Two recent court cases have begun to rebuild the wall of separation of church and state: a wall that since the founding of this nation has been breached far too many times.

In Connecticut, a judge issued an injunction against two public  school districts holding their graduation ceremonies in a Christian church. Six school districts planned to hold their graduation ceremonies at First Cathedral this year and all but two of them found alternative venues after receiving a letter from the ACLU. The two holdouts had originally agreed to find other venues, but at the urging of the Family Institute of Connecticut— a Christian organization— changed their minds.

How much proof does one need that holding graduation in a church is against the law when it is a Christian organization that pressures the school board to change its mind? I’d like to know how many of those Christian parents would have been comfortable holding the graduation ceremony in a mosque or a synagogue. Simply because Christians may be the majority it does not give them the right to force those of other faiths to either participate in their graduation in a Christian church or not attend graduation services. They earned the right to attend those services and they should be held in a place that has no religious ties.

In the second case, the US Supreme Court decided that a public university has no legal obligation to recognize, and therefore fund, a group of Christian students who do not allow gays or atheists to join.

As a public school, it should be very simple: it’s a taxpayer supported school. It should not provide funding to any religious organization. It’s the same argument as the Boy Scouts. If you want to be considered a private religious organization, and your first amendment right of free association allows that as well as allows you to discriminate against those you don’t agree with, then don’t expect funding from any government or public institution. If we give funding to Christian groups, we’d have to provide funding for groups like the KKK if they sought to have a presence on campus.

The wall of separation between church and state is essential to the continued existence of this country. For too long, Christian privileges have become so entrenched that they’re often seen as rights. It’s time to get rid of all these privileges. Bottom line is quite simple: religious organizations can’t get funding from governments or public institutions.

In the flurry of panic after 9/11, the people of this country let the government pass some really stupid laws, like the misnamed PATRIOT Act.  Then they created the scary sounding “Department of Homeland Security”, which reeks of xenophobia. And then the government decided to waste even more money by creating the TSA (Transportation Security Agency).

The TSA was supposed to make flying safer so that no one armed with box cutters could ever again take control of a plane and fly it into a large building or a government office. (Instead, people now use small planes because you don’t have to file a flight plan.) Now, you’re no longer allowed to meet people at the gate, or wave good-bye to them as they get on the plane. You can’t even leave your car for thirty seconds to help them take their luggage inside if you’re just dropping them off. You have to arrive at the airport a good two hours before your flight and if you have to take your shoes off and have them x-rayed before you can get through security. All in the name of safety.

People on eBay sell boxes of penknives confiscated from the flying public who are so used to carrying their pocket knife they forget they have it with them and there’s no time to get it to someone, so they leave it in the box at the airport and it ends up on eBay. You can’t even take a full bottle of shampoo with you anymore. Only three ounces of fluid in a bottle is all you’re allowed. And yet there have been at least two successful efforts to get explosives onto airplanes and almost detonate them.

What’s even scarier to me is that some pilots and the air marshals that are on some flights now carry guns! Guns and airplanes don’t make a good combination. Fire a gun in a plane and you’re going to probably end up with a decompression problem.

Here’s the problem. If you have a terrorist who wants to blow up a plane, that terrorist will find a way to do it. You can pass laws limiting how much money you can transfer, and he’ll transfer more times just under that upper limit. You do screenings on big planes, he’ll get a big charter plane. You make him take off his shoes, he’ll put the bomb in his underwear. Or he’ll swallow it and set it off by remote control.

Just after 9/11, when the Bush misadministration began passing all these laws and taking away a whole lot of civil rights, I said over and over that it wouldn’t change anything. That you can’t win a war on terror with weapons. You CANNOT prevent terrorism if the terrorist is determined to wreak havoc. That was a lesson we should have learned from Viet Nam because the issue is one of idealism. The terrorist (one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter) is following an ideal and if their drive to follow that ideal is stronger than your drive to follow another ideal, the terrorist will win. That’s why the North Vietnamese won the war: they believed in what they were fighting for. The Americans did not.

