States petition for secession

This seems a bit confused. Teachers in public schools are state actors. The first amendment applies to state actors even though those actors are not literally following acts of Congress or of their state legislature. I think trying to make some distinction between actions by the executive branch or other government actors and Congress entirely misses the point. The First amendment applies directly to both despite. Yes. There is a natural conflict between the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause. Schools have to avoid infringing on both. I thought those sets of Ten Commandments were identical.

Hi RAZD, How is telling them it is a sin that God destroyed 2 cities for trying to impose your will on them. It is a statement there is no way that making a statement is imposing one's will on another person.President Obama said, "We do not have a spending problem".He may have been trying to impose his will and wishes on me but he can't impose his will upon me or the facts that we do have a spending problem in Washington.God Bless,

You say I don't understand the First Amendment very well, but I think what that amounts to is simply that I reject the revisionist interpretations of it that you accept. This is a perfect example of the corrupt revisionist interpretation of the Amendment, vile sophistry. The first clause prohibits Congress from making a law establishing a state religion, period. To interpret that to make everyone in a government job the equivalent of Congress is insane. Nobody can MAKE a law BUT Congress. Legitimately anyway, leaving aside for the moment the fact that both the Supreme Court and the President like to usurp that prerogative. The idea is that the government is not to open its foul mouth on the subject of religion AT ALL. But now thanks to twisted logic if a teacher, now called a "state actor" brings a religious text to school that can be interpreted as the equivalent of "making a law respecting the establishment of religion" and you think this makes sense and this is why I want out of here. Properly understood there is no conflict whatever. The government is to keep its dirty paws off religion both in the sense of deciding that a particular religion represents the government, and in the sense of keeping people, and that includes teachers, from practicing their religion wherever they want to, including on school premises. But now the teacher is prohibited the free exercise of his/her religion because of being insanely defined as a "state actor" who would then be in the position of defining the religion of the whole nation. Wackadoo. I don't know about the Jewish version, but Rome included the part about having no other gods before the true God, carving idols and bowing down to them, under the first commandment, sort of to hide it there, or maybe they eliminated it altogether, I'm not completely sure how they did that, but the point is they don't treat it as a commandment in its own right as Protestants to, the reason of course being that bowing down to graven images is a major part of their pagan idolatrous religionEdited by Faith, : No reason given.

No. For example, if Congress passed a law saying that all Calvinists should be burned at the stake, that too would be unconstitutional, although it would not establish a state religion.But feel free to argue to the contrary. But obviously the Constitution has to affect state actors. If Congress declared war on American Calvinists, should they be able to say: "No, that's perfectly constitutional, because it's a bunch of soldiers who are killing you. In order for there to be a breach of the First Amendment, a Congressman would have to kill you personally"?

Really? So your state legislature does not pass laws? Federal and state agencies like the IRS don't implement regulations that have the force of law? Would you really have free speech if the FBI were allowed to shut you up?The result of interpreting the first amendment as you suggest would be a first amendment that provided absolutely no protection against the federal government at all. State actor means she is an employee directed by one of the several states and not the government of the whole nation. Because of the 14th amendment, the first amendment applies to your state government. Sure, Faith. You cannot even say what they did, but you do know it was evil? From your description apparently the Pope hid part of the ten commandments inside the first commandment where presumably those Catholic dupes could not find it by simply reading the text.Added by edit:Catholic Catechism:

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I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them or serve them.

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Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Yes indeed. As government agents teachers are indeed subject to the restrictions that the First Amendment imposes on the government. And rather than have each individual teacher interpret it all on their own, the school administrators develop and publish policies that will guide the teachers and thus will also keep the teachers from violating the First Amendment and getting the school district embroiled in a lawsuit. No, they are all different, albeit similar. The grouping, ordering, and numbering are different. So if you are going to display the Ten Commandments, you would first need to choose which religion's version you will use. For a government agency to choose one to display, it would be establishing the officially recognized religion.

You seem to be following Justice Scalia's interpretation of the Establishment Clause, an interpretation that I find completely wrong.Yes, favoring the dictates particular Christian sect would be a clear violation of the Establishment Clause, but so would be a state sponsored religious display that nearly all Christians would agree on, but no follower of Islam would appreciate.

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You say I don't understand the First Amendment very well, but I think what that amounts to is simply that I reject the revisionist interpretations of it that you accept.

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I don't think that Jefferson and Madison - the people mainly behind the Amendment - could be considered "revisionists". In fact wouldn't their views be rather relevant to any "original intent" interpretation ?

