Dsn't mk mch dffrnc whn ffcl plcy s t vlt thm nywy.
[Editor: ignore=off]yup
Posted by mtemiz at June 29, 2005 08:03 PMOffical policies were made to br violated, that's half the fun!
Posted by mary prankster at June 29, 2005 08:04 PMDoesn't make much difference when official policy is to violate them anyway.
Stunning. You do have some form of conscience.
Posted by phidipides at June 29, 2005 08:14 PMhey phidipides, good to see you :) The Texas case is embarassing for some of us here. But Bendito distracted me momentarily. The fact is that I can't stand the fact that it seems to be ok that people die.
Naive,I know. But I just wish we could live and die in peace.
Let me know when you get to Riga :)
I could see how SCOTUS would swing both ways on this case. On one hand overtly displaying the ten commandments can be considered an establishment of a religion. On the other hand, American Criminal Code has roots in English Common Law and other much older legal codes like, Justinian's Code, the Code of Hammurabi or even, the Ten Commandments.
Posted by Kenny at June 30, 2005 02:25 AMI just want to shake the Christian fundie zealots everytime they go on their Ten Commandments schtick. You'd think they'd have read their New Testament.
Posted by idiosynchronic at June 30, 2005 04:39 AMI have a great quote, from Val Kilmer, when he appeared on "The Hour of Power" with Dr. Robert Schuler. Having voiced Moses in "Prince of Egypt" and having played Moses in the musical version of "The Ten Commandments", he was asked what the most significant role he ever played was. His response --
Moses--playing Jim Morrison was interesting but he was very tortured. But what I get to experience every night is going through as you can do when you read the Bible and read the story of Moses as a man or contemplate the Ten Commandments, is to really find inspiration out of what we all know are simple truths. And what Jesus ended up doing is refining those ten laws to two; to love God with all your heart and soul and mind, and to love your neighbor as yourself. If you do those two things then you can’t steal, you’re not going to covet, not going to lie.
It seems most of the fundies haven't made the connection that one of the liberal Hollywood establishment has summed up rather eloquently.
Posted by the professor at June 30, 2005 05:36 AMTennessee (the state with the highest average consumption of prescription drugs) thought they could pull a fast one.
It was Kentucky. And originally, they didn't try to pull a fast one. They only added the other crap after they got sued, in an attempt to cover their tracks/asses.
Posted by Matt Davis at June 30, 2005 06:43 AMThey need the 10 Cs everywhere because who can remember all those commandments? Nobody! There was even a story to that effect recently. People always forget numeros uno and dos: I am the LORD thy God, thou shalt have no gods before me and the one about graven images, which is like a recapitulation of number one. Even remembering this I can only hit about five commandments, which is better than most Christians and I'm a heathen.
Posted by Spaz Cadet at June 30, 2005 09:30 AMWhat I find amusing is that the 10 C's were plagarized from ancient Egyptian writing in a tome called the Book of the Dead. Shouldn't the fundies cite their references in a foot note under the 10 C's?
Posted by Trieatalot at June 30, 2005 09:46 AMUnstable decision
The thing I get from the decision is that our nation is split, as is the court, and thus the decisions will not last:
1/2 wanted the displays permitted, 1/2 removed, and we had one "floppy" judge who felt there was some line between them.
Personally I think I agree with the decisions, in that, a) displays of American history and legal development are reasonable wereas b) religious ones are not.
Given the split nature of the court, nation, and the fact that if the "floppy" judge had not flipped, we would have had an all or nothing set of decisions, I won't think we have a stable decision or guideline on the issue. Darn'it.
P.S. I really wonder if this issue is a very important one for most Americans, and should be part of the definition of a Democrat (or Republican) or whether we should leave it up to the individual representatives and concentrate on more basic issues of social freedom and civil prosperity.
Posted by Mike Liveright at June 30, 2005 09:58 AMTo the Editor:
Five of the Ten Commandments are violated daily by the Bush gang, so why are their right-wing supporters so anxious to have these ancient Biblical rules publicly displayed? Let's go over these five ancient Commandments and check how the Bush gang is doing in obeying them:
1. Thou shalt not kill. Bush and his gang have murdered over one hundred thousand Iraqis in their illegal criminal war to steal Iraq's vast oil fields and to set up a puppet government there.
2. Thou shalt not steal. The Bush gang have stolen two Presidential elections: the 2000 election by the old-fashioned Republican technique of illegally throwing tens of thousands of black Democratic voters off of the Florida voter registration rolls because allegedly their names resembled those of Texas felons! This preposterous crime was engineered by Florida Governor Jeb Bush and his then Secretary of State Katherine Harris and a few of their electoral-criminal helpers. The 2004 election was stolen electronically with the help of insecure hackable Republican-controlled Diebold Corporation and ES&S Corporation computerized voting machines and computerized vote-tabulating machines. The Bush gang is also trying to steal Iraq's oil supply.
3. Thou shalt not bear false witness, or in more modern wording, Thou shalt not lie. The Bush gang has been lying about Iraq, WMD, nine-eleven, tax cuts and Social Security for as long as many of us can remember.
4. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's property. Oops, the Bush neo-con gang has been coveting Iraq's vast oil reserves since the neo-con idiots first surfaced in the early 1990s with their imperialist neo-colonialist Middle East doctrine. Also, American troops are currently stationed in over one hundred countries around the globe, ready to put down any group that happen to tire of our stealing their natural resources.
5. Thou shalt honor thy father and thy mother. Here Bush has dishonored his parents by his lies, his war crimes, his election thefts, his tortures and his overthrowing of the democracy in Haiti and the replacement of President Aristide by death squad leaders. However, it should be noted that Bush One was no honorable man himself with his smears of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in his presidential campaign in 1984. Bush One also covered up his complicity and involvement in the criminal Iran-Contra scandal.
Thus the Bush gang has been breaking five out of the ten Biblical Commandments on a daily basis. In the traditional grading system, 5/10 or 50% wrong would be an "F" for failure.
Yours truly,
James K. Sayre,
www.bottlebrushpress.com
Nevermind the ten commandments, lets bronze the Powell Doctrine and place it in every Government Entryway.
Posted by Jim HUrt at June 30, 2005 12:34 PMHow can we claim to be about peace and brotherhood when we won't let freedom of speech roll into the arena of what can and cannot be thought of as historical and respectable monuments? Sounds a bit like hypocrisy to me. The very thing one side accuses the other of, so easily. Peace, truth, honesty, and let's not fight unnecessary battles. There's plenty of dangerous stuff to worry about dealing with.
Posted by KLW at June 30, 2005 01:12 PM