The only way to deal with terrorism is to deal with the issues that lead up to it. Get rid of the inequities in the world that lead some to feel so utterly frustrated and angry that they’re willing to give their lives in the hope that they can help make it better for others. Respect the religious beliefs of others, even if you don’t agree with them. Treat others the way you want to be treated.

The real problem now is that because of all these new rules and regulations and inconveniences, people believe they’re safer. And that means they let their guard down. Which actually makes them more vulnerable and less safe. I believe that, as a nation, we are less safe now than we were in 2001. Not only because we think we’re safer, but because the Bush misadministration was so arrogant and so aggressive and so self-serving and so xenophobic that all that good will the rest of the world felt for the US after 9/11 simply not only disappeared but it turned into ill will in many parts of the world. Even the people of Iraq are not going to look on us kindly because we got rid of Saddam Hussein when we slaughter innocent civilians and leave depleted uranium all over their land, which is poisoning their natural resources and killing them and their children.

Hopefully, one day, we’ll learn. Hopefully, we’ll learn before more innocent people have to die in another terrorist attack.

The state of New York is charging a woman with adultery. If convicted, she faces a fine of up to $500 and/or 90 days in jail! The reason, apparently, that she was charged with adultery is that she and her lover (not her husband) were caught having sex in a public park. She was charged with adultery because the police officer who caught them knew she was married.

What a waste of taxpayer money! Should she be prosecuted for having sex in a public park? Yes. So should her lover. Should she be charged with adultery? No. Why? Because adultery is strictly a moral issue and morality is not to be determined by the legislature or the courts. That’s not the purpose of laws. The purpose of laws is to prevent one person from interfering with another’s life, liberty or pursuit of happiness. The courts have no idea what kind of relationship this woman and her husband have. It may be a very open one and he may not care that she has a lover. He may have one himself. Who knows? But it’s not for the courts to decide.

The woman is challenging the constitutionality of the law. And I hope she wins even if it means taking it all the way to the US Supreme Court.

The Catholic Church just isn’t having a very good year so far. More sex abuse by priests now spanning the globe, bad press from not allowing kids of gay parents to attend and now publishing a column in which the author of the article flat out lied and uses fear-mongering to try to justify the actions of the Catholic Church.

I’m going to counter the points made by the author of the article, Michael Pakaluk, because he not only insults gays, but a whole lot of other people as well.

“The question arises of whether children in the custody of (one cannot say, ‘children of’) same-sex couples should be admitted to Catholic parochial schools.”

He doesn’t say why one cannot say “children of” but it is to be assumed that it’s because the parents are not biologically related. But in most cases, children of lesbian parents ARE related to at least one of their moms. My two boys are both biologically mine. Even many gay male couples are going for surrogate parents where sperm from one or both men are used to artificially inseminate the woman. Then both men feel a biological connection (and if the woman has fraternal twins, there’s a chance each of them may have fathered one of the babies.)

But this statement is an insult to all adoptive parents or to those who raise children they may have no biological connection to, like foster parents or a best friend who raises the kids of someone who is otherwise unable to do so, either by death or imprisonment or illness. Genes do not make a family: LOVE makes a family.

“Surely everyone’s first instinct is to say ‘yes.’ The children are doing nothing wrong, and, if they are taught in Catholic schools, they will be instructed in the truth about marriage and the family.”

They will be instructed in the Catholic’s version of truth about marriage and family. Which cannot be proven to be “true” anymore than the Muslim’s ir Buddhist’s or Hindu’s version of truth about marriage and family can be proven to be true.

“My own son in the first grade in a Boston Archdiocesan parochial school had a classmate who was being raised by his father and another man. From what I observed then, I concluded that the arrangement served neither my son nor the other students in the class.”

