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Seasoned Vet
 
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ACLU targets Navy
By Terence P. Jeffrey
While many graduates of the U.S. Naval Academy have spent 2003 defending our nation in Iraq, in Afghanistan or on ships at sea, lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union have been plotting an act of cultural terrorism against the Navy here at home.
The ACLU is targeting the voluntary lunchtime prayer that has been a tradition at the Naval Academy since its founding.
In the ACLU´s view, consenting adults have a right to do just about anything they want except say grace in a government cafeteria. Consensual sodomy, it believes, is a sacred right, while consensual public prayer is a sorry ritual to be crushed beneath the boot heel of big government.
True to its creed, the ACLU began maneuvering against the Navy in April, after the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the Virginia Military Institute to cancel its supper prayer.
Theoretically, VMI violated the First Amendment. "Congress," it says, "shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." In essence, the judges concluded that when Virginia allowed its cadets to say a nondenominational prayer it was the equivalent of Congress establishing a federal religion in the very corner of Virginia where Stonewall Jackson used to teach.
Although absurd, the appeals court decision was the predictable progeny of a long line of abominable Supreme Court decisions. That court banned prayer in public grade schools and high schools. The appeals court merely extended the principle to a public college.
That gave the ACLU an opening to attack the Navy.
Maryland ACLU Director Susan Goering sent the academy a letter. "We believe that when you have had a chance to review the 4th Circuit´s opinion," she said, "you will agree that the Naval Academy´s mandatory lunchtime prayer cannot pass constitutional muster, and will therefore cease the practice."
Never mind that the prayer is not "mandatory." What mattered was Miss Goering´s implicit threat to sue. But the Navy did not retreat. In August, it announced it would keep its prayer, and the ACLU went ballistic.
"We tried things the nice way, and they´ve told us to pound sand," ACLU lawyer David Rocah told the Baltimore Sun. "If someone is interested in challenging" the prayer, he said, "we would be perfectly happy to talk to them about that."
Republican Rep. Walter Jones of North Carolina did not sit idle at such threats. If the ACLU can´t be stopped now, he told me, tomorrow it will "try to control what prayer is said in the foxhole."
"I have seen the federal courts take one right after another away from people of faith in this country," said Mr. Jones, "and I think it´s time to fight."
He introduced legislation to codify the authority of the military academies to offer "voluntary, nondenominational prayer" at academy events. Designed to send an unsubtle signal to any court that entertains an ACLU suit against the Navy, the proposal is likely to be included in next year´s Defense authorization.
But will it stop a judge from banning the Navy´s prayer? I doubt it.
The same federal courts that declared same-sex sodomy a right and banned the Ten Commandments from state buildings will not be deterred by an ordinary act of Congress.
If the federal judiciary stays on trend, prayer will be banned at Navy, and the ACLU will set its sights on a bigger target perhaps banning military chaplains.
Must Congress surrender? No. Just as the Navy has faithfully defended our democracy, our democratically elected leaders must faithfully defend the Navy. The Constitution says Congress has the power to "establish" the lower federal courts and that the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court shall be set "with such exceptions, and under such regulations as the Congress shall make."
Explaining this language, Justice Joseph Story, who was appointed by President James Madison, said: "Of course, as the judicial power is to be vested in the supreme and inferior courts of the Union, both are under the entire control and regulation of Congress."
If the ACLU files suit against Navy´s prayer, Congress should pass a law lifting the issue from the jurisdiction of the courts. Then, borrowing the words of ACLU lawyer Mr. Rocah´s, it should tell the ACLU to go pound sand.
Terence P. Jeffrey is the editor of Human Events and is nationally syndicated.
Evil Unchecked Grows, and Evil Tolerated Poisens The Entire System. Jahwal Nehru ------------------------------------------------------------- In the beginning of a change the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.
Mark Twain.
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Stare Master
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Shouldn't this be in the Navay forum.[LOL][LOL][LOL][LOL][LOL]
Only two defining forces have ever offered to die for you, Jesus Christ and the American GI. One died for your soul, the other for your freedom.
"History teaches that when you become indifferent and lose the will to fight someone who has the will to fight will take over." COLONEL BULL SIMONS
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Seasoned Vet
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oops.
Evil Unchecked Grows, and Evil Tolerated Poisens The Entire System. Jahwal Nehru ------------------------------------------------------------- In the beginning of a change the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.
Mark Twain.
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Hard Charger
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Here is a pic I got in an email pertaining to this. I don't know if the statement at the bottom holds any weight as far as the the Col. telling the ACLU to "F" off quote:
If you look closely at the picture above, you will note that all the Marines pictured are bowing their heads. That's because they're praying. The incident took place at a recent ceremony honoring the birthday of the corps, and it has the ACLU up in arms. "These are federal employees," says Lucius Traveler, a spokesman for the ACLU, "on federal property and on federal time. For them to pray is clearly an establishment of religion, and we must nip this in the bud immediately." When asked about the ACLU's charges, Colonel Jack Fessender, speaking for the Commandant of the Corps said (cleaned up a bit), "Screw the ACLU."
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Seasoned Vet
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What's next on their target list? Churches on Military bases? Chaplains? Obviously by their agenda even the presence of a Military Chaplain must conflict with their twisted view of the Seperation Clause?
These people are absolutely warped!! The majority of this nation needs to wake up and smell the coffee soon here.
The Founding Fathers only meant by the Seperation Clause that Religions shall have no part in the Running of this Nation. As in the Church of England in Pre-Revolutionary War times. It was never meant to drive all religous activity and reference from our lives either Public or Private!!
Same with the Second Ammendment and the Right to Bear Arms. They continualy try and twist and subvert the very Liberties our Nation fought for!!
Man I am realy beginning to gain a real hatred for liberal and left wing a-holes!!
Abraham Lincoln (quiet, reserved and selfless): “The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here” -Gettysburg Address
Obama (egotistical): “Now the world will watch and remember what we do here”
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Seasoned Vet
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I wonder if this is like the cross thing in the graveyards.
A hoax?
Go with God, but make Him walk the point.
If you load a mudfoot down with a lot of gadgets he has to watch somebody a lot more simply equipped - say with a stone axe - will sneak up and bash his head in while he is trying to read a Vernier. - Robert Heinlein
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Trooper
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Now look at the picture (link) that Joel posted: http://www.propertyrightsresearch.org/ACLU/aclu_upset_at_marines.htm According to the Webmaster, it was a hoax!
SAVOIR C'EST POUVOIR (Knowledge is Power) "The objective is not the occupation of a geographical position, but the destruction of the enemy force"
- General Piotr A. Rumyantsev (1725-1796)
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