The Government : Your Enemy and Mine

Quoting Scripture banned in library community room

Quoting from the Bible has been banned in a community room at the public library in Clermont County, Ohio, and now a couple who sought to use the facility for a financial planning seminar has brought a court case.

"What's next? Will the library board attempt to keep patrons from checking out Bibles and reading them on government property?" asked Tim Chandler, a legal counsel with the Alliance Defense Fund, which is working on the case involving George and Cathy Vandergriff.

The couple asked for permission to use a public facility at the library to hold a financial planning seminar with the Institute for Principled Policy.

Under the use policy for the facility, the meetings rooms there "are available to all community groups and non-profit organizations engaged in activities that further the Library's mission to be responsive to community needs and to be an integral part of our community," according to the lawsuit.

"When the Library's meeting rooms are not being used for library-related programs, the rooms are available for non-profit use by community groups. The groups may use meeting rooms for private meetings or to present programs for the general public," it continues.

However, when Cathy Vandergriff asked in person to use a meeting room for a financial planning meeting, the conversation with the library employee took an unwelcome turn.

"When Mrs. Vandergriff indicated that the seminar would be a free ministry to the general public, the employee asked if she would be quoting the Bible in the presentation. Mrs. Vandergriff answered that she would be using the Bible, and the employee informed her that the Library's Policy would therefore not permit her to use the meeting room," the ADF said.
When she followed up with a written request for the use of the facility, an employee again warned about the ban on quoting from the Bible, and the written rejection soon followed. It carried the hand-written notation: "Contact Mr. Vandergriff will be quoting bible versus [sic] explained our meeting room policy."

The ADF's complaint, filed last week in U.S. District Court in Ohio, requests a declaratory judgment, preliminary and permanent injunctions and damages and costs for the action.
"The … Clermont Public Library Board of Trustees … is prohibiting plaintiffs from engaging in expressive activities in a generally available public forum solely due to the religious viewpoint of those activities," the ADF said.

The library did not return a WND message requesting comment.

The complaint cites alleged violations of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution including the right to free exercise of religion, and the 14th Amendment's equal protection and due process clauses.

"The library has no compelling reason that would justify excluding plaintiffs from these generally available public facilities solely on the basis of the religious nature of plaintiffs' speech," the complaint said.

"Refusing to grant this group permission to hold a seminar at a meeting room in a public library because they planned to quote the Bible is about as blatantly un-American and unconstitutional as you can get," Chandler said. "Christian organizations shouldn't be discriminated against for their beliefs."

"The denial sends the message to the Vandergriffs and other Christians that they are not deemed a valuable part of the community. Christians have the same First Amendment rights as anyone else in America," the ADF's Kevin Theriot added.

"Any government policy denying equal access rights to a group simply because it intends on quoting Bible verses does not comport with the Constitution. This is a financial planning seminar, and the library has previously allowed meetings that discuss financial planning. The fact that they may quote Bible verses during the meeting does not legally matter."

The Institute for Principled Policy planned to sponsor the two two-hour seminars for 10 attendees April 18 and 19 at the library using Larry Burkett’s Crown Ministries materials.

The Observer

A Map of Ted Turner's Cannibals In 2050?

No! It's Absolut Vodka's vision of it's future sales!

A new ad for Absolut vodka reconfigures North America according to the aspirations of many Mexicans, who believe the U.S. Southwest was stolen and should be returned.
Over a redrawn map of the U.S., the ad by the Absolut Spirits Co. declares, "In an Absolut World," noted columnist and blogger Michelle Malkin.

Major Hispanic civil rights groups in the U.S., such as the National Council of La Raza, are tied to movements advocating a "reconquista," or reconquest, of territory lost when Mexico signed the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo at the end of the Mexican-American War.

As WND reported in 2006, Rep. Charles Norwood, R-Ga., called on La Raza to renounce its support of the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan – which sees "The Race" as part of an ethnic group that one day will reclaim Aztlan, the mythical birthplace of the Aztecs. In Chicano folklore, Aztlan includes California, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico and parts of Colorado and Texas.