Ah, so based on ONE person’s experience in ONE school in ONE diocese at ONE point in time, let’s never consider allowing the children of gay parents to attend our schools. Does this man know that being gay is not a sin in the Catholic church? Engaging in gay sexual relations is the sin. And for all the church knows, the couple is celibate. (There are gay Catholics who believe that they are called to be celibate but can still enter into a loving relationship with the one they love. They just avoid having sex.)

“There were three basic reasons. The first involves the inevitability of scandal. It was inevitable that either the teacher, or some parent, would deal with the two men in such a way as implicitly to teach my son, or other children in the class, that there is nothing wrong with same-sex relationships. But this is scandal: that is, leading a ‘little one’ astray in some serious matter by the example you set.”

OK, let’s get something straight here. What is “right/wrong” is based on your own personal beliefs. What is “healthy/unhealthy” is a more objective classification of a relationship. NO teacher should be teaching about “right/wrong” in public schools. And what is taught in private schools is only right/wrong for those who believe as the school’s administration believes. The Catholic church teaches that birth control is immoral/wrong. You have no idea how many Catholics I know who use birth control. And it’s only wrong unless you get special dispensation from a priest because you can’t afford to raise any more children…

Yes, the man’s son might actually see a teacher talking to the gay parents of this child as if they really were the child’s parents. Which they are! Legally, emotionally, mentally— all the ways that are important. This man’s son might actually see that a child can be healthy and happy when raised by gay parents! And he might become less intolerant and prejudiced and bigoted! God forbid!

“Someone might object that, no, what the teacher or parents would teach is to ‘love the sinner while hating the sin.’ I say in reply that this objector is presupposing that the young children involved have already been taught to recognize and ‘hate’ the sin, which is what is at issue.”

I certainly hope that by the age of six, children haven’t been taught to hate those who are different from them. Sadly, I know this isn’t the case. One need only look at those involved with the Westboro Baptist Church to understand taht.

“Also, I reject the idea that an appropriate task for a 6-year-old might be learning how to ‘love the sinner but hate the sin’ in a matter involving both immediate familial affections and sexual disorder.”

I wonder if this man understands that a little over 40 years ago, this very same argument was being used to try to stop the US Supreme Court from overturning miscegenation laws that barred blacks from marrying whites in 16 states because it went against God’s natural order…

Oh, and one of his outright lies is that homosexuality is a sexual disorder.

“All of this is not even to touch upon the question of whether teachers and parents will distort how they talk about parents and family life, out of a misguided sense of ‘love.’”

Actually, the only misguided sense of love I see here is that of the author of the article.

“Will forms to be filled out by mother or father be changed to forms for ‘parents’? Will Mother’s Day be turned into ‘Parent’s Day’? I saw this beginning to happen in my son’s school: not wishing to offend, teacher and parents would refer to the two men as the ‘parents’ of that boy, even though only one was the father.”

Again, genes do not make a parent. LOVE makes a parent. This is again insulting to any step-parent who has raised a child and is referred to by that child as “Mom” or “Dad”. If he’s going to argue that they can’t both be parents because they’re not married, then lift the damn laws that make it illegal for them to do so in most states. (Although in Massachusetts it is already legal.) The author of this article is obviously lacking in logical thinking skills.

“The second reason is that parents are rightly given access to a child’s classroom, and yet I could not trust the designs of the same-sex couple. A mother or father may volunteer to read to the class or chaperone for a class trip. If the homosexual parent does so, what guarantee would I have that he would not be an advocate for his lifestyle, implicitly if not explicitly? One would expect him to be: he says he takes ‘pride’ in his life; the school, it seems, has implicitly endorsed his role; and so why wouldn’t he speak unabashedly about his lifestyle?”

