In a blow to secularists and civil libertarians, the Supreme Court voted 5-4 in Greece v. Galloway to allow Christian prayers at a local council. The Court again left little clarity on the standard for future cases in what proved a highly fractured decision. Justice Anthony Kennedy tipped the balance in favor of the Town of Greece with Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Samuel Alito, Justice Antonin Scalia, and Justice Clarence Thomas. However, his opinion was left in pieces by a series of concurring opinions. Scalia and Thomas specifically bolted over Part II-B of Kennedy’s opinion (except as to Part II–B, concluding that the town’s prayer practice does not violate the Establishment Clause.) Alito wrote a concurring opinion, joined by Justice Scalia. Justice Thomas also wrote a concurring opinion joined by Justice Scalia in part. Even the dissenting justices divided with a Breyer opinion for himself and a dissent by Kagan that was joined by Justices Breyer, Ginsburg, and Sotomayor. In other words, an unholy mess.
The record in the case was viewed by many as highly suspicious in how the council almost exclusively used Christian ministers while professing to be open to any faith, including atheists. The town followed an informal method for selecting prayer givers under which a town employee would call the congregations listed in local directory. That itself allowed for an obvious bias but also the town only had Christian ministers. Even Kennedy admitted that “from 1999 to 2007, all of the participating ministers were too.”
The prayers often referenced Jesus or Biblical passages:
“Lord we ask you to send your spirit of upon all of us gathered here this evening to do your work for the benefit of all in our community. We ask you to bless our elected and appointed officials so they may deliberate with wisdom and act with courage. Bless the members of our community who come here to speak before the board so they may state their cause with honesty and humility. . . . Lord we ask you to bless us all, that everything we do here tonight will move you to welcome us one day into your kingdom as good and faithful servants. We ask this in the name of our brother Jesus. Amen.” Id., at 45a.
“Lord, God of all creation, we give you thanks and praise for your presence and action in the world. We look with anticipation to the celebration of Holy Week and Easter. It is in the solemn events of next week that we find the very heart and center of our Christian faith. We acknowledge the saving sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross. We draw strength, vitality, and confidence from his resurrection at Easter. . . . We pray for peace in the world, an end to terrorism,violence, conflict, and war. We pray for stability, democracy, and good government in those countries in which our armed forces are now serving, especially in Iraq and Afghanistan. . . . Praise and glory be yours, O Lord, now and forever more. Amen.”
Kennedy emphasized that the Court had long recognized a historical practice of prayers as not violating the establishment clause:
An insistence on nonsectarian or ecumenical prayer as a single, fixed standard is not consistent with the tradition of legislative prayer outlined in the Court’s cases. The Court found the prayers in Marsh consistent with the First Amendment not because they espoused only a generic theism but because our history and tradition have shown that prayer in this limited context could “coexis[t] with the principles of disestablishment and religious freedom.” 463 U. S., at 786.
Kennedy found no evidence of coercion in the use of the prayers by the Town of Greece:
Ceremonial prayer is but a recognition that, since this Nation was founded and until the present day, many Americans deem that their own existence must be understood by precepts far beyond the authority of government to alter or define and that willing participation in civic affairs can be consistent with a brief acknowledgment of their belief in a higher power, always with due respect for those who adhere to other beliefs. The prayer in this case has a permissible ceremonial purpose. It is not an unconstitutional establishment of religion.
Kennedy made clear that secular values would not replace religious values in such public meetings as a constitutional mandate and refused to require “chaplains to redact the religious content from their message in order to make it acceptable for the public sphere . . . Government may not mandate a civic religion that stifles any but the most generic reference to the sacred any more than it may prescribe a religious orthodoxy.”
This does not of course help those who do not believe in theism. I suppose, like Rome, when in Greece just learn to do as the Greeks do.
The case is Greece v. Galloway, 12-696. In my Supreme Court class, the students voted overwhelmingly to affirm by a vote of 11-1. The prediction was closer. Five of us thought that the Court would reverse the Second Circuit (which it did) and seven students thought the Court would affirm.
Here are the opinions.
Hypocracy? What’s that?
Elaine – that is a misspelling 🙂
Too many new trolls, changing names. Cowards.
Nick – at least they have stopped calling us sockpuppets. There is something to be said for hypocracy.
