Rube Reality » 1st Amendment http://rubereality.com Ruminations of an unrepentant rube Thu, 02 Feb 2012 18:47:07 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Democracy in Action! http://rubereality.com/2012/02/02/democracy-in-action/ http://rubereality.com/2012/02/02/democracy-in-action/#comments Thu, 02 Feb 2012 18:47:07 +0000 Herk http://rubereality.com/?p=1125 As mentioned here, there was a petition to investigate Chris Dodd for bribery. Well, the White House has spoken:

Thank you for signing this petition. We appreciate your participation in the We the People platform on Whitehouse.gov. However, consistent with the We the People Terms of Participation and our responses to similar petitions in the past, the White House declines to comment on this petition because it requests a specific law enforcement action.

Or to put in another way, you can only petition the government if you’ve agreed to the Terms of Participation and don’t violate them – and requesting that the executive branch do their constitutional job is clearly a violation of those terms. Seriously! Read the Terms, you chumps, and stop bothering that poor man – he’s heard your complaint, and that’s all he’s required to do. Besides he’s too busy fighting the good fight for the people that matter – his Hollywood campaign donors!

 

]]> http://rubereality.com/2012/02/02/democracy-in-action/feed/ 0 Ceremonial Deism http://rubereality.com/2009/11/17/ceremonial-deism/ http://rubereality.com/2009/11/17/ceremonial-deism/#comments Tue, 17 Nov 2009 07:52:04 +0000 Herk http://rubereality.com/?p=158 “In God We Trust” did not appear on any coin until 1864. It wasn’t used on all coins until Roosevelt’s presidency, it wasn’t mandated by legislation on all coins until 1955, nor made the official motto of the United States until 1956. Likewise, the Pledge of Allegiance wasn’t even written until 1892, and the words “Under God” weren’t added until 1954. So enough of this nonsensical revisionism that the Founding Fathers were all devoted Christians and founded this country as a Christian nation – those who utter such nonsense are bearing false witness. Even were that not the case, the difference between their faith and today’s “American Christian” is this: they were unwilling to cheapen God’s name by printing it on something so base as money or by using it in political slogans & statements.

…I would suggest that such practices as the designation of “In God We Trust” as our national motto, or the references to God contained in the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag can best be understood, in Dean Rostow’s apt phrase, as a form a “ceremonial deism,” protected from Establishment Clause scrutiny chiefly because they have lost through rote repetition any significant religious content.

From Justice Brennan’s dissenting opinion in Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U.S. 668 (1984)

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