Tag Archives: First Amendment

Recall effort, over this?

garagesale

Many communities in America have them.

They’re gadflies. Blowhards. People who raise a ruckus just to be heard. Maybe they like the sound of their own voices. I don’t know.

An individual has surfaced over yonder, in Tucumcari, N.M., who I guess qualifies as a gadfly. She doesn’t like a proposed new city ordinance that puts some restrictions on garage, rummage or estate sales in the city.

She’s threatening to recall Tucumcari city commissioners over their insistence on approving the city ordinance.

But here’s the ridiculous aspect of it.

The gadfly, Dena Mericle, doesn’t like in Tucumcari. She lives in rural Quay County. She doesn’t have any proverbial skin in the game. The ordinance doesn’t affect her. Her garage sale restrictions are set by the county commission.

According to my colleague Thomas Garcia, writing for the Quay County Sun, Mericle said this during a public hearing: “The commissioners are elected by us, the public, to serve our best interest and the interest of the city.”

She then used the R-word — “recall” — to make her point. “If the commission passes this ordinance, then I hate to resort to this, but I’ve collected well over 300 signatures … for a recall of the commissioners.”

Tucumcari Mayor Ruth Ann Litchfield told Garcia that commissioners “often make decisions that are unpopular. If we give in to the threat of recall, then anytime there is an item or ordinance that someone doesn’t like, they will resort to that tactic.”

Earth to Dena: You are entitled to express your opinion, but you are not entitled — as a practical matter — to spearhead a recall drive in a community in which you have no vested interest.

Geez, I hate recalls. They should be done only in the case of malfeasance. Tucumcari commissioners are acting totally within their purview by regulating a legal activity inside the city’s corporate boundaries.

As such, commissioners are answerable only to those who pay the bills, the residents of the city — who also would be financially liable for the cost of a recall election.

This kind of outside intrusion isn’t unique, of course, to Tucumcari.

Do you recall the Amarillo municipal referendum this past November in which residents were asked whether to approve construction of a multipurpose event venue in its downtown district? The referendum passed in a close vote.

One of the main foes of the MPEV was a guy who lived in Canyon, about 15 miles south of Amarillo. But there he was, raising Cain at City Council meetings objecting to the MPEV.

I get that he — as is Mericle — is entitled to speak his mind. If he didn’t like the MPEV, the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution grants him the right to speak out against it.

However, these local issues ought to be decided and argued publicly by those who have a tangible stake in their outcome. That’s not a legal requirement, of course. It just makes sense.

The rest of us are perched in the proverbial peanut gallery, where our arguments and objections will get all the attention they deserve … which isn’t much.

Rewrite the 2nd Amendment? Just try it

The Orlando, Fla., massacre has ignited yet again — for the zillionth time — the debate over whether to enact tighter controls on the purchase of guns such as the weapon used by the monster who mowed down those innocent victims.

I don’t intend to enter that debate here. I do, though, want to introduce you to an idea that’s being kicked around: rewriting the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

I’ve long believed that of all the first 10 amendments, those that guarantee our civil liberties, the Second is the most horribly written of them.

It seems to contain two distinct references that appear to be at odds with each other.

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Are clear on that? Now? Forever?

Hardly.

Gun-control advocates glom onto the first part, the reference to the well-regulated militia; gun-owner advocates cling to the second part that refers to “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

The founders inserted a couple of commas in the middle of the text that seem — to my eyes, at least — to add to the confusion.

Mac McCann, a blogger for the Dallas Morning News, has posited the notion that the Second Amendment needs to be modernized. Will it happen? Sure, it’ll happen about the time both sides of the gun violence divide come together, lock arms and sing in perfect harmony.

http://dallasmorningviewsblog.dallasnews.com/2016/06/maybe-the-only-solution-is-to-rewrite-the-second-amendment.html/

McCann writes: “I hold the Constitution in the highest regard, and I’m naturally skeptical of government power. But I’m moved by Obama’s words: ‘to actively do nothing is a decision, as well’ — and clearly not a good decision.

“We need a text that reflects the will of the American people in today’s world — which, of course, is far different from the world the Constitution was written in.”

