The Right Lane update 8.10.13

The pursuit of Constitutionally grounded governance, freedom and individual liberty

"There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily." --George Washington

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Religion in School

Students do not give up their individual liberties when they enter the classroom.  They are entitled to rights to practice religion in school according to their individual freedoms. Every year, we see this right to religion in school exemplified in the See You At the Pole (SYATP) celebration, where students gather around the flagpole before classes start to pray for the school, our Nation, and other issues.  Almost every year, we hear stories of students being denied their rights to practice their religion in this way at school, so we reach out to the schools to educate them on students’ rights regarding SYATP.  These arguments would also defend students right to religion in school for other matters, as well, such as starting up a Bible club on campus.  The facts are these:

First, public schools may not disallow students from using school facilities during non- curricular times because of the students’ religious viewpoint. See Good News Club v. Milford Central School,533 U.S. 98, 120-121 (2001). Further, under Morse v. Frederick, 127 U.S 2618, 2620-2621 (2007), students have a right to express their faith on campus so long as it does not “materially and substantially disrupt the work and discipline of the school,” and as long as the school officials do not have a compelling interest to prohibit the speech, such as discouraging drug use. While the Supreme Court did hold that student-led public prayer over a football game speaker system violated the Establishment Clause because the prayer occurred publicly at a school-sponsored game and could be viewed as school endorsement of religion, “there is a crucial difference between government speech endorsing religion, which the Establishment Clause forbids, and private speech endorsing religion, which the Free Speech and Free Exercise Clauses protect.” Santa Fe Independent Sch. Dist.,530 U.S. 313, 302 (2000).  Since SYATP is not occurring over the loudspeaker of a school-sponsored activity like a school football game, since SYATP is entirely student-sponsored and student-led, and since students participating in SYATP gather to express pure speech during the non-curricular time of 7:00 AM and are not promoting a harmful activity such as drug use, the students have a right to gather for SYATP.

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War by wordplay  By Charles Krauthammer

Jen Psaki, blameless State Department spokeswoman, explained that the hasty evacuation of our embassy in Yemen was not an evacuation but “a reduction in staff.” This proved a problem because the Yemeni government had already announced (and denounced) the “evacuation” — the word normal folks use for the panicky ordering of people onto planes headed out of the country. Thus continues the administration’s penchant for wordplay, the bending of language to fit a political need. In Janet Napolitano’s famous formulation, terror attacks are now “man-caused disasters.” And the “global war on terror” is no more. It’s now an “overseas contingency operation.”

Nidal Hasan proudly tells a military court that he, a soldier of Allah, killed 13 American soldiers in the name of jihad. But the massacre remains officially classified as an act not of terrorism but of “workplace violence.”

The U.S. ambassador to Libya and three others are killed in an al-Qaeda-affiliated terror attack — and for days it is waved off as nothing more than a spontaneous demonstration gone bad. After all, famously declared Hillary Clinton, what difference does it make?  Well, it makes a difference, first, because truth is a virtue. Second, because if you keep lying to the American people, they may seriously question whether anything you say — for example, about the benign nature of NSA surveillance — is not another self-serving lie.  And third, because leading a country through yet another long twilight struggle requires not just honesty but clarity. This is a president who to this day cannot bring himself to identify the enemy as radical Islam. Just Tuesday night, explaining the U.S. embassy closures across the Muslim world, he cited the threat from “violent extremism.” The word “extremism” is meaningless. People don’t devote themselves to being extreme. Extremism has no content. The extreme of what? In this war, an extreme devotion to the supremacy of a radically fundamentalist vision of Islam and to its murderous quest for dominion over all others.

But for President Obama, the word “Islamist” may not be uttered. Language must be devised to disguise the unpleasantness. Result? The world’s first lexicological war. Parry and thrust with linguistic tricks, deliberate misnomers and ever more transparent euphemisms. Next: armor-piercing onomatopoeias and amphibious synecdoches.

