September/October 2003

In 1940, 14 years before Congress added the phrase “under God” to the Pledge. A school district in Pennsylvania said that students had to recite the Pledge. The Supreme Court said it was OK for the school district to expel students who didn’t.
A brother and sister—Jehovah’s Witnesses—were expelled from school when they refused to recite the Pledge because of their religious beliefs

One of the primary purposes of incarceration is the reform and eventual rehabilitation of prisoners. Despite this goal, recidivism is common, and prisons are often the breeding grounds of criminal conspiracies. Yet not all those released from prison return to a life of crime. For many, prison time provides the opportunity to reflect deeply on life and the impetus to explore religious faith. There is solid evidence that this exploration of faith plays an instrumental role in reforming prisoners.

Like any parent, I want the best for my children. I want to give them every opportunity our society and my means can provide. I want to protect them from harm and insult, which often carries greater harm than a bruising tumble. I want them to have high values and a faith in the transcendent.

In John W. Whitehead’s “Amish v. State” article in the March/April 2003 Liberty magazine, he indicates that the only waste that an Amish family produces is organic. Inasmuch as human feces is organic and it flows untreated into streams, it would seem that Mr. Whitehead would have no problem living downstream from an Amish family. The issue is about raw human waste and not chlorofluorocarbons.

The understanding that the freedom of religion clause in the First Amendment was intended to erect “a wall of separation between church and state” is rapidly becoming passé and is already regarded by many with actual hostility.
This wall view was espoused in a letter from Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury, Connecticut, Baptist Association in 1802, and reiterated and empowered by former Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black in Everson v. Board of Education
in 1947 (330 U.S. 156).

Remember last June? For some a time of infamy. For others a brave judicial finding. Three judges of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled that the phrase “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance endorses a religious belief; that when the U.S. Congress added the phrase to the Pledge back in the mid-1950s, it violated the First Amendment to the Constitution; and that the addition of that
phrase to the Pledge amounts to nothing less than official government endorsement of a particular religious belief.

During President Reagan’s first term the Christian Coalition’s predecessor, the Moral Majority, expended great effort to, in effect, amend the First Amendment. With the support of a popular president they almost succeeded. But for the efforts of U.S. Senator Lowell Weicker of Cohile standing for reelection in 1984, courageously led an extended filibuster against proposed constitutional amendments to allow prayer in public schools.

Prison was not a new experience for Michael Potts. This was his third time behind bars. Like the overwhelming majority of prisoners, Michael was caught in a revolving door. Prison did nothing to prepare him for life on the outside, and so, given the opportunity, he kept falling back into criminal activity. But Michael decided that this time it was going to be different.

At first it seems ironic, if not downright ridiculous: a federal lawsuit seeks to block funding of an Iowa prison program that in Texas has resulted in a nearly two-thirds decrease in the recidivism rate of released convicts.