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This is a perfect example of the corrupt revisionist interpretation of the Amendment, vile sophistry. The first clause prohibits Congress from making a law establishing a state religion, period. To interpret that to make everyone in a government job the equivalent of Congress is insane. Nobody can MAKE a law BUT Congress. Legitimately anyway, leaving aside for the moment the fact that both the Supreme Court and the President like to usurp that prerogative. The idea is that the government is not to open its foul mouth on the subject of religion AT ALL. But now thanks to twisted logic if a teacher, now called a "state actor" brings a religious text to school that can be interpreted as the equivalent of "making a law respecting the establishment of religion" and you think this makes sense and this is why I want out of here.

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A teacher is a government employee in a government position and they should not use that position to promote their religion. The principle hardly seems vile, and you would endorse it in a heartbeat if a teacher used his position to promote a religion that you disliked.

fitting eh?

Another alternative is to have enclaves like the Amish.They have their own schools and community centers. The Amish allow kids to experiment in their youth but make up their mind at 18.Seems to work for them.Enjoy

Yes, that is quite correct. I do agree with that. If the claim is being made that a display is non-sectarian and does not favor any particular religion, then you cannot at the same time include only certain religions while excluding many others; that would be sheer hypocrisy and anyone who has bothered to read the Gospels should know what Jesus is supposed to have thought about hypocrites.A similar example is Boy Scouts of America, Inc (BSA), claiming to be "absolutely non-sectarian" and not defining "God" nor even what "duty to God" is supposed to entail, saying that they leave that entirely up to each individual member's own religious tradition and religious leaders. Yet in practice they do arbitrarily define "God" and decide what "duty to God" entails. Hypocrisy is hypocrisy. If you want to claim to be "absolutely nonsectarian" then that is what you need to practice. And an "all-inclusive" religious display must indeed be all-inclusive. A truly all-inclusive religious display on government property might still not pass judicial muster, but being truly all-inclusive has to be the first step.

It is, when you are telling them to change their behavior to suit your beliefs. With everyone pay a just proportion of taxes for programs that have been passed by the peoples representatives -- rather than starting unfunded wars like the schrubbia administration -- we don't have a problem. Most of the costs we see in the budget come from the war budgets, so we could cut those if we want to reduce spending.I'd like to see an amendment that all bills are fully funded, including taxes and fees.Taxes are user fees for citizens to live in the USA, and those that benefit most from the economy etc provided by the government should pay more for that benefit.EnjoyEdited by RAZD, : .

So how about something like the Amish?Enjoy.

I don't accept that mere persuasion, and even rude in your face shouting and finger pointing amounts to imposing your will; at least when adults are ithe targets. It might be annoying, but unless some kind of coercion is used, I would not consider simply calling me names to be imposing your will on me.Add something to the mix like a recognized authority (the police, my mom) and then you've got some imposing of the will.

Hi RAZD, How is telling them to change their behavior to suit your own beliefs imposing your will on them?Now if you have an apartment building and you have rented an apartment to a person and later that person moves a roommate of the same sex into the apartment, and you find out they are gay and tell them they have to change their belief or move, that is trying to impose one's will on another person.But if they are unwilling to move they are trying to impose their belief on the person who owns the property. I believe in a flat tax or no tax at all.I lived in the Cayman Islands for 15 years and they have no income taxes, no sales tax, and a one time land tax.Yet they have funds for their programs.There is a set amount of duty on everything that is brought into the country which is added to the cost of products and when anyone buys those products they are paying a portion of that duty that was paid by the importer.Thus they have a flat consumption tax in which everyone that buys anything is participating.Until the last 4 years I was there the government had no debt but they decided to expand government like the rest of the world and borrowed money to do things. Which will mess up that country.No country can spend more than it takes in. My state has to balance the budget every year. No money can be spent that is not covered by income.To fix our problem there would have to be a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. This would force the government to live within its means. In other words spend what comes in and borrow no money.In fact we need to spend less because we have a growing 16.4+ national debt that needs to be paid back.$1.4 Trillion dollars have been spent on the war in Iraq and Afghanistan including billions of dollars that was given to corrupt people in those governments that was diverted from the intended use to gains for crooked politicans.But during the Obama administration we have gone from a 10.63 trillion dollar national debt to over 16.4 trillion national debt the day he started his second term. That is an increase of 5.77 trillion dollars and at the present rate will be over 22.17 trillion dollars. That is an increase under Obama of 11.54 trillion dollars which is almost a trillion dollars over double the national debt the day he took office.We have a spending problem and there is no way to tax our way out of the problem.Since the states do not get to decide how the money is spent why should they participate in such a ponzi scheme? By doing so they are doing their citizens a disservice.Washington is out of control and a train wreck waiting to happen.We must cut spending, else what are we going to do when the well goes dry and no one buys our worthless bonds? Taxes are not users fees.
Taxes are funds that are extracted from the citizens to fund the lavish living styles of those in power.Why do you think our congress does not cut spending?The movement for disolving or leaving the union is because the Federal government has gotten to big for its britches and have begun to IMPOSE its will upon the states with impunity. Up until now no one has questioned the Federal government.God Bless,