This would all be comical and merely peculiar if it didn’t reflect a larger, more troubling reality: The confusion of language is a direct result of a confusion of policy — which is served by constant obfuscation. Obama doesn’t like this terror war. He particularly dislikes it's unfortunate religious coloration, which is why “Islamist” is banished from his lexicon. But soothing words, soothing speeches in various Muslim capitals, soothing policies — “open hand,” “mutual respect” — have yielded nothing. The war remains. Indeed, under his watch, it has spread. And as commander in chief he must defend the nation.

He must. But he desperately wants to end the whole struggle. This is no secret wish. In a major address to the National Defense University just three months ago he declared “this war, like all wars, must end.” The plaintive cry of a man hoping that saying so makes it so.  The result is visible ambivalence that leads to vacillating policy reeking of incoherence. Obama defends the vast NSA data dragnet because of the terrible continuing threat of terrorism. Yet at the same time, he calls for not just amending but actually repealing the legal basis for the entire war on terror, the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force.

Well, which is it? If the tide of war is receding, why the giant NSA snooping programs? If al-Qaeda is on the run, as he incessantly assured the nation throughout 2012, why is America cowering in 19 closed-down embassies and consulates? Why was Boston put on an unprecedented full lockdown after the marathon bombings? And from Somalia to Afghanistan, why are we raining death by drone on “violent extremists” — every target, amazingly, a jihadist? What a coincidence.

This incoherence of policy and purpose is why an evacuation from Yemen must be passed off as “a reduction in staff.” Why the Benghazi terror attack must be blamed on some hapless Egyptian-American videographer. Why the Fort Hood shooting is nothing but some loony Army doctor gone postal. In the end, this isn’t about language. It’s about leadership. The wordplay is merely cover for uncertain policy embedded in confusion and ambivalence about the whole enterprise. This is not leading from behind. This is not leading at all.

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Reid Ripped For 'Race-Baiting' Comment on GOP Opposition to Obama By: Paul Scicchitano

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says he hopes Republicans who oppose the president do so "based on substance and not the fact that he's an African American."  The comment came during a wide-ranging interview Friday with Las Vegas-based National Public Radio affiliate KNPR, in which Reid, a Nevada Democrat, lamented Republican filibusters and claimed opponents do everything they can to make Obama fail.  He recalled that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, said during Obama's first term that his most important goal was ensuring Obama wasn't re-elected. "Here we are seven months into his second term and nothing has changed," Reid said. "It's been obvious they are doing everything they can to make him fail. And I hope, I hope, and I say this seriously, it's based on substance and not the fact that he's an African American."

Reid's comments went unchallenged by the program's moderator, but not by conservative African-American columnist Clarence V. McKee, who said there was no reason for Reid to raise the race issue during the interview. “It’s been typical for the last 3½ years — Obama supporters, black and white — whenever he’s criticized the first thing they yell is ‘race or racism,’” said McKee, who held several positions in the Reagan administration as well as the Reagan presidential campaigns. “For the Senate majority leader to stoop that low and go into the racial gutter is disgusting.” McKee blamed Reid’s comments and similar ones for the apparent deterioration of race relations since the election of President Obama in 2008.

“He’s just race baiting and the president should disavow it as should other Democrats, but they’re all part of a race-bait chorus,” according to McKee, citing a recent Wall Street Journal poll, which found that attitudes on race relations have plummeted under the president. “They’re doing more to hurt race relations than the Zimmerman verdict will ever do.” He said Reid’s comments were tantamount to “liberal, elitist, racism.”  McConnell's office referred a request for comment to Sen. Tim Scott, a black Republican from South Carolina, who said Reid's remarks were offensive and asked for an apology. In 2010, Reid apologized for comments he made about the president’s race during the 2008 presidential campaign. Reid described then-Sen. Obama as “light skinned’’ and “with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.’’ In his apology, Reid attributed his private description of Obama to a “poor choice” of words.  “I deeply regret using such a poor choice of words,” he said at the time. “I sincerely apologize for offending any and all Americans, especially African Americans for my improper comments.’’  Convenient amnesia or what?

