Spatula City

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{Where you, the Spatulaite/Spatulaette, get to talk back}

On the site and other stuff...

Azeem Chouhdry writes - 

Hey Craig,

Thought i'd drop you an e-mail. Hey i've been reading some of the stuff on the site. pretty cool. Say what do you think about the current"yates Case"? its pretty controversial and i kind of got in to trouble at the class. now half the class thinks that i'm trying to provoke inflamatory topics. Well maybe i am.

SC> Just remember, "inflammatory" usually means that you disagree with a liberal. (Maybe I should put that in the glossary.)

Anyway, on Yates - I look at her this way:  She waited too late to kill those kids.  Had she aborted them before birth, Partricia Ireland, Kate Michelman, Molly Yard and the rest of the feminist movement would be hailing her as a heroine.  As it is, they're taking up a defense fund for her.  I only wish they had the intestinal fortitude to publish a list of those who would donate to such a fund, so those people could be held up to the harshest public scorn.

On my apparent lack of a work ethic...

Eric Lang writes -

On the "tummy tuck" for the bunny...

Alan Henderson writes - 

On Lieberman...

Mark Dowden writes -

amen

SC>Thanks, Mark. Appreciate the encouragement.

On School Prayer...

Alan Henderson writes -

 

The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 banning student-organized prayer at school-sponsored sporting events. After hearing the opinions of Rehnquist and Kennedy, I get the impression that no one in that chamber gets it.

 

Much of the reaction is prejudiced by the Political Correctness jihad has long sought to erase all vestiges of religion from the schools. (Some forms of Eastern and New Age mysticism, such as Transcendental Meditation and guided imagery, tend to get a pass, having been intentionally disguised as and/or unintentionally mistaken for secular activities.) The ACLU and other jihadists are prejudiced by their fanatical devotion to the "separation of church and state." (I guess Jay and I are felons for having participated in a communion service at Big Bend National Park. Smash the state!)

 

The responses from the religiophobic Left and the religious Right tell me that they don't get it, either. They key to judging this case properly is the law in regard to the private use of public oproperty. The courts have ruled justly that a school, public library, or other government institution that makes its property available to one private entity must extend that availability to ALL private parties. In accord with this principle, the Rutherford Institute fights for the right of religious groups to meet on school grounds when school districts allow secular groups to have such access.

 

The obverse to this principle is true: any ban on the private use of government property must be applied equally to all private parties. This is the real reason why the Supreme Court should have ruled as it did. What is at issue is specifically the use of the stadium PA system for prayer. This is a property rights, not a speech rights, issue. A public staduim has the right to restrict the use of their PA systems for official communication ONLY. If it chooses to do so, it must make no exceptions, even for prayer. If the cheerleaders want to gather in a prayer huddle, or if the halfback wants to yell "Allah akbar!" when crossing the goal line, all is fine and legal. The only way that a ban could be levied with consistency is if the stadium banned all on-property private conversation, including cheering in the stands. (Gee, almost sounds like Wimbledon.)

 

I fear that the ruling could be perverted to ban prayer at graduation ceremonies, when the result should be the exact opposite. The mike is controlled by the government but its is open to the free expression of students and invited speakers. The practice of inviting clergy to deliver commencement prayers can be legally barred only if the law judges that officially invited speakers (excluding valedictorians and other students, since they are the school's  customers) are de jure official representatives of the government body that invited them. If the mike is closed to a de jure official's religious sectarianism, it must also be closed to an official's philosophical and political sectarianism. That defeats the whole purpose of commencement addresses. There's no logical or legal way to claim that one delivering a commencement speech does not speak for the school and that a cleric delivering a commencement prayer does.

 

Good CYA would be to print on the programs a disclaimer stating that invited speakers speak as private citizens and not for the school district. Heck, the way things are in Dallas, they'd need that disclaimer even if a DISD official were the commencement speaker. Even district superintendent Bill Rojas' views do not necessarily reflect those of the DISD.

 

...the public schools don't have a prayer

SC>Not bad. How'd you like a volunteer editorial-writing job...? (grin)

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