Two rural northern Florida school officials were found not guilty of violating an injunction against praying in school, a Florida judge ruled late Thursday in a contentious school prayer case that spurred a reaction from Congress earlier this week.
Hundreds of people waiting in the rain outside of a federal courthouse in Pensacola cheered just after 7:30 p.m. when U.S. District Judge Margaret C. "Casey" Rodgers ruled that Frank Lay, principal of Pace High School in Santa Rosa County, and his athletic director, Robert Freeman, didn't intentionally violate her order to not offer prayers at school-sponsored gatherings.
"We're very pleased," said Mathew Staver, spokesman for the Liberty Counsel, the Orlando-based legal group that represented the two men. "We'll now focus on getting the underlying order set aside or overturned by a higher court."
Glenn Katon, director of the Florida American Civil Liberty Union's religious freedom project, said the judge "made an honest evaluation of the facts and applied the law."
But the battle goes on. My prayers now will continue to be that the ACLU will join ACORN in the dustbin of history, along with the Communists. And speaking of commies, guess who's on the rise again? Communism in Russia may be officially dead, but the raw naked power for evil underlying the defunct Communist regime is not only alive and well, but won another round yesterday.
And guess who handed over the victory on a silver platter? President Barack Hussein Obama abandoned the missile defense shield plans for eastern Europe yesterday, effectively allowing the Russians to resume work on erecting the Iron Curtain the eastern Europeans tore down in 1989.
Wesley Pruden of The Washington Times (who unlike our rookie President and like me is old enough to actually remember the bitter lessons of the Iron Curtain and Communist rule of eastern Europe) spells out what this historic action of retreat by an American president means.
Barack Obama looked Thursday to the lesson of Hiroshima. Sometimes one bomb won't do it. Nagasaki had to follow to "reset" relations with Japan. Six decades later, the Apology Bomb the president dropped on Moscow during his visit last May didn't do it, either. He had to drop another one Thursday.
When Mr. Obama, eager to "reset" relations with Russia, decided to abandon arrangements carefully worked out by the previous administration to base missile defense sites in the Czech Republic and Poland, he dropped amends the size of the H-bomb. Surprise was so important he only told the Czechs and Poles about it in a midnight telephone call so they wouldn't read about it first in the morning papers.
Then, while the Czechs and Poles were marinating in the bitter juices of double-cross and humiliation, the president made the official announcement on the 70th anniversary of the Russian invasion of eastern Poland, the first fruit of the infamous Hitler-Stalin pact of 1939. To be fair, Mr. Obama may not have been aware of the history - important to the Poles, but to a community activist from Chicago, not so much. This president is about sweet talk, not history. Maybe the young president-to-be was home with a tummy ache the day his high-school history class learned about World War II, the Cold War that followed, why that history is so important to the Poles, or why Americans revere Winston Churchill, or the fact that America is made up of only 50 (not 57) states. You can miss a lot by playing hooky.
Accusing a president of selling out an ally is a lot more serious than merely accusing him of lying, impolite as that may be, but the Czechs and the Poles can be forgiven if they think "sell-out." What's scary about this is not how it was done but that it was done at all, that the president and his men (and women) were acting in well-meant good faith. Said the White House: "We ... welcome Russian co-operation to bring its missile defense capabilities into a broader defense of our common strategic interests."
Never before has an American president put the defense of the country's "common strategic interests" in the hands of an unreliable rival's "defense capabilities."
Those who forget the lessons of history are doomed to repeat its mistakes. And as G.K. Chesterton said, before you tear a fence down, it's best to ask "Why it was erected there?"
The eastern Europeans took matters into their own hands after 75 years of Communist rule and tore down the Iron Curtain. President George W. Bush led the way to getting the Czech Republic and Poland into NATO and started the process of building a missile defense shield that would deter primarily Iran with it's growing nuclear ICBM capability, but also future Russian evils.
Ask Georgia and the Ukraine about future Russian evils. Georgia has already been invaded by the Russians and the Ukraine is staring down the muzzles of Russians tanks today. And history is getting ready to repeat itself as BHO becomes the Chamberlain of our time, appeasing the Russians. But I'm sure BHO has no idea who Neville Chamberlain was, the prime minister of England who appeased a dictator named Adolf Hitler, green-lighting his launch of World War II.
Take two minutes of your time to consider how important this issue is for our national security.
Two Florida school officials facing possible jail terms for praying in the presence of students arrive in court Thursday enjoying the support of more than 60 members of Congress.
Some of those members, who signed a letter of support and sent it to the two school officials Monday, took to the House floor Tuesday night to denounce what they called a "criminalization of prayer" that "tramples on the First Amendment rights" of Christians.
"The Founding Fathers would be appalled" at the trial of Pace High School Principal Frank Lay and his school athletic director, Robert Freeman, said Rep. Jeff Miller of Florida. His Pensacola-based district includes Santa Rosa County, where the lawsuit is based.
The 9 a.m. trial "is one of the first times we've literally had the potential for the criminalization of prayer in the United States of America," said Rep. J. Randy Forbes of Virginia, chairman of the Congressional Prayer Caucus.
If the two men are found guilty, "there will come a day," Mr. Forbes predicted, "when the speaker of this house will be hauled into federal court and threatened with jail because she dares to stand at that podium where you stand tonight and ask the chaplain to start our day with the prayer."
Mr. Forbes, Mr. Miller and Rep. Mike McIntyre, North Carolina Democrat, were signatories to the Monday letter to the two educators, assuring them that "we are standing with you in prayer and support as you face your trial." More than 60 members of the House have co-signed.
I have been praying that this case will be the cause that hoists the Anti-Christian Lawyers Union by its own petard. The ACLU has been the bully on the block against everything Christian for far too long. It's about time they get slapped down and this case is so ridiculous on the face of it, I can't seen how any sane judge would not throw it out. But sane and judge may not necessarily go together. Pray that sanity will break out today in that courtroom in Florida.
And I am proud to say we've got 60 members of Congress who have gotten into this fight on behalf of the two Christian gentlemen who have done nothing illegal except in ACLU idiocy.
God bless Mike McIntyre of my home state and the other 59 members of Congress who have stepped up to the plate to defend God and country and the liberty most of us still hold dear.
A t-shirt worn by one of the British troops in Afghanistan says plainly that their business is killing Taliban -- and business is good.The soldiers are living like animals at a little rat’s nest called FOB Gibraltar. They call it “Gib.” Named after the lynchpin of British naval dominance in the Mediterranean, this cluster of mud huts in the middle of hostile territory is more like Fort Apache, Afghanistan. The British soldiers from C-Company 2 Para live in ugly conditions, fight just about every day, and morale is the best I have seen probably anywhere.Say a prayer for Michael and the troops, ours and our allies, in the never-ending war on terror.
“Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right. Also, for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending [U.S. soldiers] out on a task that is from God,” she exhorted the congregants. “That’s what we have to make sure that we’re praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God’s plan.”The boldface part is what Gibson left out, claiming her "exact words" but twisting them to mean something exactly opposite from what she really said. Talk about grace under fire, Sarah's got it.
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