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Obama Claims He has Decimated Al Qaeda

Obama has nothing to do with it and has made sure that terrorists continue to have power in the world. They laugh at his weakness and plan their next attack. The only way to deal with them is to destroy them.
In a press conference at the White House East Room on Friday, President Obama said that the “core” of Al Qaeda was on its heels but that the terrorist group had “metastasized” into a different sort of threat.  Then went on to make these astonishing comments! “They have the capacity,” he said, “to go after our embassies… to go after our businesses… to be destabilizing and disruptive in countries where the security apparatus is weak.” Obama said that it was consistent to believe that this “tightly organized” Al Qaeda that attacked us on 9/11 has been “broken apart” and is “very weak,” while simultaneously claiming that the Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula could still pose a serious threat. Huge "Play on Words" - He wants it both ways.  His previous claims that "Al Qaeda is on its heals" while making his recent security alerts appear rational.  He takes the American people a simpletons that can be manipulated!  Maddening!

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NEA Union Membership Plummets

A total of 44 NEA state affiliates lost members since 2008-09, including 22 with double-digit percentage losses

Recent union membership statistics spell trouble for the National Education Association. Overall NEA membership was about 2.7 million in 2011-12, which represented a loss of about 6.9 percent since 2008-09, according to media reports.  But union finances will only take a moderate hit, since NEA leaders decided to raise individual members dues by $3 per year to make up for the loss in revenue.

Reasons given for the decline include teacher layoffs throughout the nation and new laws that allow teachers to walk away from union membership more easily in some states.  Dissatisfaction among members with NEA service, and the union’s increasing participation in Democratic Party politics are common reasons for members to resign.

The scope of the membership loss is easiest to appreciate at the state level. The membership totals of active and inactive members for each state NEA affiliate were recently compiled by Mike Antonucci of the Education Intelligence Agency. Active members are employed teachers, professionals and education support workers. Total membership numbers includes retirees, students, substitutes and all others.

The data shows that from 2009 through 2012, 44 state affiliates lost active members, with 22 experiencing losses of double digit percentages. The state affiliates that faced the biggest drop in numbers as measured by percentage were Arizona, North Carolina and Wisconsin. Only six affiliates had more active members in 2012 than in 2009.

Arizona – A closer Look

The active membership number in Arizona decreased by a whopping 43.1 percent since 2008-09. The total membership for Arizona has fallen by approximately 30 percent since 2010 – 2011, leaving the state union a mere shadow of its former self.  The decline is so great that the Arizona Education Association’s income fell from $7.5 million to $5.4 million in a single year, according to the Arizona Daily. The union is only budgeting for $5.3 million in dues revenue over the next year, the news report said.  One of the largest school districts in the state, Tucson Unified, now has so few teachers in their local union that the district is not legally obligated to participate in collective bargaining, although it continues to voluntarily do so.

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President Obama’s Sycophantic Attitude toward the Muslim World by David L. Goetsch

What can explain Barack Obama’s sycophantic attitude toward the Muslim world?  In his recent Cairo speech, the president said: “I know, too, that Islam has always been a part of America’s history.”  Really?  Since when?  As a fairly well-informed student of American history I cannot recall any significant contribution of Muslims to America’s history, other than, of course, our recent history of terrorism. Why would a president who knows full well his words will be heard by Americans whose only ties to the Muslim world other than over-priced gasoline consist of terrorist attacks such as 9-11, Boston, Khobar Towers, and the U.S.S. Cole?

Perhaps the president is trying to reach out to so-called “moderate Muslims.”  I keep hearing about moderate Muslims but I am beginning to wonder if there really is such a thing. If there are really moderate Muslims, where were they when our embassy in Libya was attacked by Islamist fanatics?  Where were they when participants and spectators—including a child who was killed—were bombed during the Boston Marathon? Where were they when the Twin Towers were obliterated on 9-11? Where is their outrage over the atrocities and brutality of their more fanatical brethren?

Their silence in all of these situations shows where so-called moderate Muslims truly stand. I will believe in the concept of moderate Muslims when those who claim this status come together and speak out loudly, uniformly, and consistently against Islamist terrorism and the abuses of Sharia Law.  Frankly, for now I am convinced that any time Islamist terrorists are able to penetrate our defenses and do harm to American citizens so-called moderate Muslims go behind closed doors and rejoice.

