Integration of Church and State, indeed
Recognizing the public need for fasting and prayer in order to secure the blessings and protection of Providence for the people of the United States and our Armed Forces during the conflict in Iraq and under the threat of terrorism at home.
Don't you all have something better to do than to ask the President to set a day for us to, "seek guidance from God to achieve a greater understanding of our own failings and to learn how we can do better in our everyday activities?" [§2b] I mean, come on! Shouldn't public debate about the President's US$350 billion tax cut which favors the rich over the middle and lower classes? Is there debate over the current stealth class warfare by the Bush Administration whereby using Political Correctness that would make a early 90's hipster cringe to line the pockets of the already rich?
Where is the debate over the fact that even questioning the dividends recieved from stocks are income, and therefore subject to income tax? And that questioning the propaganda of calling this "double taxation" creates angry waves of accusations of classism and class-warfare which arise from the Right? Or the fact that the Justice Department is planning to roll out the so-called Patriot II Act, which would - among other things - grant the Executive the, "ability to strip citizenship from an American who supports a group the feds label as terrorist"?
No...the House would rather rubber stamp budgets from the Executive and then fill the time between those sessions with asking all of us to pray and to rename 'French Fries' to 'Freedom Fries'.
What happened to the greate debates that occured in the halls of Congress? For God sakes, in 1856 South Carolina Representative Preston S. Brooks caned Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner on the floor of the House of Representatives.
CANED during a debate!
Not that I am advocating violence, but come on this appears to be a combination of pandering to a very targeted audience, a lack of direction and/or attention of the House and wanting the appearence of actually accomplishing something. The art of the public debate has been so debased that you get this - a non-binding resolution asking people to pray to the Judeo-Christian God while useful and spirited debate about the direction our country is going - both abroad and domestic - is nowhere to be found.
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This is the permanent home of Integration of Church and State, indeed. I wrote this post at 01:48 on March 28, 2003. This post is part of grubbykid.com, a weblog. If you liked this entry, why don't you read some other posts such as Laurie Garrett Meltdown Clock or Blast-off? Or you could go to the site archives or return home. All are good choices.
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Some descriptive tags for this entry are: religion politics law conlaw rights.
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Some descriptive tags for this entry are: conlaw, law, politics, religion, rights.
Mommy... what's a tag?
