Bill--

The unfairness of having to sit in a courtroom where there is a religious plaque which makes you uncomfortable is way down the scale of discrimination and harm. (Ask any black person).

I think we will never reach agreement on the 10 Commandments point. All I ask is that we keep the debate here and do not try to push to remove the 10 Commandments "in the real world", since that campaign will unavoidably have the effect I cited earlier.

To quote one of your favorite groups of folksingers, the Rolling Stones: "You can't always get what you want."

The Democrats were smeared last year as being unpatriotic and against religion.

Haven't we learned anything from 2004?




Carol--

I'm sorry for your treatment at the hands of that idiot bigoted fundamentalist, who not only cannot be seen as typical of people of faith, but also has no claim to even be called a lawyer. (Even watching "Perry Mason" you would learn a lawyer is not supposed to ask a question in court unless he knows the answer. That fool had no idea how you would answer the question about the book.)

You really should be reimbursed court costs--can't a legal aid society help?

However, in your post of 8 Oct 2005 10:06, you're stretching. Does not compute. That sort of reasoning is why I am not a Democrat. Though for damn sure no Bushite either.

I don't think the posting of the 10 Commandments will be determined to favor one religion over another by the Supreme Court. Avoiding that was the goal of the First Amendment, as I said earlier--primarily to avoid the Church of England situation, with its particularly noxious Test Act, etc. The point never was to expunge religion from public life.

As for favoring "the monotheistic religions over others", no Supreme Court, especially not this one--one of the few times I agree with them-- is going to bend over backwards for the benefit of Wiccans and other polytheists, to remove all traces of the US Judeo-Christian tradition from public life.

Good luck even removing "under God" from the Pledge, even though that's a recent addition. And please don't try to do it until we have a more reasonable regime than the current one.

You are not only bashing your head against a brick wall, but you have also disturbed a very large hornets' nest on the wall.