About the only thing this man got right in this entire paragraph is that he said the gay father takes pride in his life, NOT his lifestyle. Because there is no such thing as a gay lifestyle. You can have a pious lifestyle, a bohemian lifestyle, a miserly lifestyle, a criminal lifestyle, but you can’t have a gay lifestyle because there is NOTHING that is common to all gays. (Keep in mind bisexuals are part of the gay community and bisexuals sometimes have opposite gender partners, so you can’t even say that the gay lifestyle means being with someone of the same gender.)

The author is using fear-mongering here very skillfully. Personally, if I was the parent of the boy, I’d worry what the other parents were going to teach my child about hate, intolerance, prejudice and bigotry.

“He might even view himself as something of a ‘pioneer’ and ‘reformer,’ helping to encourage what he regards as ‘progressive’ (’spirit of Vatican II’) aspects of Catholicism in opposition to the ‘backward’ and even ‘hateful’ positions taken by ‘the Vatican.’”

You mean like those pioneers and reformers who fought to get desegregated schools, to allow blacks to marry whites, to allow blacks to vote, to allow women to vote? Those kinds of pioneers? Marriage has NOT always taken the form we see it in today. And it won’t remain in that form either.

“I saw this happening in my son’s school. The same-sex couple was interestingly activist in hosting pizza parties, sponsoring tables at fundraisers, and volunteering when parental help was needed. I found out only by accident that the pizza party–a ‘beginning of the school year’ celebration, held as an afterschool event–was going to be held at the apartment of the same-sex couple. The school felt no obligation to inform the parents of this fact. When I complained to the principal, she claimed that the school would never divulge such information, as it was ‘confidential’ and a matter of ‘privacy.’”

Well, given that it was an after-school event, she is right. The parents would have surely found out when they dropped their children off. How were the kids invited? Didn’t the invitation say where the party was? If not, how would the kids have known were to go? And would not that address have tipped off the parents that it was at a private home?

“The third reason is that it seemed a real danger that the boy being raised by the same-sex couple would bring to school something obscene or pornographic, or refer to such things in conversation, as they go along with the same-sex lifestyle, which–as not being related to procreation– is inherently eroticized and pornographic. He might expose other children to such things, as he might easily have encountered them in his household.”

Another outright lie. Love has nothing to do with procreation. People can procreate day and night and not care one iota about each other or the child they produce. Therefore, procreation is a meaningless measuring device as to the availability of porn. Does the author feel the same way about older teachers who are past childbearing age? Or about couples who are unable to have children? Their relationships are not about procreation either, but I don’t see him questioning if their relationships have been eroticized or overly reliant on pornography.  I am strongly opposed to pornography and if my kids had porn, they sure as hell didn’t get it from me!

*snip*

“Someone might wonder where the line should be drawn if children raised by same-sex couples are excluded from parochial schools. What about children raised by divorced, contracepting, or cohabiting couples?

Well–what would be the problem in requiring that if parents wish to enroll their children in a Catholic school, they must agree to abide by basic principles of morality?”

Here’s the problem. Either the enrollment would go way down or you’d have a lot of parents who were liars.

Another problem is that morality is personal. You may believe it’s given by God, but you chose the faith that teaches that. I have my moral code of conduct, you have yours. You say yours came from God and applies to everyone equally so that they don’t end up going to hell. I say mine came from the Divine and applies to me because my spiritual needs and my level of spiritual maturity are different than anyone else’s and the Divine knows what rules I need to follow in order to learn to Love. I believe my faith as fervently as you believe yours….

“It should be said that all of my practical concerns involve young children, who should be innocent of sexual matters and whose familial affections are still being formed. Nothing I have said would count against admitting children raised by same-sex couples into high school, and probably not middle school.”

Really? Are you suggesting that your first grade child does not know what is inappropriate touching? That is a sexual matter. And it is something that children need to be taught long before first grade. Pedophiles (and there are pedophile priests and deacons and pastors and ministers) don’t wait for their victims to reach a certain age. They begin grooming those children sometimes years before they ever abuse them. And kids need to know what that grooming involves and what to do when the abuse finally starts. So if you’re keeping your six year old completely unaware of sexual matters, then you’re doing him a grave disservice. One I would consider bordering on neglect.

