fitzage.me

Prayer is not something to be rendered unto Caesar, nor is it something Caesar ought to be put in charge of, asked to bless, permit, allow or establish.

I can't say that I like everything Slacktivist says, or even everything he says in this article (he is a Baptist, after all), but he makes some excellent points here. I've never really thought about the fact that state sponsored religion not only limits the freedoms of other religions, but also limits the officially sponsored religion as well.

Their responses are like the general public’s in many ways. Most describe the amount they paid in taxes this year as “fair.” Most send their children to public schools. A plurality do not think Sarah Palin is qualified to be president, and, despite their push for smaller government, they think that Social Security and Medicare are worth the cost to taxpayers. They actually are just as likely as Americans as a whole to have returned their census forms, though some conservative leaders have urged a boycott.

I'm not a Tea Party supporter or anything, but I've become increasingly annoyed by the tendency of many liberals to paint them all with the same brush, as if they were all a bunch of stupid, racist rednecks.

    In fact, there are numerous "public options" in American life, with many of them rooted deep in the nation's history. In the area of education, there are public schools; in recreation, public parks; in travel, public roads; in fire-fighting, public fire departments; in law enforcement, public police forces; in culture, public libraries; in transportation, public bus and train lines; in mail delivery, the post office; in sanitation, public water supply plumbing, and sewers; in energy, public power; in old-age security, Social Security; in nutrition, public school lunch programs. Where did the notion ever come from that public programs were somehow "un-American"?

Hahaha!

It may very well be Constitutionally legal to execute the innocent:

Twenty years ago, off-duty police officer Mark McPhail was shot and killed in a Savannah, Georgia parking lot. Based on information provided by Sylvester Coles, the police sought Troy Davis for the murder. He was found guilty and sentenced to death based on the testimony of eyewitnesses.

Since then, however, nearly all of those witnesses have recanted, claiming in affidavits that they were pressured by police to name Davis as the perpetrator. Meanwhile, additional evidence has been found indicating that Coles, the prosecution’s star witness against Davis, was the actual killer … neither the Georgia courts nor the Georgia Pardons and Parole Board has seen fit to stop Davis’s execution.

Last week, the Supreme Court offered Davis a ray of hope. In response to his petition for a writ of habeas corpus, the Justices ordered that a federal district court in Georgia “should receive testimony and make findings of fact as to whether evidence that could not have been obtained at the time of trial clearly establishes [Davis’s] innocence.”

The Court’s order in Davis was not unanimous, however. Justice Scalia, joined by Justice Thomas, dissented. Justice Scalia said that even if the district court were to find Davis to be innocent, there would still be nothing unlawful about executing him.

I’ve always been oddly attracted to the weird disconnect between our laws and common sense; the legal grey areas surrounding what should be stark black and white. This is no different.

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Yikes.

Witnesses said that Sgt. Crowley, failing to recognize Gates on their flight to Logan Airport, arrested the tenured professor in midair, once again at the baggage claim, and twice during their shared cab ride back to Cambridge.

Snicker.