NEWS: American Beats Down Jesus Again

POLITICS: American Beats Down Jesus Again

Monday was an ugly day for the Lord Jesus Christ. The Supreme Court basically spit in Jesus's eye when it rejected a case from Maine about school choice. Our crazy religious friends were hoping this case was going to be the big one and blow the doors open for public funding of private religious schools. They were wrong because of something called the Constitution.

A Maine state law bars the use of public funds to send students to private religious schools. Jesus would have been so mad. So, just like the Lord would have done, opponents of the law sued. They hoped the Supreme Court would take the case and spank Maine for their pagan ways. But the Supreme Court is under the power of Lucifer, the dark lord of the nether region.



The Maine Supreme Court ruled last may that the religious school restriction is legal. The Court stated the law was about respect for the Constitution and not hostility toward religion. The baby Jesus then cried. The US Supreme Court ruled in 2004 in favor of a Washington state scholarship program that did not allow the funds to be used for a devotional theology degree.



Maine used to enjoy the Lord Jesus Christ. When Maine's tuition system was set up in 1879, almost all private schools were religious. But in 1980, Satan intervened and the state attorney general declared the program to be unconstitutional and the Legislature passed the current law.

But what will this mean for the School of Voodoo Economics?

I don't know about you, but I know Lucifer is the dark lord of my nether regions.

Cool, now we know what FTR looks like!

FTR is a Western misrepresentation of Jesus Christ himself? I knew that fucker had a Messianic Complex, but whoa...

lol @ the pictures

Today I learned that Lucifer is the dark lord of vaginas.
Thanks FTR!

"The baby jesus then cried"

hahhahaha.

is FTR Missy's hubby? I've had a hunch he is, for the longest time.

Everybody knows carbon dating is manipulated by the devil. If these kids don't get schooled by Jesus we will never get back to the glory of god and trickle down economics.

im confused if the state is giving the families money because they dont have high schools. does that mean the families pay school taxes and then just get them back, if thats the case then it shouldnt matter where the kids go. im so confused

It's amazing that these secular bastards even find time to pass their Godless laws in between planting fake 'Dinosaur' fossils in deserts to test our faith.
x

By the way, there are some Christians on this site who have a clearer understanding of what Jesus would say from reading what Jesus really said and probably would say concerning issues of church versus state issues. Here is an example on the issues concerning the issue. I think Jesus would strongly endorse such separation by with verse alone. Enjoy.
It is amazing what people would tell you what Jesus say or do instead of pointing you directly to what the Bible says said. Interpret at your own risk.

15Then the Pharisees went out and laid plans to trap him in his words. 16They sent their disciples to him along with the Herodians. "Teacher," they said, "we know you are a man of integrity and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. You aren't swayed by men, because you pay no attention to who they are. 17Tell us then, what is your opinion? Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not?"
18But Jesus, knowing their evil intent, said, "You hypocrites, why are you trying to trap me? 19Show me the coin used for paying the tax." They brought him a denarius, 20and he asked them, "Whose portrait is this? And whose inscription?"

21"Caesar's," they replied.
Then he said to them, "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's."

22When they heard this, they were amazed. So they left him and went away.

A win for the good guys... I know i'd hate to find out my tax money was going to brainwash children with religious crap... people who want their kids brainwashed should pay for it themselves

Matthew 22:15 by the way.

What no bush bashing here? You must be slipping.

Well, I suppose you still have the extremely heavy handed sarcasm.

You might just become a journalist yet. Nah, never mind.....

I think everyone is missing an important part of this...

So if it's cheaper to send them to a religious school that they want to go to in state, rather than a super expensive school with out of state tuition on it... I say let them go. In this case the religion isn't being forced upon the individual unless it's from their parents, and if that's the case it'll be forced on them whether they go to a religious school or not.

Generally speaking, you pay taxes, and some portion of the funding thereof may be allocated to funding schools, among other uses. So in most cases nobody is paying a "school tax", although it's certainly not impossible. I think it's already uncommonly generous (and possibly a bit questionable) to allocate state money to these people if they choose to go to a private school of a non-religious sort, or an out-of-state school of any variety. Paying for them to attend religious schools would pretty clearly violate that whole separation of church and state business. Hence the ruling.

really, what does this have to do with anything?

It's just hilarious, bitter ranting from a man who has a small grasp on reality.

18%

This is an incorrect statement of law. In fact, Maine's conclusion in 1980 that the program was unconstitutional has been proven wrong by the subsequent U.S. Supreme Court case Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, which held that voucher programs such as the one in Maine do not violate the Establishment Clause. FTR's hyperbole that "[o]ur crazy religious friends were hoping this case was going to be the big one and blow the doors open for public funding of private religious schools," is incorrect for the same reason.

Nor, as FTR claims, did the Court say that the Institute for Justice's argument was "wrong." The Court did not reach the merits of the case, it merely denied cert.

The school choice movement was not started to promote religion; the late Milton Friedman, the father of the school choice movement, was agnostic (as am I, if that matters). The school choice movement was started to improve education. People can (and should) argue about whether or not it is capable of doing so, but that argument should focus on the merits of the idea, not silly conspiracy theorizing.

For anyone who wants more information on this case, you should check out IJ's litigation backgrounder HERE

Finally, I should point out IJ is not, as the source article describes them, a "conservative group." IJ is a libertarian group.

That conclusion seems rather...odd to me, but okay. I am certainly not a lawyer and I am not prepared to gainsay the Supreme Court on a matter of law. As for vouchers...not a fan, but I don't feel like this is the thread to get into that particular discussion.

Never said thier argument was "wrong." You are spinning and lying about something that is written above. I said they were wrong about thinking it would blow the doors off religious schools being able to obtain vouchers. Bill O'Reilly would be impressed by your spin and distortion.

If you read the article you would also see that I never said "the court reached on the merits of the case." You have lazily distorted again. The entire article is about how the religious zealots were defeated because the Supreme Court refused to even hear the case. That is what they wanted they did not get it. That is a defeat.

Who gives a shit who wanted to start it? To give state money for religious education would violate our constitution. I don't really care if your desires are good when you are in bed with people who wish to turn our country into a theocracy.

Render unto Caesar?

I agree that they were defeated, but since you said "They were wrong because of something called the Constitution," I assumed you meant they lost before the Supreme Court on some constitutional grounds, which, as you admit, they did not. You can assume laziness or bad faith on my part if you want, but I think it's a plausible reading of what you wrote. However, if I misread you, I apologize.

Now to substance. While I'll admit they were defeated, I don't see how the people defeated were "religious zealots". Perhaps religious zealots wanted IJ to win, but the Institute for Justice most certainly isn't staffed with them (among other acts of secular zealotry, IJ submitted an amicus brief on behalf of the plaintiffs in the homosexual sodomy case Lawrence v. Texas).
As for the plaintiffs themselves, if they're anything like the plaintiffs in previous voucher cases, it's unlikely that they're zealots either. In previous cases, the majority of students attending religious schools on voucher programs were not practicing members of the school's denomination. The article you link to certainly doesn't provide any evidence to the contrary. In fact, I don't see any evidence of "religious zealotry" in the article at all.

If the Court had granted cert. and IJ had won, religious zealots probably would have been happy. But not everything that makes those crazy people happy is a bad thing. Nor is everything they view as a "defeat" a good thing.

Neutral voucher programs that allow parents to select the school do not violate the Constitution, see Zelman, cited above. And motive does matter. Zelman turned, in large part, on the state having a valid secular purpose, namely, the desire to improve children's education. This is why no one expected this case to be "the big one." Zelman was the big one.