OK…so I’m done responding to his points. Personally, I cringe that someone so lacking in logic, so narrow-minded and bigoted, so willing to lie and spew misrepresentations and stereotypes without checking facts has been a visiting scholar at Harvard and teaches a class on ethics….

The Boy Scouts just don’t get it.

They went to court— and won— in the case of Dale v BSA. In that ruling, they got what they wanted: they were classified as a private religious organization and therefore, were free to determine who could join their little club. In other words, they were free to discriminate against whomever they chose because they are a private religious organization.

Fine. If that’s what they want, so be it. But…

As a private religious organization, they are not entitled to special deals with government entities because such deals are in violation of the first amendment if they are given to one group or one religion only. So there are two options: the BSA loses their special deals OR such deals are offered to ALL religious organizations.

But before you make your choice as to which you think it should be, let me remind you of some of the groups that are/were considered religious organizations.

• The KKK
• David Koresh’s Branch Davidians
• Jim Jones’ Peoples Temple
• The Unification Church (Sun Myung Moon)
• Los Angeles Church of Christ
• Aryan Nations (white supremacist)
• Army of God [NOTE: If you google this group, please be advised that their website's main page contains very graphic pictures of aborted fetuses.]
• The Order (white supremacist)
• Christian Identity (white supremacist)
• Focus on the Family (fundamentalist, anti-gay, anti-choice)
• Moral Majority
• Every single church in the US

Every one of these organizations— and thousands of others not even listed— would be eligible for the same special privileges that the BSA is demanding as a private religious organization. That would mean billions of dollars in lost revenue for places like city-owned convention centers or sports arenas that are often rented by these kinds of organizations. It would mean millions of dollars lost to the national parks, campgrounds, marinas, wildlife areas, etc. that would then be available for them to use for $1 a year (the rate the BSA is getting from the federal, state and local governments).

So which is it? Do we support ideals that violate the very fabric of this nation (ie, discrimination, teaching hatred and bigotry, etc.) by allowing all private religious organizations to have the same privileges the BSA has or do we take those special privileges away from the BSA, who should have never had them in the first place?

Guess which one I choose.

The US Supreme Court recently ruled that an employer has the right to search and audit text messages sent on company devices. The case originated in California when the Ontario Police Department obtained a transcript of his sexually explicit messages to his girlfriend.

The police department had initiated the search because it was attempting to discover if it had purchased a sufficient texting policy because there were overages. And one of those overages belonged to Officer Jeff Quon, who went over his quote because he was sexting his girlfriend. When confronted (and the article doesn’t even say he was disciplined or fired or suspended or if that was ever even talked about, although another article in the LA Times calls Quon a “former sergeant”) with the overages, he sued, claiming his Fourth Amendment rights had been violated. However, there is a government policy regarding privacy of government issued electronic devices that Quon was aware of (according to court documents) that gave the employer a right to audit employee usage.

OK, here’s the real kicker to this case. Quon was sexting his mistress, dispatcher April Florio, and texting his wife and all three of them sued the department! It seems that perhaps the probe into his overages (he was the highest text user in the department) may be what busted his cheating ways? I don’t know…but his then wife is now his ex-wife, so maybe….

Now, let me get this straight. A police officer, in violation of a policy he knew about, is using a government issued pager to send sexually explicit messages to his girlfriend  and personal messages to his wife, sometimes when he was on the clock! So instead of protecting the citizens of Ontario, he’s telling his girlfriend how much he misses her tight ass. And now he wants to sue his employer?

Look, people, I understand that in this age of cell phones, you’re gonna get a text that needs to be taken care of immediately while you’re at work. But use your own personal cell phone! If it’s been issued by your employer, than it is your employer’s phone and your employer has every right to make sure that you’re not misusing the property entrusted to you.

