for free-standing homes:  $835,769

Wow!  With the pressure of running from water polo practice to your next badminton match, how did poor little Laura Ponce find the energy to paint her face and chest?  Her hair stylist must have done it for her.

So, the moral of the story devoted readers is this:  Your first amendment rights will be upheld as long as you are a threat to trample the first amendment rights of others.  If you are a peaceful, patriotic, law-abiding student, you have no first amendment rights, because the people you might offend might be violent.