Dismantling the First Amendment Once Again

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Those may well be the most important few words ever written in the history of this country. Why are the conservatives so anxious to do away with them or water them down until they have no meaning?

This latest flap of course concerns Keith Ellison of Minnesota, the first Muslim elected to Congress. He plans to take his oath of office on the Koran rather than the traditional Christian Bible.

Here, from Town Hall, is Prager's entire diatribe.

And, thanks to Wikki, a "non-neutral" biography of Prager. Fine with me; I've never made any pretense of neutrality when it comes to people who are determined to undermine the Constitution.

In an effort of fairness to Prager, who is Jewish, he has said that if he were elected to office, he'd take the oath on a Christian Bible because of "tradition". If that's what he's comfortable doing, so be it. For me, it would be hypocritical to swear on a book I didn't believe, no matter which book. Perhaps Congress is comfortable with hypocrisy? For that matter, why should they be forced to "swear" at all? The court system has largely left the choice of wording (swear or affirm) up to individuals.

Thanks to Echidne of the Snakes once again.

Personal note:

The gremlins struck again. Comcast has once more replaced my modem and I'm running at higher speed than ever before. I hope it lasts longer than the two weeks the last one did. I'm playing catchup with all of you.

And my daughter is in hospital. We don't know a lot yet. I have a longer post on "granny" but not all of you visit over there. We had thought she was in remission from intestinal cancer and may still be but she had some alarming symptoms last week. Right now they're treating the symptoms and running lots of tests.

I'll try to update when I know more.

Ann