Wall – E [stablishment]

Distinctly American in origin, the separation of church and state is deeply rooted in our American way of life. Yet this concept of separation has never appeared to be free from debate as to its meaning. A clearly defined and consistently pursued Supreme Court precedent was strikingly absent until 1947 when Justice Hugo L. Black wrote the majority opinion in the case Everson v. Board of Education.

Justice Hugo L. Black within the majority opinion produced the Court's initial formulation of an establishment standard. He stated, "The First Amendment has erected a wall between church and state. That wall must be kept high and impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach."

Yet cracks in that wall are ever present and ever dangerous.

Case in point is a law in Illinois involving years of acrimony and an equal number of years of courtroom drama. At issue is a statute first passed in the 1960s encouraging Illinois school children to engage in a moment of silence at the beginning of each day. A law whose language was originally innocuous was amended in 2007 causing many to question its constitutionality. The new law, entitled The Illinois Silent Reflection and Student Prayer Act, went beyond encouragement and now mandated all schools and students to comply.

Mandating a moment of silence, however, was not the problem. Mandating the encouragement of “prayer” was. Though never the final word on the meaning of the establishment of religion, a Federal judge has ruled the Illinois statute unconstitutional. Voluntary prayer in school is OK. Requiring public school teachers to teach and encourage prayer is not.

Judge Robert Gettleman used the Lemon Test to settle the dispute in Illinois. This test is a byproduct of the Court’s opinion in the case Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971). The Lemon standard for judging establishment clause violations is:

1. A statute must have a secular legislative purpose;
2. A statute must have a principle or primary effect that neither advances nor inhibits religion; and
3. A statute must not foster an excessive government entanglement with religion.

As Judge Gettleman argued in his opinion, the Illinois statute mandating silent reflection and student prayer clearly violated the Lemon test. You do not need to be a judge to reach that conclusion.

So why did the Illinois legislature pass a law so clearly in violation of the constitution?

The sponsor of the bill in Illinois claimed, “Here in the General Assembly we open every day with a prayer . . . I don’t get a choice about that. I don’t see why the students should have a choice.”

A bigger choice is will we be vigilante in guarding our liberties? Will the Bill of Rights continue to limit an ever-intrusive government? We must keep watch.

The "wall between church and state" continues to symbolize not so much the way it has always been but the way in which "we the people" want it to be. If we do not watch carefully others might have a different idea - even those in whom we have placed our trust.

Check Out What We the People Hope for in Obama

What do we hope for in Obama?

Closing the Book on the Bush Presidency

Books have been in the news lately. There has been a lot of talk about the books read by both our current president and our president-elect. Comparing the reading habits of George W. Bush and Barack Obama is going to raise a few eyebrows. Challenge someone’s reading prowess and they are bound to be defensive.

We all assume Obama likes to read. He has been seen recently reading Fred Kaplan’s Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer. Obama’s inaugural speech will be his most important writing to date.

Karl Rove, coming to our current president’s defense, recently claimed Bush read over eighty books last year.

Looking back through the Bush presidency one can imagine he read a lot of Dickens.

These last eight years have been A Tale of Two Cities. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Promising a new style of politics, a heavy dose of the old was given. Partisanship was exacerbated. It did not help that Bush had to fight for the presidency in Court due to the Florida recall. Winning in 2000 with less than a popular vote victory hindered both the legitimacy and the mandate effective presidents long for. Yet his self-confidence never waned. “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.” Too often this cavalier, cowboy spirit divided us into two fighting camps. It has been a tale of two cities.

Following the scandalized Clinton years we all had Great Expectations. From pipsqueak to president, our President Bush was surrounded by too many Havishams to change the course. Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rove were a cast of characters who pushed for policies that challenged prevailing best practice. And when their ill-advised ways were discovered all attempts to cover up their mistakes compromised the honesty and integrity of the office. We expected so much more from Bush, a truly likeable person. Like Dickens, this ending could have been different.

As Obama is soon to discover, the presidency has a lot in common with The Old Curiosity Shop. Despite grand intentions, the office has a way of eating up its inhabitants. Bush could hardly have predicted or prepared for the attack on 9/11, or Katrina, or the financial meltdown. Surrounded by an overwhelming shadow government, the federal bureaucracy, and constrained by a political process known for it inefficiencies Bush was given a seemingly impossible job. His demise might have been Gore’s and Kerry’s as well. Soon there will be wonder if Obama can politically survive the dastardly details of this curious time in which we live.

Without question, however, President Bush leaves us with a Bleak House. Bush’s candidacy had a lot in common with John Jarndyce but to our surprise we elected William Guppy. A compassionate conservative was promised but a rejected soul will leave Washington next week. He leaves the Republican Party leaderless. Yet all is not lost. The Chancery courts were reformed, thanks in part, to Bleak House. Our current circumstances as well are bound to change. Obama promised as much. In these hard times, the days look bleak. We are living in a Dickensian time. There is fog everywhere. But as Esther assures us all in the end, “we can very well do without much beauty.” Persistence is what we take from this president.

And what about the Obama presidency? What will he be reading?

Read on. We can only hope it is something a little more cheery.

3/21: Welcome, Friends of the Program

Welcome to the WAES 88.1 Fourth Annual Election Night Radio Show!

Your hosts, Mr. Andrew Conneen and Mr. Dan Larsen, welcome your comments and questions during tonight's program directly onto this blog site.

Thanks for tuning in and participating!