FFRF and Newdow challenge "under God" in Pledge in NH

[Ensign Steve]

At least the framers were hemp smokers, am I right? Huh? Huh?

[ZEZOZE]

lol...ES, you are probably the coolest person here.

[D. Scarlatti]

ITOSZ, would it be too much to ask you to start a separate thread and fill it with your idiocy, and leave this one alone?

Thanks.

[ZEZOZE]

now that's not nice to say about ES...

and that is it for my participation, which was honest. now it is being made about me, will go unnoticed until i fall into the girlie gang trap and reply to ds with something stupid and the pile on for my insolence will begin...and it really will become about me.

i am forced to bow out. my words stand for who i am. see my signature for how the majority feels about that.

silenced.

[godfry n. glad]

Originally Posted by D. Scarlatti

Don't make me get all Holy Trinity Church v. U.S., 143 U.S. 457 (1892), on your ass.

Yeah?

Does that trump the Treaty of Tripoli of 1797, authored in large part by John Adams and ratified by the US Senate, wherein it states, as the preamble to Article XI that "...the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion..."

It seems to me that the US Constitution has some provision about how ratified international treaties having some sort of precedence over domestic legislation.

[D. Scarlatti]

I'm kidding, godfry. Although Holy Trinity rather infamously arrived at the pronouncement that "the U.S. is a Christian Nation," based on a selective enumeration of various historical practices, most -- if not all -- of which, if I recall correctly, predated the ratification of the First Amendment.

You still see it popping up occasionally, but I don't expect it to be seriously invoked in defense against the present action. After all, none other than even Justice Scalia declared it "aberrant," or, "an aberration."

[Caligulette]

Originally Posted by InTheServiceOfZeke

i am forced to bow out. my words stand for who i am. see my signature for how the majority feels about that.

Duck Tick? Wha....?

Anyhoo-

Godfry, could you provide a link to Tripoli for a lazy non-looker-upper?

[viscousmemories]

http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/treaty_tripoli.html

[D. Scarlatti]

Originally Posted by InTheServiceOfZeke

silenced.

Bitch please. Feel free to begin your own "The U.S. remains a slaveocracy" thread, or whatever. I'm just hoping that, since ELGS took a fair bit of time assembling the information contained in the OP, and that this specific question (the one in thread title) is something that interests many of us, that it might remain generally on track.

Dragging it off on some crazy tangent is counterproductive and, frankly, annoying as hell, especially when it's so easy to start a different thread. You don't want people putting you on ignore, then stop posting off-topic crap in what otherwise has been an interesting and substantive discussion.

[ZEZOZE]

Originally Posted by D. Scarlatti

Whatever. If you wish to participate in a legal discussion, use the proper terms of art.

"Framers" is a particularly important one, in the context of this lawsuit.

before i leave this thread again, before ds makes it all about me, i would like to point something out to him...

you missed my particularly important point in using the term "founding fathers"...i emphasized FATHERS for a reason, hinting back at christian ideals... guess you didn't get it, or don't care, or just felt the need to feel like a big man, but our FATHERS who art in congress...

i am not participating in a legal discussion, but a human one.

go sit on a sharp stick and be amazed by the lack of penetration.

now...i go.

[Stephen Maturin]

Originally Posted by godfry n. glad

Yeah?

Does [Holy Trinity]trump the Treaty of Tripoli of 1797 . . .

You walk in darkness, my brother, but only because you lack the benefit of noted historian and legal scholar Chuck Norris' wisdom on this vital issue. Congress knew full well that the U.S. was founded in every sense upon the Christian religion but was hell bent on appeasing the Barbary pirates, the Islamofascists of their day. Lesson: appeasement didn't work then and it won't work with the current crop of Islamofascists either.

[D. Scarlatti]

Originally Posted by InTheServiceOfZeke

our FATHERS who art in [C]ongress...

While filed in federal court, this suit is against a school district in the State of New Hampshire. As for at least one of the federal questions presumably raised, I'd hardly count the 83rd Congress among the nation's founding fathers.

[Deadlokd]

This Scarlatti/Zeke thing pisses me off. I can't read a thread now without it being derailed into another spatfest. FFS, put each other on ignore if you piss each other off that much. I don't even know how the fuck it started, but ffs, can it stop already?

Getting back on topic. ELGS, can some legal minds take that "God is not religion" and fuck the religious nuts up? Like the televangelists? They base their ministries on God and God alone. If God is not a religion, then they have no church and no tax exemption. Hell, that'd work for all the churches. Of course, I failed law school, so I'm not qualified to call this, but surely the Supreme Court have hung someone with this ruling.

Best of luck with it too. I hate Church enroachment into government.

[256 colors]

Originally Posted by They

ELGS, can some legal minds take that "God is not religion" and fuck the religious nuts up? Like the televangelists? They base their ministries on God and God alone. If God is not a religion, then they have no church and no tax exemption. Hell, that'd work for all the churches. Of course, I failed law school, so I'm not qualified to call this, but surely the Supreme Court have hung someone with this ruling.

Sounds like something that would cost a lot of money. A large group like the FFRF would be suited for such a challenge if there was a means to pay for it, but I don't know if such an approach would be possible. Interesting idea, though. Thanks.