In 2002, a prominent Chicano activist and University of California at Riverside professor, Armando Navarro, told WND he believed secession is inevitable if demographic and social trends continue.

"If in 50 years most of our people are subordinated, powerless, exploited and impoverished, then I will say to you that there are all kinds of possibilities for movements to develop like the ones that we've witnessed in the last few years all over the world, from Yugoslavia to Chechnya," Navarro said.

"A secessionist movement is not something that you can put away and say it is never going to happen in the United States," he contended. "Time and history change."

... wonder if George ever drank this? Never liked it, myself., Blended Whiskey is better. - Tiger

The Observer

They'll Come For Your Guns Eventually

A District of Columbia gun-control law struck down by a federal court has won surprise support from the Bush administration.

On Friday, U.S. Solicitor General Paul D. Clement urged the Supreme Court to rule that the Second Amendment right to bear arms is not absolute and is limited and subject to "reasonable regulation" by the government and that all federal restrictions on firearms should be upheld, according to the Los Angeles Times.

In his brief, Clement stated that such reasonable regulations include the federal ban on machine guns and other "particularly dangerous types of firearms," and that the government forbids gun possession by felons, drug users, "mental defectives" and people subject to restraining orders.

"Given the unquestionable threat to public safety that unrestricted private firearm possession would entail, various categories of firearm-related regulation are permitted by the Second Amendment," Clement said in his filing concerning the District's ban on keeping handguns at home for self-defense, which a federal court has ruled violates the Second Amendment.

(... the case will determine if the 2nd Amendment applies to every citizen, not whether existing federal law is valid, therefore Clement's words are suspect! Of course, we already know the Amendment applies to the citizenry, so this entire case is suspect! - Tiger)

Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Handgun Violence, told the Times he saluted the administration for recognizing a need for limits on gun rights. Alan Gura, a key gun-rights advocate leading the challenge to the District of Columbia's gun law, said he was disappointed over the administration's position, adding that he was troubled that Clement advised the justices to send the case back for further hearings in a lower court.

"We are not happy. We are very disappointed the administration is hostile to individual rights. This is definitely hostile to our position," Gura said.

The Times noted that later this year the Supreme Court is expected to "rule squarely on whether the Second Amendment gives individuals a right to have a gun despite laws or ordinances restricting firearms."

That amendment provides that "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." Pro-gun-control groups insist that that the law applies to militias, such as the national guard, and not individuals.

In the case now before the court, the constitutionality of the District of Columbia's ordinance is at issue. Clement in his brief agreed that the Second Amendment "protects an individual right to possess firearms, including for private purposes unrelated to militia operations," and contends that D.C.'s ban on handguns goes too far and is probably unconstitutional.

He cautioned, however, that the court should move cautiously and make clear that the Second Amendment does not threaten most current restrictions on guns and gun owners, and said the court should stop short of striking down the D.C. ordinance on its own, and that the case should be sent back to a trial judge, the Times reported.

"The D.C. ban may well fail constitutional scrutiny," he said, because it totally forbids private citizens from having a handgun at home. Such a ruling however, should not threaten other laws, he said. "Nothing in the Second Amendment properly understood . . . calls for invalidation of the numerous federal laws regulating firearms."

The court will hear arguments in the D.C. case in late March.

In another development, President Bush signed the nation's first new gun-control legislation in 14 years on Saturday to help keep guns out of the hands of the dangerously mentally ill. The law appropriates $250 million a year for states and their courts to computerize their records on mentally ill people and forward the information to to the FBI for inclusion in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System to prevent anyone who is seriously mentally ill, a criminal or who has a restraining order against them for domestic violence from buying a gun.

( ... has anyone out there ever taken pills for depression? ...for anxiety? ... do you have a heart condition where you're concerned about having an attack on a daily basis, and have been prescribed "pep" pills? - all of these people can be refused the RIGHT to have personal weapons for self-defense. All it takes is one letter from your LIBERAL doctor to the local LIBERAL magistrate! The NRA is bleeding members daily because of their support of this legislation. BTW, the legislation is sponsored by Charles Schumer! - Tiger)