Of course, any effort to amend an amendment is going to be interpreted as repealing the original text. We’ve had discussion in the past about amending the First Amendment, too. Free-speech/freedom-of-religion/free-press purists such as myself, quite naturally, have opposed such a thing on its face. That puts us in a bind when discussions come up regarding the Second Amendment, which is held in equally high regard by purists interested in gun-related issues.

This notion of modernizing the Second Amendment, though, is a discussion worth having.

If only we can have it intelligently and without the demonization that is guaranteed to erupt.

Your thoughts? Talk to me.

 

Mayor to Trump: Thanks, but no thanks

Sadiq Khan

Sadiq Khan made history by becoming the first Muslim ever elected mayor of London.

He’s a distinguished man who apparently doesn’t like other politicians patronizing him.

So, when presumptive Republican Party presidential nominee Donald J. Trump offered to grant the mayor-elect an “exception” to a proposed ban on Muslims visiting the United States, Khan offered a terse “no thanks.”

This is precisely the kind of reaction Trump should have gotten in response to his ridiculous — and patently unconstitutional — proposal to ban people from entering the United States on the basis of their religious belief.

Trump issued the call in the wake of the Paris terror attacks. He said he would, if elected president, work to ban all Muslims from entering the United States. Why? He said the threat of Islamic terrorism coming to this country is too great.

Trump does not grasp the idiocy of this proclamation.

Mayor-elect Khan has rejected Trump’s offer to exempt him from the ban. He wonders about how other Muslims would react if they want to come to the United States “on holiday.” What if they want to go to Disneyland, Khan asked, but they can’t because “President Trump” says they aren’t welcome here?

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution allows absolute freedom to worship as one believes. It has been interpreted during the past two-plus centuries to mean that no one should be discriminated against because of their religious faith.

Trump has proposed something that utterly flouts one of the basic tenets on which this country was founded.

Sadiq Khan — the duly elected mayor of one of the world’s truly great cities — saw through it immediately.

He understands what it means to be an American more than the individual who is poised to be nominated to run for the presidency of the United States.

 

Once again: Constitution is a secular document

delay_constution_140220a-2-800x430

Tom DeLay knows his audience and he speaks their language.

In this case, the former U.S. House majority leader was speaking a couple of years ago on a religious program hosted by John Hagee Ministries.

If only, though, he would speak accurately about the very founding of this great republic.

Host Matt Hagee asked DeLay where he thought the nation had gone wrong. DeLay’s response was, shall we say, more than little off the mark.

http://www.rawstory.com/2014/02/tom-delay-people-keep-forgetting-that-god-wrote-the-constitution/#.VTt_WhZmKvw.facebook

“I think we got off the track when we allowed our government to become a secular government,” DeLay explained. “When we stopped realizing that God created this nation, that he wrote the Constitution, that it’s based on biblical principles.”

Well …

Where do we begin?

We’ve had a “secular government” since its very founding. The Constitution — as I’ve noted in this blog before — contains precisely two religious references. That would be in Article VI, which declares that there should be “no religious test” for anyone seeking election to public office; and in the First Amendment, where the founders declared there would be “no law respecting an establishment of religion.”

That’s it, folks.

The founders knew precisely what they were doing when they omitted any other religious references in the Constitution. They intended for the government to be free of religious pressure or coercion.

I happen to be totally OK with that.

DeLay, though, sought to parse the Constitution differently when he told the Hagee Ministries audience about how God “wrote the Constitution.”

This gets to the debate that continues to this day. Indeed, it’s been going on virtually since the United States of America emerged from its revolution.

The Rawstory item showed up on my Facebook feed today I suppose as a reminder that this national debate likely never will go away.

Can’t we just accept the notion that the founders built a government framework that would be free of religion, but which allowed each of us to worship as we see fit?

That happens to be — in my humble view — one of the true-blue beauties of a secular government.

Reason prevails in Tennessee statehouse

Old fashionet American Constitution with USA  Flag.

Tennessee’s Republican governor, Bill Haslam, has put his veto pen to good use.

He vetoed a bill that would have made the Bible the “state book” of Tennessee. Frankly, such a law looks like something that might one day find its way to the desk of the Texas governor.

His reasoning is interesting, to say the least. Haslam said giving the Bible such a designation “trivializes” the holy book.

I applaud the governor for making a reasonable decision.