If you’re given a company car and told you’re only to use it for company business and you drive it to your vacation destination 3000 miles away, do you not think your employer has a right to take check the mileage on your car? This is no different! This guy was the top texter who was racking up overages. The taxpayers don’t pay government employees to be bill collectors for cops who can’t keep their text messages below their allotment.

If you’re on employer time, you’re supposed to be doing employer business and if you’re conducting personal business on employer time, you are essentially stealing from your employer. Now, everyone, even before cell phones, would have to conduct some personal business on company time. Your kid’s school calling saying s/he was sick. A doctor’s office calling to remind you of an appointment. But those were short and infrequent occurrences and most employers recognize that there cannot be a 100% split between personal and professional lives. But when you start abusing that, when you’re supposed to be working and you’re talking on the phone with your mother-in-law about what you’re going to bring to the surprise party for your sister-in-law that you’re planning two months from now and you talk about the party fifteen or twenty minutes every day for that entire two months, then your employer has a right to get upset and even fire you because you’re not doing your job! Essentially, your employer is paying you to plan a personal party when you talk about it on company time. And that’s not what you were hired to do.

And in this case, that’s not what the taxpayers are paying you to do! The taxpayers of Ontario, California should sue Jeff Quon for dereliction of duty if it can be shown he was sexting or texting when he should have been answering a call. At least he’s not going to profit off it now that the SCOTUS has ruled against him.

Arizona’s Department of Transportation has been given a grant by the Federal Highway Administration to put in place 41 “canopy tunnel crossings” that will hopefully allow the endangered Mount Graham red squirrel to cross  the road that goes up Mount Graham without becoming road kill or dinner for some predator that catches them in the open. And because of this, ABC News’ website has made them “Today’s Goat” (6/17/10) on their main page. For those not familiar with the “Today’s Goat” part of ABC’s site, it’s for those people/companies— and now apparently innocent animals— who ABC feels deserves the scorn of the internet community.

What, pray tell, did the poor Mount Graham red squirrel do to deserve this “title”?  They survived! They were once thought to be extinct, but in the 1970s they were rediscovered on Mount Graham. About 250 of them make the mountain their home— down from the 300-350 of them that lived there in the 1990s. State officials say that about 5 squirrels each year are killed by the cars using the Mount Graham road. But there’s really no estimate as to how many become prey to predators as they cross the road.

The canopied tunnel crossings will allow the smaller Mount Graham red squirrel to safely cross the highway (if they use it) but won’t allow larger squirrels or predators to cross— at least not through the canopied part. It will also prevent the squirrels from being attacked by birds of prey as they cross. The canopied tunnel crossings are fire retardant and will be dyed to blend in with the scenery. They’re made of durable military grade nylon and can be quickly released in the event of a fire so that a.) they can be saved and b.) they don’t become the means by which a fire spreads from one area to another.

Unfortunately, it appears most of the people in the nearby town would rather the squirrels just continue to die off. They’re rather upset that the squirrel project has received $1.25 million dollars for the purchase, fabrication, installation and monitoring of the canopied tunnels. They think that the $1.25 million could have been better spent on repairing human roads. According to Graham County Supervisor Mark Herrington, there’s over 600 miles of bad roads in Graham County that need to be repairded.

So I decided to find out just how many miles could be repaired for $1.25 million dollars. I found a cost/mile guide for road repairs for the state of Arkansas. Then I went to the government’s Davis-Bacon wage site. After checking with several different jobs and comparing rates between Arkansas and Arizona, I discovered that it costs about 1.6 times more to build something in Arizona than it does in Arkansas. So using the cost/mile guide for the cheapest repair I could find ($16000/lane mile for single application asphalt surface treatment overlay), multiplied that cost by 1.6 and came up with $25,600 per lane mile (which means $51,200/mile for a two lane road) to repair a road in Arizona. That means with the $1.25 million that the state is spending to attempt to keep a species of animal from going extinct, Graham County could repair a whopping 24.1 miles of road. Or, in other words, .09 miles of road paved for every squirrel still living on Mount Graham. That means you don’t get to pave about 475′ for every squirrel still alive there. That’s about a football field and a half of bad roads for the safety of a squirrel.

