But that’s neither here nor there. The point is, the Establishment clause is more general than just the first amendment because it’ really about individual rights, not the strict wording of the Constitution. Congress should not be getting together in session to pray to God, because this is alienating to the millions of Americans who do not believe in the Jewish God, as is their right. I have a right to not have my government representatives take up time to pledge allegiance to some weird tiki god the same as a Buddhist doesn’t have to put up with this. This is a citizen government, and congressmen don’t have a right to make anyone feel unwelcome by interjecting their personal faith into public proceedings.

Turning it around and saying non-Christians were being insensitive is not valid. If a group of Christian congressmen want to get together and pray, no one is stopping them, but please not on the public’s dime.

To me, it comes down to this: You get a certain value from your government based on the taxes you pay. To some extent, you don’t get what you pay for when the government pushes laws or values you don’t agree with. This is just going to happen in representative government. for example, I hate the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Education Association. I wish I didn’t have to pay for their perpetuation, but the majority of citizens through their elected officials continue to support these programs. The reason this is acceptable is because public policy has been created out of values that are able to be extrapolated into public policy. It is a supportable, defensible position with strong public support.

The difference with things like congressional prayer time and faith-based funding is, these are based on personal and not public policy values, and putting them into government is by nature oppressive to the personal values of people who do not share them. Again, this is different from public policy because frankly, you can disagree about policy issues but you can’t disagree about religion. What’s good for me maybe isn’t good for you when it comes to religion, and I can’t explain why. That’s why we don’t go around ramming it down people’s throats in the first place. And in the case of government, my taxes are essentially being stolen to alienate me when the government spends time and money on their pet beliefs.

Misunderestimate? Maybe you could stack a few more extraneous prefixes in there and come up with a really special word, e.g., “exdeprodisconmisunderestimate.”

Regardless, you’ve certainly illustrated one of the reasons Christians are widely perceived as uneducated bumpkins, and you and your fellow snivelers make it abundantly clear that either won’t accept or cannot figure out something the nation’s founders understood well: that regardless of America’s preponderance of Jesus-ites, religion is *not* tantamount to Christianity. Period. Kudos to David Hamilton for not kowtowing to the innumerable backward persons in Indiana and ruling correctly.

DO NOT ‘misunderestimate’ the Christians in this country. We are good hearted, and we don’t like to fight…much.

When you start infringing on us, well, you’ve bought yourself a fight. We remember the Holocaust. Do you?

“An Indiana federal judge yesterday reaffirmed his decision to forbid prayers to be offered that use Jesus’ name in the state House of Representatives.”

Liberal judges just cannot stand to see Christian observances any place. I think Americans should elect all judges. Then, let the Anti-Christian judges stand on their record of being Anti-Christian. I venture to say that most liberal judges would not be so quick to rule against Christian observances.

I imagine if some cleric came in and prayed to a gold ram or something that would be OK….