“If we believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God, then we shouldn’t be recognizing it only as a book of historical and economic significance,” Haslam said.

Indeed.

Here’s another thought: Giving the Bible such a designation quite possibly would violate the U.S. Constitution First Amendment prohibition against government establishing a state religion.

The Bible is a sacred text. It belongs in the homes of families whose faith relies on the Bible’s teachings. It belongs in churches where clergy preach its holy word.

It does not belong as a government-designated “official book.”

Don’t those fine public servants who serve in the Tennessee legislature understand the oath they took, the one that says they would support, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States?

The Constitution they swore to uphold is a secular document. It prohibits governments at all levels from enacting the kind of law that came out of the legislature in Nashville.

And, yes, the Bible is a sacred text. Let’s not cheapen it by making a state’s “official book.” The Bible is a much more profound document than that.

 

Which religious liberties have we lost?

liberty religion

My wife and I are going to start our day tomorrow the way we usually start every Sunday.

We’ll get up. Have our morning coffee. We’ll eat a light breakfast. Read the newspaper. We’ll get cleaned up. Get dressed. Then we’ll go to church … more than likely.

We’ll pray. Sing a few hymns. Listen to the preacher deliver his message from Scripture. Pray some more. Then we’ll leave the church and go through the rest of our day.

I keep wondering in the context of this hyper-heated presidential campaign: Which religious liberties have my wife and I — as red-blooded, taxpaying, patriotic Americans — lost?

One of the remaining Republican candidates for president keeps insisting that our “religious liberties” are being peeled away.

Texas U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz keeps harping on the notion that “we are one liberal justice away from having our religious liberties” stripped away. That’s what he says. The crowds to whom he speaks eat it up. He says he won’t “compromise away our religious liberties.”

Thanks, Ted. From where I sit, young man, we’re still quite free in this country to worship as we see fit. Or not worship. The Constitution that Cruz and others say they revere spells it out quite clearly: Government shall make no law that establishes a state religion. That means, as most of us understand it, that we are free to adhere to any deity of our choice.

You want a real threat to religious liberty? How about banning individuals from entering this country solely because they happen to be Muslims? Yes, I know that Cruz opposes the idea put forward by his fellow Republican candidate for president, Donald J. Trump. But if he’s going to raise hell from the campaign stump, he ought to take his best shot at that patently idiotic and unconstitutional idea.

My family has made our religious choice. We did so all on our own. Our religious liberties are quite intact and I am quite certain they are as strong as they’ve ever been.

I thank God every day for those liberties.

So let’s quit dangling those dubious threats, Sen. Cruz, to the liberties that our Constitution’s very First Amendment guarantees for all of us.

Cruz and others suffering from some form of political paranoia might perceive those threats to be real.

I don’t.

Yes, Mr. Justice, ‘religious neutrality’ is in the Constitution

No-religious-test-of-office-320x1241

I am about to do something that gives me the heebie-jeebies. I am going to challenge a premise by one of the nine people who serve on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Justice Antonin Scalia told a group of high school students this weekend in New Orleans that the U.S. Constitution does not compel “religious neutrality.”

Well, Mr. Justice, I believe it does.

Scalia, a deeply religious Roman Catholic, told the students that the Constitution prohibits government from adhering to a specific religion, but it does not compel government to ban references to religion in general.

He said it’s all right for government officials to invoke God in public.

Sure it is. Presidents of both parties have been ending public speeches for as long as I can remember — and that goes back a ways — with the words ” . . .  and may God bless the United States of America.”

But I have been reading the Constitution since I was old enough to read anything and I can find precisely two uses of the word “religion” or “religious” in that document. It’s in Article VI, where it says there shall be “no religious test” required of any individual seeking any public office at any level in the United States of America; and it’s also in the very First Amendment, where it says Congress “shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . . ”

The rest of it is secular by design.

I agree with Justice Scalia that “God has been good to us” as a nation. But he seems to be getting a bit ahead of himself when he implies that “religious neutrality” seems intended to deprive Americans the right — or the desire — to worship as they see fit.

The individuals who founded this nation knew exactly what they were doing when they created the Constitution. They meant for it to be free of religious dogma. Yes, some have taken that intent too far by suggesting that we should remove “In God We Trust” from courtroom walls or from our currency.