We don’t know what long term effect the extinction of another species will have. We don’t know when we’ll pass that critical point where, like a spider web, the entire ecosystem will collapse when we remove one more component of it. We’re already killing off about 137 different species of plants, animals and insects every day simply through rainforest destruction. In the next 25 years, almost half of the world’s plants, animals and microorganisms will be extinct or severely threatened by rainforest destruction. That’s a frightening number! Try taking out half the supports on the roof of your house and see how long it stays in place.

Let me put this another way. $1.25 million dollars would finance the war in Iraq for 7 minutes. (Using figures from 2006. A year later another group estimated that it was costing $280 million a day in direct expenses and another $440 million in indirect expenses (like long term health care) which, using only the $280 million would take the number down to a little less than 6 1/2 minutes.)

Personally, I’d rather pay for the squirrels’ canopied tunnel crossings than pay for the continued destruction of Iraqi and American lives. Besides, it’s not the squirrels’ fault we humans have destroyed its natural habitat.

I was utterly floored by the title of a story I read on ABC News’ website today. “Father’s Day 2010: Bad Dads Like Brazilian Fritzl Not Worthy“.

First, these men are not fathers. They’re pedophiles who happened to donate the sperm that helped create the children they then later abused. But they are NOT fathers. Fathers don’t imprison their children, rape them and sire children with them: children who are then neglected, never taught to speak and will probably spend the rest of their lives in institutions because they are likely to be unable to grasp the intricacies of life as a human being after having been treated like an animal for so long. (The younger children may have a chance at a normal life, particularly in the case of the children in Brazil.)

Second, Father’s Day (and Mother’s Day and Grandparents Day and a whole host of other “holidays”) have been created by businesses to make money and, in my humble opinion, cheapens the status of father/mother/grandparent- hood by using guilt to get people do buy cards and gifts for their father/mother/grandparents.  Being a mother or a father is not a one day a year job. Moreover, it is a job that the mother/father chose, over which the child had no control. The mother/father’s gift is the chance to raise the child they decided to bring into the world. To have the privilege of being part of that child’s life and being able to teach that child about unconditional Love. To suggest that a child must “repay” the parent with cards and/or gifts every year is demeaning to the joy of being a parent because it puts a price tag on the whole thing. In other words, real parents don’t decide to become parents so they can get gifts and cards when their kids get older.

Additionally, society has placed such emphasis on these faux holidays that if one does NOT get a card/gift/call from one’s child on the gender specific day, it is a sign that they are/were bad parents. Now there are countless parents out there who wonder what they did wrong if they don’t hear from their children on the appropriate “holiday”. They don’t remember that 19 year olds, for example, are often irresponsible, self-centered and unable to see long-term consequences because the neurons in their brains that make those connections are still developing. I know (from personal experience during my own life) that most kids do not really begin to appreciate what their parents did for them until they’ve been living on their own for a while or until they have kids of their own.

I raised my kids to be independent and to live their lives as they see fit. If they’re enjoying their lives and being responsible, that is the perfect gift for me. When asked, I tell my kids (and my wife) I want nothing for Mother’s Day. I’m usually ignored. I would much rather prefer that my kids give me the “gift” of enjoying their life and becoming responsible citizens of the world than to get a card once a year. But I digress…

ABC’s story has given “legitimacy” to these men’s claims that they are fathers. It has tainted the image of what a real father is by calling these men “fathers”. And it has subtly reminded millions of children all over the country that Sunday is the day they should be buying their father a card and/or gift while at the same time putting fathers across the country on alert to expect such a card/gift or “realize” what a bad parent they were.

