First Amendment, Duck!
Well, I’ll be damned. You knew it was gonna happen. The Second Amendment just up and shot the First Amendment with an assault rifle, unprovoked and with what little available forethought there is in North Carolina.
Republican North Carolina state legislators have proposed allowing an official state religion in a measure that would declare the state exempt from the Constitution and court rulings.
The bill, filed Monday by two GOP lawmakers from Rowan County and backed by nine other Republicans, says each state “is sovereign” and courts cannot block a state “from making laws respecting an establishment of religion.”
“I’m Proud To Be An American North Carolinian South Baptist” will now be sung at all Duke University Blue Devils Red Angels basketball games.
Smokey Mountain National Park will become North Carolina Hills of Galilee and Hallelujah Jesus Theme Park. The historic coastal city of Wilmington will be named The Baptismal Font of Glory and Washing Away of Sins, where genders do not mix because of all those wet tee-shirts after the dunkings.
They will still have bars and dance halls in North Carolina but they will be renamed Holy Water and Rejoicing Centers.
And all them Jesus hatin’ sumbitches who are too chicken to kill someone for stealing a teevee or lookin’ funny at your wife have to move to Virginia.
Them’s the rules, you yankee first amendment sumbitches.
Thanks to Sharon for the heads up.
That’s not an earthquake. It’s Washington, Adams and Jefferson rolling over in their graves. The lobotomy Loonies strike again. Will the last sane person leaving North Carolina please turn out the lights.
1OK, now they’ve done it. I’ve been putting up with those people and their fantasies about how the Second Amendment is the cornerstone of our freedom as if all you needed to protect freedom was a gun. But now I’m mad. The First Amendment is the cornerstone of our freedom, damn it. It says very, very clearly that the government can’t set up a state religion. For the information of those people in South Carolina (and Rick Santorum and everybody else who wants to impose their religious beliefs on me), the 14th Amendment says the 1st Amendment applies to the states. Their law is unconstitutional on its face. Somebody remind those people that the South lost the Civil War.
2What these constitutional scholars don’t say is how they plan to get around their own state constitution, Article 1, Sec 13:
Religious liberty.
3All persons have a natural and inalienable right to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their own consciences, and no human authority shall, in any case whatever, control or interfere with the rights of conscience.
Good lard on a taco! Will there be a gun fight over the type of baptism? I suppose the Baptist will demand dunking and outlaw sprinkling, as well as dancing.
4Instead of the cardinal, the North Carolina state bird will now be the dove of the Holy Spirit.
5Instead of the Tarheel state, North Carolina will be the televangelist “Heal! Heal!” state.
6Well my land, if we-uns are going to exempt ourownselves from the Constitution, we can do a whole lot of other fun things too:
-we can stop the wimmen from voting
-we can outlaw all those pesky Knee-groes and kick them out, or even kill them cuz they are all criminals doncha know
-we can outlaw those unnatural sodomy act things AND make them capital crimes
-we can make rape legal again, but only for WHITE men (and if its rape it wont count as sodomy or pedophilia either so WHITE men can do what they please at all times)
-we can make only WHITE men legal property owners
-we can declare wimmen PROPERTY
-we can have slaves (Mexican ones, cuz we are gonna get rid of all those uppity sumbit@h KNEE-gros remember)
Oh good grief y’all the list goes on and on and on! What on earth are we gonna do about this mess? How are we going to turn the tide on these religious freaks that are hell bent on dismantling democracy? Perry will no doubt think (!! insofar as that is possible) that this is a GREAT idea and he’ll be espousing it next!
7God, please save us from ourselves. Please save us from our hypocracy, self righteouness, intollerance, and selfishness. These separatists piss on our inalienable God given rights to be free of totalitarinism, be it religious or secular based.
8Christian Sharia?
9Moving to Ashe-vegas in June! Cannot wait to turn that state BLUE AGAIN!
This is a semi-official announcement of my retirement…
10Kinky Friedman once said that he almost became a Southern Baptist, but he found out the didn’t hold them underwater long enough when they were baptized. . . . . Man had a point.
11It has just gone apeshit crazy ’round these parts since good ol’ boy, Pat McCrory wrazzled control of the state from those leftie commie tree hugger feminazi democrats. I swannee they are just sittin around spitting tobaccy and trying to outdo some of the other confederate states with their craziness. I outta just move to Texas!
12U.S. Constitution Article VI applies.
13Irene asks:
> Christian Sharia?
Of course. That’s what they’ve been after for years. It’s not an argument over principle, it’s about what book to use.
14RockheadedMama is right on target. Most southern states passed Constitutional Amendments to prevent state money from going to church organizations because they feared and hated Catholics.
Sometimes that will come back to haunt you.
15Yeah, pretty sure this won’t even come close to passing constitutional challenge in NC, much less Federal. Glad to hear things are so good in my state that they can worry about nonsense like this. Oh wait…they aren’t, these guys are just idiots masquerading as public servants.
16I sure will be glad when this RePig Movie of the Insane is over~it has been on waaayyy toooo long~
17It appears they are only in love with the Constitution when they think it is advancing their own agenda. Otherwise, not so much!
18My answer to the opinion that liberal causes were a “slippery slope” towards moral decay used to be a joke: “And passing laws against it are a slippery slope towards replacing the constitution with the Bible.”