David apparently does not understand ANOVA. Simple explanation below of how ANOVA can be used to account for variables.
http://www.statgraphics.com/analysis_of_variance.htm
Chuck Stanley wrote: “David apparently does not understand ANOVA.”
LOL. As a scientist, I have been well trained in experimental design and statistical analysis. Analysis of variance never makes up for poor experimental design. Apparently it is you that does not understand the proper role of ANOVA, and I am rather shocked at that given your professional credentials.
My critique was on the basic experimental design of using phone surveys to collect the data for analysis. Assume for a moment that one gender would be more likely than another to respond to the survey thoroughly, or assume that there is a difference between Republicans and Democrats, or any category that you want to analyze. Maybe Professionals would be less likely to respond than laborers. Also consider what categories might not ever answer their phone. I know many today who do not answer their home phones because that is the number they give out to the public when they place orders and such. They don’t want to answer sales calls, solicitors, and surveyors. The point is that a phone survey does not lead to a true random sample, which is the basis for the statistical analysis that is done with the data.
Furthermore, even of those who do answer the survey, are some more likely to be honest in their responses than others? Do the people asking the questions lead the survey respondent in the questions they ask, expecting them to answer a certain way?
The point is that one must be careful with interpreting the results if the foundation of the study is likely to skew data collection. The results can be interesting, but they must be taken with a grain of salt and is most useful in leading us toward areas of future study with better experimental design to test the validity of the conclusions.
David does not appear to be unaware to me. He has made an obvious decision to regard women this way. He probably thinks it is biblically based.
RTC,
I’ll have to take responsibility for myself and outspoken women like myself who have emasculated and feminized the men in our society. I hang my head in shame!
😉
Chuck – you just linked to ANOVA, there is no indication that you seem to understand it. Remember the old saying Chuck: There are lies. Damn lies. And statistics
Elaine wrote: “I’ll have to take responsibility for myself and outspoken women like myself who have emasculated and feminized the men in our society.”
Elaine, you mention this many times, about how outspoken you are, but I have never particularly noticed that about you. You quote what others think far more often than you express your own opinion. Even when someone questions what you quote, you defer from engaging in conversation about it. You certainly enjoy posting messages on the blog, but you are not really an outspoken woman from my perspective. There was another woman around not too long ago who I would say was outspoken. She definitely held my admiration. I really like intelligent and outspoken women… especially if she drives a big four wheel drive truck with a rifle mounted on the gun rack. 🙂
The way that feminists have feminized men is by seeking to make them ashamed of their natural aggressiveness. They put young boys on various drugs to deal with that, attempting to make them passive. They forbid them from playing cowboys and indians or cops and robbers, or even from drawing pictures of guns in school. Can’t make your pop tart look like a gun, or even hold your finger like a gun. Boys grow up learning that society wants them to act like a woman, and they are a bad male if they don’t make sure that an equal number of women rule over them in society.
Check out the following USAToday article:
GIRLS GET EXTRA SCHOOL HELP WHILE BOYS GET RITALIN
“At last June’s graduation at Franklin High School just outside of Milwaukee, three of the four students who tied for valedictorian were girls. Among the National Honor Society members, 76% were girls. And girls comprised 85% of the students on Franklin’s 4.0 honor roll. The superintendent of schools for this upper-middle-class suburb, Gerald Freitag, investigated those numbers after the parents of a boy filed a complaint. He found that the skewed performances by gender at Franklin pretty such mirror the imbalances across the state — and the nation.”
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2003-08-28-our-view_x.htm
RTC – scientifically speaking it takes two to make a baby. Regardless of how you do it. And now that courts are clawing back at sperm donors to make them financially responsible for their offspring, it is doubly so.
That being the case, each party should have an equal right in the matter of either birth or abortion. That’s the kind of equality that progressives are always shouting from the rooftops for, isn’t it? NO ONE should be superior.
And the health of the mother has gotten to be a joke because it has not become the ‘mental health’ of the mother.’ We have abortionists deciding on the mental health of pregnant women. Anyone who has spent any length of time with a pregnant woman knows they tend to be a little unstable to begin with.
It’s not that he’s unaware, so much. He’s just not been sissified like you and me. (see his comments above about how the women’s rights aganda has turned us soft.)
RTC,
I thought the same thing, but kinda cringed thinking someone would be as unaware as David. But, what do I know.