However, I happen to quite comfortable with “religious neutrality” as it relates to our government.

I’m still free to go to church and pray to God. I will do so again today.

 

Cruz splits with Trump over Muslim registry

liberty religion

Are you sitting down?

Of course you are. So … I’m about to say something positive about Sen. Ted Cruz, who has actually expressed a difference of opinion with Donald Trump, a fellow Republican candidate for president of the United States.

Trump’s offensive notion of establishing a registry for Muslims has come between the men.

The only thing about Cruz’s criticism — such as it is — that bothers me is that he qualified it by calling himself a “big fan” of Trump. He differs with him on the idea of keeping such an eagle eye on Muslims because of their faith.

Cruz said the “First Amendment protects religious liberty.”

That, folks, is the central reason why Trump’s idea is a non-starter.

Some critics have compared the idea of a religious registry — even for U.S. citizens — smacks of what Nazi Germany did to Jews living in that country prior to the outbreak of World War II. We all know where that effort led.

Trump has been trying to take back what he apparently told a reporter about whether he’d like to establish a data base to monitor Muslims. He said he didn’t say that precisely. The record, though, suggests he did when pressed by a reporter.

As the Texas Tribune reported: “I don’t know what Mr. Trump did or didn’t say,” Cruz told reporters after a town hall Friday afternoon in Harlan. “On the question of should the federal government keep a registry of any religious group? The answer’s of course not.”

So, there you have it. Cruz and Trump actually disagree on something.

From where I sit as I watch Cruz’s campaign for the presidency, that’s progress.

 

Religion takes center stage

No-religious-test-of-office-320x1241

Bobby Jindal says Donald Trump isn’t really a Christian.

Ben Carson said — initially, at least — that a Muslim isn’t fit to be president.

Mike Huckabee says Barack Obama is trying to “criminalize” Christianity and that the president is a “pretend” Christian.

Can we stop — please! — with the religion rhetoric?

Jindal was just the latest to ridicule another Republican presidential candidate’s statement of faith. Trump had spoken to the Values Voter Summit and proclaimed his deep Christian faith. Jindal followed him and said Trump has never read the Bible and that he believes only in himself.

Religion has no place here

I kind of get where Jindal, the Louisiana governor, is going with the Trump jabs. Trump opened himself up to the ridicule by proclaiming to a group of zealous conservatives that he’s one of them. Jindal, I suppose, has the right to challenge one of his rivals’ assertions in that regard.

But this continual back and forth regarding candidates’ faith is getting tiresome and, frankly, it misses a critical point about electing the next president of the United States.

The point is that the president is head of a secular state and government. We can argue until hell freezes over about what the founding fathers intended when they wrote the Constitution. But the finished document is as secular as it can possibly be.

The First Amendment spells it out. Congress shall make no law that establishes a state religion, it says. Isn’t that enough evidence of what the founders intended when they established the Bill of Rights in the nation’s government document?

So, let’s cut the talk about who’s a real Christian?

It does not matter.

 

 

Religious intolerance is alive and kicking

liberty religion

The fellow who stood up in that Donald Trump town hall event and made those disparaging remarks about Muslims brings to mind a serious hypocrisy that fuels so much of today’s political debate.

You’ll recall the guy who said that Muslims present a problem in this country and he asked Trump how should the federal government “get rid” of those who adhere to Islam. Trump, of course, didn’t condemn the remarks as being bigoted and hateful.

It struck me, though, that so many on the right and far right keep saying two mutually exclusive things.

They keep harping on “religious liberty,” and accuse those on the left of “declaring war on Christians and Christianity.” The leader of that anti-Christian movement, in their eyes, is the president of the United States, who many of them believe is a closet Muslim.

Well, “religious liberty” is written into the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. It’s a cherished civil right that — as I understand it — means that all Americans are free to practice whatever religion they wish.

That includes those who believe in Islam.

Why, then, do some — maybe many, for all I know — keep insisting, as that Trump town-hall yahoo said the other evening, that Muslims need to be shut down, silenced, denied their basic right to practice their religion?

That is precisely what that guy said, to applause from the rest of the crowd who had come to listen to Trump.

Do they believe in “religious liberty” for all … or just those who believe as they do?