[256 colors]

Click here to read the Secular Coalition for America's position piece on the Pledge:

http://www.secular.org/issues/pledge/

The Secular Coalition for America opposes government-coerced recitation of the religious Pledge of Allegiance by public school children. Our community is relegated to second-class citizenship when patriotic exercises require an affirmation of supernatural belief.

[BDS]

Originally Posted by They

Getting back on topic. ELGS, can some legal minds take that "God is not religion" and fuck the religious nuts up? Like the televangelists? They base their ministries on God and God alone. If God is not a religion, then they have no church and no tax exemption. Hell, that'd work for all the churches. Of course, I failed law school, so I'm not qualified to call this, but surely the Supreme Court have hung someone with this ruling.

Best of luck with it too. I hate Church enroachment into government.

If you hate Church encroachment into government, why support government encroachment into the Church? Once the government starts taxing the church, it will have a vital interest in keeping the money coming in.

BDS, who thinks that paying sales tax on newspapers should be unconstitutional, based on Freedom of the Press. (After all, if the government taxes newspaper sales, they could raise the taxes to $20 on all newspapers government officials didn’t want people to read.)

[Deadlokd]

Originally Posted by BDS;

If you hate Church encroachment into government, why support government encroachment into the Church? Once the government starts taxing the church, it will have a vital interest in keeping the money coming in.

Because the churches answer to no one. They enjoy tax exempt status and all they give back is a vague promise of an afterlife. Maybe. If you've given enough.

And you know, it's a long way from churches buying governments to governments taxing churches. A church 'sponsors' a candidate, they own them. A government taxes a church, they don't own them.

[BDS]

Isn’t the point of “Freedom of Religion” that the churches answer to no one (or at least no one from the Government)? They do enjoy tax-exempt status – and they should, if we are going to believe that Church and State should be separate entities. I think that in some European countries churches are still supported by tax dollars (I may be wrong).

Besides, I don’t like the idea of the Quaker Church financing the War in Iraq.

[California Tanker]

Originally Posted by BDS

BDS, who thinks that paying sales tax on newspapers should be unconstitutional, based on Freedom of the Press. (After all, if the government taxes newspaper sales, they could raise the taxes to $20 on all newspapers government officials didn’t want people to read.)

Not I. If they really intended free speech to be free, sales tax wouldn't come into it. After all, an 8% sales tax on something which you can read for $0.00 is... counting fingers here.... nothing. They're taxing commericalism, not speech.

Now, when it comes to the flat $200 tax on NFA firearms, which is levvied upon transfer regardless of cost even if otherwise free, that's arguably an assault on the right to bear arms.

NTM

[BDS]

Originally Posted by California Tanker

Now, when it comes to the flat $200 tax on NFA firearms, which is levvied upon transfer regardless of cost even if otherwise free, that's arguably an assault on the right to bear arms.

NTM

It is indeed, CT. However, I think freedom of the press is far more important than the right to bear arms.

[godfry n. glad]

Originally Posted by BDS

If you hate Church encroachment into government, why support government encroachment into the Church? Once the government starts taxing the church, it will have a vital interest in keeping the money coming in.

I don't have any problem with churches, that is, sacral gathering places, have tax exemption. But when churches come to own vast holdings of property, from which they derive regular income (like home rentals), and expect all that to be tax exempt, I get resentful.

Does anyone know how such is dealt with under the tax laws of the US and its states?

[Crumb]

The fact that the government has to decide what is a "religion" and what is a "church" in order to know who gets the tax breaks and who doesn't leads me to see tax breaks for churches as a violation of the separation of church and state. They should have the same tax burdens as a comparable secular organization.

[256 colors]

Originally Posted by Crumb

The fact that the government has to decide what is a "religion" and what is a "church" in order to know who gets the tax breaks and who doesn't leads me to see tax breaks for churches as a violation of the separation of church and state. They should have the same tax burdens as a comparable secular organization.

Organizations that serve a niche community such as "nontheists" or "freethinkers" usually qualify for tax-exmpt status (501c3).

[godfry n. glad]

Originally Posted by California Tanker

Now, when it comes to the flat $200 tax on NFA firearms, which is levvied upon transfer regardless of cost even if otherwise free, that's arguably an assault on the right to bear arms.

NTM

There is no carte blanche "right to bear arms" in the US. Historically, firearms have been regulated by states for any number of reasons (hunting limitations, concealed weapons permits, disarming violent felons) and the Supreme Court has upheld those regulations.

Also, it seems to me that the "right to bear arms" has no bearing on the ownership of arms, which is taxed by said flat fee. The person owning them can allow anybody they wish to bear them, without charge, but they still have to pay the tax to own them.

Lastly, the language of the Second Amendment states, "A well-regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." This would seemingly allow US courts to interpret it such that the "right" was based upon the communitarian need to maintain a "well-regulated" militia, and thus, if one were not part of such a "well-regulated militia", then one has no right to bear arms. I believe it has been so interpreted in the past.

Needless to say, regulation need not interfere with one's right to bear arms and exists in multitudinous forms in the US today.

[California Tanker]

Originally Posted by BDS

It is indeed, CT. However, I think freedom of the press is far more important than the right to bear arms.

It might be as a principle, but latter is supposed to guarantee the former as a practical issue.

NTM