Where are they now: Icy Hot Stuntaz edition

[Xouqoa]

Rapping for Jesus, apparently.

http://www.boingboing.net/2011/01/25/mo ... le-ra.html

[cadalano]

http://www.reverbnation.com/store/store ... type=music

music samples.. i recommend Jesus Lean and My Trunk Go Boom

[Kwonryu DragonFist]

Stunty Icy Hottaz 4 the Win!

[miir]

http://www.reverbnation.com/store/store ... type=music

music samples.. i recommend Jesus Lean and My Trunk Go Boom

Wow... that's embarrasing.

[Kwonryu DragonFist]

Jesus Lean and Trunk go boom!

Great stuff!

[Xatrei]

http://www.aclu.org/blog/religion-belie ... nstitution

[Kilmoll the Sexy]

Leave it to a liberal rag to not even know what is in the Constitution.

[masteen]

The ACLU is a liberal rag that doesn't understand the Constitution? Wow, you must be killing brain cells at a truly staggering rate.

[miir]

Leave it to a liberal rag to not even know what is in the Constitution.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaaaaa....HA
You're a fucking embarrassment to your country.

[Kilmoll the Sexy]

There is not one single passage anywhere in the Constitution about the separation of Church and State. None. Zero. Nada. How fucking hard is that to understand?

[Sylvus]

Um... I take it you don't consider the Amendments to the Constitution to be part of the Constitution itself? Because I'm pretty sure (and while my opinion may not mean much, perhaps the opinions of the Supreme Court hold some sway?) it's right there in the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. Perhaps you should read up on ENGEL v. VITALE or LEE v. WEISMAN, which appear to speak pretty specifically to this instance that the ACLU is up in arms about, and tell us how fucking hard they are to understand.

[Kilmoll the Sexy]

Thanks for helping prove my point. Maybe YOU should read these cases. Just having religious events at a school are completely Constitutional, but you cannot force one to partake in a certain religion's practices. Unless they forced those kids to participate or rap along with that imbecile, then nothing is wrong.

Another happy aspect of the case is that it is only a jurisprudential disaster, and not a practical one. Given the odd basis for the Court's decision, invocations and benedictions will be able to be given at public school graduations next [505 U.S. 577, 645] June, as they have for the past century and a half, so long as school authorities make clear that anyone who abstains from screaming in protest does not necessarily participate in the prayers. All that is seemingly needed is an announcement, or perhaps a written insertion at the beginning of the graduation program, to the effect that, while all are asked to rise for the invocation and benediction, none is compelled to join in them, nor will be assumed, by rising, to have done so. That obvious fact recited, the graduates and their parents may proceed to thank God, as Americans have always done, for the blessings He has generously bestowed on them and on their country.

[miir]

It was sponsored by the school and school officials participated.

[Sylvus]

You do realize you're quoting the dissenting opinion. I think the part you might want to actually read is:

The lessons of the First Amendment are as urgent in the modern world as in the 18th century, when it was written. One timeless lesson is that, if citizens are subjected to state-sponsored religious exercises, the State disavows its own duty to guard and respect that sphere of inviolable conscience and belief which is the mark of a free people. To compromise that principle today would be to deny our own tradition and forfeit our standing to urge others to secure the protections of that tradition for themselves.

As we have observed before, there are heightened concerns with protecting freedom of conscience from subtle coercive pressure in the elementary and secondary public schools. See, e.g., School Dist. of Abington v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203, 307 (1963) (Goldberg, J., concurring); Edward v. Aguillard, 482 U.S. 578, 584 (1987); Board of Ed. of Westside Community v. Mergens, 496 U.S. 226, 261 -262 (1990) (KENNEDY, J., concurring). Our decisions in Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421 (1962), and School Dist. of Abington, supra, recognize, among other things, that prayer exercises in public schools carry a particular risk of indirect coercion. The concern may not be limited to the context of schools, but it is most pronounced there. See County of Allegheny v. American Civil Liberties Union, Greater Pittsburgh Chapter, 492 U.S., at 661 (KENNEDY, J., concurring in judgment in part and dissenting in part). What to most believers may seem nothing more than a reasonable request that the nonbeliever respect their religious practices, in a school context may appear to the nonbeliever or dissenter to be an attempt to employ the machinery of the State to enforce a religious orthodoxy. [505 U.S. 577, 593]

I don't know whether this latest school assembly was "voluntary" or not, but the part I just quoted makes it seem as if it wouldn't matter.

/edit: But this is all beside the point. You claim that the Constitution doesn't say anything about the separation of church and state, and that's abso-fucking-lutely wrong, unless you're trying to play a semantics game. Sure, it might not use the words "separation of church and state", but the intent is clearly there and has been upheld in numerous Supreme Court rulings on the matter.

[Sueven]

Schools as public forums are open to religious and nonreligious groups on equal terms. Perhaps that's what you are referencing. This doesn't look like a public forum issue, it looks like a school-sponsored event. It's blatantly unconstitutional based on the whole of American jurisprudence. This is not a close call. It's obviously unconstitutional according to the cases, and only a fraction of even conservative legal scholars and judges would argue that those cases are so wrong as to render this constitutional.

You might think that the whole of First Amendment jurisprudence is based on a fundamentally incorrect misreading of the text of the Constitution ("the constitution doesn't mention a separation of church and state" comment seems to support this view). That's fine, we can all have our opinions about what the text of the Constitution should be taken to mean. But our political system has a defined method of interpreting the Constitution-- the courts, over hundreds of years (with a little bit of input from congress and the president and the public). And that method has provided an interpretation that gives a clear answer here.