DavidM, WTF!!!: ” Women enjoy talking about that (their husbands beating them up).
You know, David, I got a feeling, call it a hunch, but women don’t really enjoy talking about being abused.
Myyyyy gosh.
Paul:
By now I would have thought you would understand the liberal mind, if you put your hand into a fire it depends on whether or not you knew fire was hot, did you mean to do it multiple times, did you have a bad childhood, was your father abusive, did you not breast feed long enough, were you poor and dropped a piece of meat into the fire, it really just depends.
You have to nuance these things to come up with the most gender neutral, non-threatening, all encompassing answer.
It is too easy to just say get your hand out of the fire you big dumb a$$, which is why conservatives have small anterior cingulate cortecies or so say liberals.
Byron – what some don’t seem to understand is sometimes you get tired of feeding the bunnies and want to move on to another animal. Sadly, the bunnies get all butt-hurt.
Narcissist’s Reactions to Deficient, Fake, Negative, Low-grade, or Static Narcissistic Supply
By Sam Vaknin, Ph.D.
The narcissist presents to the world a facade of invincibility, equanimity, superiority, skilfulness, cool-headedness, invulnerability, and, in short: indifference.
This front is penetrated in times of great crises that threaten the narcissist’s ability to obtain Narcissistic Supply, or when the Narcissistic Supply is spurious (fake or low-grade), negative, or static.
http://www.globalpolitician.com/print.asp?id=7079
Charlton – you did forget to mention that abused women and probably men have a tendency to stay in those relationships. If I continue to put my hand in the fire and get burned, who is the victim?
Again – this is why the cat hero video is So Cool!
In all battles of good versus evil – it is unity that is key.
Evil tends to bully (such as cops preventing voters);
but can’t stand the truth having light upon it –
that cajoles unity.
This is why mobs – as an evil tool – works to bad ends.
They are just a grouping of bullies.
What lots of folks are leaving out is that in most circumstances it’s a learned response to a domestic situation. That’s why better education is needed on ending the cycle of abuse from the victims as well as the abuser. Not all who abuse intend to do so and it can be created from a number of factors, job, housing, money, alcohol etc.
The victim is not to blame.
“Or they deflect blame on to the victim by indicating that the victim’s behavior war rented the abuse. ”
You left out the one that goes ‘I only beat you because I love you so much’ or ‘your are lucky to have a man who cares enough to show you the right way’
Paul,
Who said pistol? How about a deer rifle? .308 with 4x scope? It is not the act, but the psychology of instilling fear in a person who is already a coward. These people don’t pick on somebody their own size.
My friend is barely 5’3″ and weighed a hundred pounds less than her husband at that time. She had no other weapon to get away from him other than psychological warfare–especially when the guy is a control freak who had threatened to hunt her and their baby down if she left him. Now, imagine what that simple warning did to his state of mind as he went about the community, not knowing whether she would actually do it or not–especially in view of the fact he knew she was a crack shot long before he met her.
Carlton – let me posit another scenario to you. Instead of living in an abusive marriage, how about she get a divorce. If she was threatening him like that, she had access to a weapon. And if she had access to a weapon and was a crack shot, as you say, there would be no problem getting a divorce.
I have a friend who is in the process of divorcing her husband. They are still residing in the home because they need to fix it up to sell it. Her daughter thinks she might be at physical risk from the guy. I have told her to pack a ‘go-bag’ with enough stuff to tide her over for a couple of days and to hide a copy of the car key outside where she can get to it in an emergency. I am hoping for the best, but helping her plan for the worst.
By the way – OS, I’m going to quote your thorough explanation on “alloplastic”
Otteray;
I concur.
Always said, to woman who were abused that I’d head up a frying pan for the next time “he” tried to beat me and warn him that I’ll drop this on your arse -red hot, at 3:00 am in the morning – the next time you hit me.
Though I do concur with the 9 to 5 Dolly Parton analogy that:
“I can change you from a rooster to a hen with 1 shot”…
Try to be civil if you can: on 1, May 15, 2014 at 11:24 pmNick Spinelli
I was speaking of stalking. While stalking often leads to violence, it does not necessarily so. As I said, men are the violent people in our culture, no one needs a study to know that. Try and keep up, Chuck. Geez!
Chuck,