It’s not a joke anymore, huh?
19I went to Catholic school and learned from the nuns, most of them either off the boat from Ireland or 1st generation, they didn’t have good things to say about State Religion.
20It appears we may have won the battle, but lost the war.
Democrats typically and very much so, do not vote in local elections and this is where the republicans are winning.
In 2010, the republicans won lots of seats in these local elections.
They are taking over school boards and local elections.
With their majorities, they gerrymandered lots of states and have majorities.
And this is what they do. And the only way to stop it is to get them out of office and/or make sure they do not get into office in the first place.
SO please. Vote and make sure others do too.
Here is the website for Elizabeth Cobert Busch. http://colbertbuschforcongress.com/
21She is running against Mark Sanford in S. Carolina.
It may not help the state of N Carolina, but let’s help(if you can) a fellow Democrat.
If this were not so damned pathetic. It would almost be funny. Not funny HA HA….. but funny peculiar.
But it is pathetic…. and not really funny at all.
Where do these people get these ideas? From whence springs this idiocy? Is it parents, teachers, talk radio, fair and balanced teevee…. the NRA….. Where????? Where does this crap come from anyway?
Totally beyond comprehension. Good Grief!
22I used to go to a Methodist church in the summer, and a Baptist church in the winter. I told the Baptist preacher once the joke my Methodist preacher told in a sermon.
“Know the difference between Baptist and methodists when they see each other in the liquor store?
The Methodists say “Howdy”.”
The Baptist preacher said you have it all wrong. The difference is, Methodists are Baptists that learned how to read.
And top it off with this quote about Don Young in the Washington Post today. “GOP consultant John Weaver said the comment “hurts us,” even though he described Young as “a dinosaur on the bridge of political insanity and irrelevance.””
23I think we need to consider Border fences for some states other than the South Border!
24As far as I know, ever one of those politicians gives an oath to uphold and protect the Constitution of the United States. When they break that oath (which these bozos did) they should be summarily removed from office and prosecuted.
25This is all fine and dandy until the inevitable debate over which flavor of Jesusplaooza is the chosen one. I mean, my Mormon relatives live in North Carolina and some of their prayers are pretty weird. Trying to think how that will fly with the good Baptists there.
26Miemaw asked “. . .whence springs this idiocy?”
This idiocy happens to be a pet idea of Justice Antonin Scalia who believes that when the constitution says “Congress shall pass no law. . .” that it applies only to the Congress of the United States and no other governmental bodies or states. And it applies only to legislation, not rules or practices of the government. So the House can adopt one religion and the Senate another religion, and the State Department another religion and so on. And as long as it is done by rule rather than legislation, Scalia says it’s OK.
Really, he really believes that. No kiddin’.
27I think this is great. From now on each State gets to create a “state religion” but to be fair, we need to prevent overlap. So North Carolina gets Christianity. Perhaps we can talk California into Paganism and New York into Judaism…leaving Texas to pick up the next big number: Islam.
Really some great ideas here and we can even let one state be the token Atheist state. You can then practice your freedom of religion amendment by moving to the best state for your faith… Of course, that might mean the Christians will run out of land in NC…but just imagine how many Representatives they’ll be allowed to have once we restructure the states by religion.
28I would make a comment, but I don’t think Momma would allow it…….:)
29I can’t wait to see the shootout at the OK Jesus corral as to which religion will be designated the state religion.
30A state legislature would vote that it is not bound by the Constitution nor the federal courts? I don’t know what you call it down there, but up here, we Yankees call that “secession.”
Article 1, Section 5 of their OWN state constitution says: “Every citizen of this State owes paramount allegiance to the Constitution and government of the United States, and no law or ordinance of the State in contravention or subversion thereof can have any binding force.”
The end.
31I’m moving to Washington state when I retire from teaching. The South has just gotten too stupid. And yes I’m including Texas in with them.
32There is a wonderful clip on the net from Aaron Sorkin’s great new HBO series, “The Newsroom”:
33The characteristics of the American Taliban (Tea Party) include:
compromise is weakness, fundamentalist belief in scriptural literalism, denial of science, need to control women’s bodies,undeterred by new information, tribal mentality,intolerance of dissent, pathological hatred of the U.S. government.
Forget about Afghanistan, they’re alive and well and living in South Carolina.
the American Taliban strikes again.
34As well as NorthCarolina. All the Rethug strogholds.
35Star, I’m not into paganism and that’s not fun enough for us flaky Californians…can we be Druids? We’re already half-way there – painting our faces and dancing around trees and all.
36daChipster prompted me to look at my own state’s constitution. The Washington State Constitution, Article 1, Section 2 (in its entirety) says, “The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the land.” Short and sweet.
James, I’m sure Washington will welcome you. Just so you are well-informed before your move, the west side of the Cascade Mountains is largely blue, and the east side definitely red, although progress is being made. Beats the heck out of the South.
37Which religion would be the state one? Only 47.51 percent of people in NC have a religious affiliation, “Baptist” being the largest, but that’s only 18.68 percent (and I don’t know how many flavors of Baptist that includes):
http://www.bestplaces.net/religion/state/north_carolina
38It looks like the head of the republican party has smacked this one down.
39