Silence in the face of evil is not an acceptable response.  Dr. Martin Luther King made this point during some of the darkest days of the struggle for Civil Rights when he said (paraphrased): It is not the anonymous bigot hiding under a sheet that we have to worry about.  It is the good man who knows we are right and yet remains silent.  The same could be said for so-called moderate Muslims.  If they are indeed good people, they know that the violence and brutality perpetrated worldwide in the name of Allah is wrong.  Knowing this they have no excuse for remaining silent.  To remain silent in the face of evil is to approve of evil.

Back to Barack Obama’s claim that Muslims have played a significant role in America’s history.  A few questions for our ill-informed president: Which of the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock was a Muslim? Which of the Founders who signed the Declaration of Independence was a Muslim?  Which signature on the Constitution belongs to a Muslim?  Which author of the Bill of Rights was a Muslim?  How many of George Washington’s troops during our War of Independence were Muslims?

Barack Obama claims to be well informed concerning America’s Civil Rights Movement.  Perhaps a few questions from that part of our nation’s history are in order.  How many Muslims sat with Rosa Parks when she refused to give up her seat on that bus in Montgomery? How many Muslims marched with Dr. King in Selma? How many Muslims were attacked by Bull Connors’ police dogs in Birmingham?  An interesting aside to all of these questions about the Civil Rights era is that it was Jews not Muslims who came to the aid of black Americans and suffered side-by-side with them.  Here is another history lesson for our president.  During World War II, the Muslim Grand Mufti met personally with Nazi leader Adolph Hitler and conspired with the Nazis to murder of Jews.  Perhaps they did not cover American history at Harvard Law School.

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The illogic of anti-creationism  by Jonathan Sarfati

Over a century ago, astute anti-Darwinian apologist G.K. Chesterton¹ (1874–1936) explained what had returned him “back to orthodox theology.”² Surprisingly, the culprits were the leading christophobes of his day. Their attacks on Christianity were so irrational that they contradicted each other:

“As I read and re-read all the non-Christian or anti-Christian accounts of the faith … a slow and awful impression grew gradually but graphically upon my mind—the impression that Christianity must be a most extraordinary thing. For not only (as I understood) had Christianity the most flaming vices, but it had apparently a mystical talent for combining vices which seemed inconsistent with each other. It was attacked on all sides and for all contradictory reasons. No sooner had one rationalist demonstrated that it was too far to the east than another demonstrated with equal clearness that it was much too far to the west.”

On the one hand, they ‘proved’ Christianity was “a thing of inhuman gloom”, but then they proved that Christianity “was a great deal too optimistic.” Christianity supposedly caused overpopulation by “Go forth and multiply” (Genesis 1:28), but then it was supposedly anti-sex. Another of Chesterton’s examples was:

“Or, again, certain phrases in the Epistles or the marriage service, were said by the anti-Christians to show contempt for woman’s intellect. But I found that the anti-Christians themselves had a contempt for woman’s intellect; for it was their great sneer at the Church on the Continent that ‘only women’ went to it.”

So Chesterton concluded that either Christianity was very wrong indeed, if mutually incompatible objections can be hurled at it—or it was the one right belief system with the proper balance….

Continue Reading on creation.com

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Obama Says Insurance Will Be 'Significantly Cheaper' Under Obamacare, But That Isn't True - CNN: Rates will 'soar' in Ohio and Florida.  By JOHN MCCORMACK

At a White House press conference Friday afternoon, President Obama said that health insurance plans offered under Obamacare will be "significantly cheaper" than plans currently on the market, but a string of recent reports say that isn't true. 

"What happens on October 1, in 53 days, is for the remaining 15 percent of the population that doesn't have health insurance, they're going to be able to go on a website or call up a call center and sign up for affordable, quality health insurance at a significantly cheaper rate than what they can get right now on the individual market," Obama said on Friday.  But, as CNN reported this week, rates will be 35 percent higher in Florida and 41 percent higher in Ohio on average under Obamacare. The president's health care law is also projected to drive up health care costs for many people currently on employer-provided plans. The Associated Press reported yesterday that insurance companies "have already warned small business customers that premiums could rise 20 percent or more in 2014 under the Affordable Care Act," and some companies may respond by not paying for insurance coverage for their employees' family members.