The glorious state of Oklahoma doesn’t seem to have much to do except waste taxpayer’s money trying to find a law that will ban abortions and stand up to a constitutionality test and passing laws that are rather redundant. Like the  “Save Our State” amendment that just passed the legislature. (It’s not yet law— it has to be passed by 3/4 of the states population to become a constitutional amendment in the state of Oklahoma.) The law would ban judges using Sharia law to decide cases.

Yes, you read that right. Despite the fact that the first amendment of the US Constitution prohibits religious laws, the state legislature of Oklahoma, with a population of 0.81% Muslims, felt it was necessary to pass a law forbidding the use of Muslim religious law to rule on cases. Can you say redundancy?

Republican State Rep. Rex Duncan, who is the driving force behind the law, is using the old Republican and rrr stand-by— fear-mongering— to garner support for his amendment by suggesting that Muslims are out to take over the US and the world.

Not that Christianity ever did (or does) that… try to take over the world, I mean. The megamillionaire televangelists are out to save your soul, don’t-cha-know. It’s a lie that they’re after your money! It’s all for God’s glory, I tell you! Even though Jesus never asked any of his followers for a single shekel to glorify God, these televangelists NEED your money! Even if it means you have no heat or money to pay your rent this month! God will reward you, my child! [NOTE: In case there is any doubt, the preceding seven lines are complete and utter sarcasm.]

Hypocrites annoy me.

Well, Congress is about to embark on another waste of their time and our money by seeking to alter the fourteenth amendment. The fourteenth amendment contains five sections, including equal protection under the law and due process. But the one that Congress is looking at deals with who is a citizen.

As it stands now, anyone born on US soil is a US citizen. That means that if a pregnant woman visits the US and gives birth while in the country, her child is a US citizen. The woman and her child may return to her native country and the child may be a citizen of that country as well. However, legally, that child is and always will be a US citizen unless s/he renounces their citizenship. (The US does not recognize dual citizenship: if you apply for citizenship, you must give up citizenship of the country from which you came. However, if you already have US citizenship, you may apply for citizenship in some countries without being required to renounce your US citizenship.)

This part of the fourteenth amendment has led many immigrants, especially those from Mexico, to travel to the US and give birth in the US. Then the parents apply for legal resident status so they can take care of their child, who cannot legally be forced to return to Mexico since s/he is a US citizen. Congress seems to think if they change this part of the amendment, the illegal alien numbers will go way down.

Now, I don’t know how many pregnant women near their delivery date actually give birth in the US. It’s not really important. A much simpler solution would be to not allow foreign travelers who are more than 8 months pregnant to enter the US.

Any attempt to alter the fourteenth amendment will likely be met with failure, given that the Constitution has only been amended 27 times in the entire history of our nation, and the first ten (the Bill of Rights) were in place before it became the law of the land. However, it’s a great political ploy for the incumbent politicians. They can say they’re getting tough on illegal immigrants and doing everything they can to prevent it, including amending the 14th Amendment.

But the process of amending an amendment is the same as proposing a new amendment. It would require both houses of Congress to propose the amendment by a two-thirds vote. And the amendment must be the same in both houses. IF they can get that done, then in order to ratify the amendment, three quarters of state legislatures must approve the amendment as written. And all that has to be done in a seven year period unless Congress intervenes to add an extension (which hasn’t actually been declared a legal extension since the only time it was used was for the ERA and that failed to pass even after an extension so the legality of the extension was never challenged in court.)

So while they can say their doing everything they can, they can also rest assured that nothing, in all likelihood, will change. Then they can’t be blamed when the price of everything increases drastically by the new immigration policies because virtually no American citizen want to be a migrant farm worker and much of the manually picked produce that graces our table is picked by immigrants— legal and otherwise.

In other words, by taking up this discussion of amending the fourteenth amendment, Congress is engaging in an act of almost certain futility at our expense. But what else is new?