So, why is the president saying things that are flat not true?  Does he intentionally lie? One must think yes; he is not a stupid person that would get the facts  wrong.

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Washington Post Writer Wrong about Religion, America, and the Constitution   by Gary DeMar
Charles C. Hayne has written “Dispelling the myth of a ‘Christian nation’” for the Washington Post. The article begins: “Culture warriors, pseudo historians and opportunistic politicians have spent the last several decades peddling the myth that America was founded as a ‘Christian nation.’ “The propaganda appears to be working.
“A majority of the American people (51 percent) believes that the U.S. Constitution establishes a Christian nation, according to the State of the First Amendment survey released last month by the First Amendment Center. America existed as a nation long before the Constitution was drafted and enacted into law. Every colony and state had as its foundation the Christian religion, some more specific than others, from the 1606 First Charter of Virginia and the 1643 Constitution of the New England Confederation to the 1778 Constitution of the State of South Carolina and the 1776 Constitution which stated in Article 32 the following: “That no person who shall deny the being of God, or the truth of the Protestant religion, or the divine authority of the Old or New Testaments, or who shall hold religious principles incompatible with the freedom and safety of the State, shall be capable of holding any office or place of trust or profit in the civil department within this State.” Hayne also writes: “Nowhere will you find [in the Constitution] mention of God, Christ or any intention to found a Christian nation.” In Article I, Section 7, Paragraph 2 of the Constitution, the following is found: “If any bill shall not be returned by the President within ten Days (Sundays excepted)….”
Sundays were set aside as a day of rest for the president because it was a distinctly Christian observance. If it was the purpose of the Constitution to remove all things religious, then why include this most particular Christian exception? Then there is this in Article 3: “No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.” The Wikipedia article on Article 3 has this: “This rule was derived from an older English statute, the Treason Act 1695.” The Treason Act got it from the Bible (Deut. 17:6; 19:15; Matt. 18:16; John 8:17; 2 Cor. 13:1; 1 Tim. 5:19; Heb. 10:28). Just above George Washington’s signature, the following is found: “Done in Convention, by the unanimous consent of the States present, the seventeenth day of September, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty seven.” The use of “Lord” is a reference to Jesus Christ. The 1797 date tells us as much. Compare our Constitution to what the French did during their revolutionary period. They started their calendar with the year one and abolished the seven-day biblical week with a ten-day week. What about the “no religious test” clause in Article VI? At one level, the “no religious test” was designed to protect the states since some state constitutions required a religious test for office holders. The federal Constitution did not change what the states required. A national religious test would have been contentious since the states would have lost their right to set their own religious requirements. The First Amendment was designed to keep the national government out of the religious affairs of the states: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. . .” Constitutional scholar Daniel Dreisbach writes: “[M]any delegates to the state conventions were unwilling to grant the new national regime authority to implement a practice (i.e. religious tests) that was common at the state level precisely because they wanted to retain the state tests and they feared a federal test might displace existing state tests.”[1] Luther Martin (1748-1826) The no religious test clause was controversial in the 18th century among those who saw the broader implications of its inclusion. Luther Martin (1748–1826) of Maryland, in a lengthy letter to the Speaker of the House of Delegates of Maryland, set forth his justification in leaving the Constitutional convention and in refusing to sign the Constitution. He wrote: “There were some members so unfashionable as to think that a belief in the existence of a Deity and of a state of future rewards and punishments would be some security for the good conduct of our rulers, and that, in a Christian country, it would be at least decent to hold out some distinction between the professors of Christianity and downright infidelity or paganism.”[2]
Today, we are paying a heavy price for a secularized government by those who assumed that a vibrant 18th-century Christian worldview would be enough to maintain the moral and political sanity of a nation more than 200 years hence. Many of America's founders believed that Christian morality was shared by all Americans regardless of faith, and that no particular religion was necessary for maintaining that morality. They were wrong.

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