Mississippi schools are really in the news a lot lately. First for denying a young lesbian student the right to attend her prom with her girlfriend. Then for not allowing a young woman’s picture to appear in the yearbook because she wore a tuxedo. And now, they’re in the news again for not allowing black students to run for class president!

When I read this story, I had to look at the clock on my computer and then double check it on my phone. And they both told me the same thing: that it was August 27, 2010.Forty-six years after the Civil Rights Bill has been passed. And there was, until August, 2010, a public school that had, as a written policy, that blacks could not run for student body vice president and that only blacks could run for other posts? How is this possible? Why did it take until 2010 to challenge this kind of rule? What are the parents of students in Mississippi doing? Are they not paying attention? Or perhaps do they not care? Or maybe they support the policy?  Or some combination thereof?

I was momentarily speechless that this kind of policy could still be in place. And yet, I’m guessing that if we were to look at the policies in schools in the south, we’d find all kinds of violations of civil rights. School prayers still being said on PA systems or led by faculty/staff of the school. Gays being discriminated against. Blacks and other racial minorities being discriminated against. Women being discriminated against. The “good ol’ boy” network is still alive and well in many parts of the country, but especially in the South it seems.

Hopefully, the publicity generated by this story will cause other school districts in Mississippi, and all other states as well, to review their policies and to get rid of the discriminatory ones. I think we should set up a pool as to when the last discriminatory policies/laws are off the book in Mississippi….I’ll put my money on the end of time….

The military is often called a fighting machine. Unfortunately, the military seems to have taken that quite literally and treats their soldiers like machine parts: replaceable, expendable and not worth fixing when they break.

An internal report released by the Army shows some staggering statistics:

• suicide rates among military personnel have increased since 2004 and, in 2008, surpassed the rate among the civilian population.
• use of prescription drugs has tripled and one third of all soldiers are taking some form of prescription drug. 14% are on some type of powerful (and therefore addictive) painkiller.
• domestic violence has risen 177% in the last six years.
• sexual offenses committed by soldiers has risen 300% since 2003.
• in 2009, more soldiers died from accidents and “risky behavior” than those who died in actual battle.

The report’s main concern is the use of prescription drugs to maintain the integrity of the Army. Many soldiers are given prescriptions with no expiration date and refills “as needed”, leading to the abuse of prescription drugs.

Illegal drug abuse is also a major problem according to the report. Soldiers who test positive for controlled substances are being allowed to remain in the military, even after testing positive for a second time. In fact, 90% of all soldiers who tested positive twice tested positive a third time. One soldier had tested positive 17 times and was still on active duty. (And yet they kick out people just for being gay…go figure!)

Crime is also on the rise and the military’s policy of “taking care of its own” is leading to some disturbing statistics. More than 15,000 soldiers committed crimes in 2009 that entailed no disciplinary action by the military and no referral to local law enforcement. There are more than 1000 soldiers who have committed at least two felonies who are still on active duty.

Crime and drug use often overlap. Since 2001, the army has listed more than 10,000 soldiers as serial drug users and more than 2400 as serial criminals. Those two lists have more than 1600 names in common.

Mental illness, like PTSD, now accounts for about one in nine medical discharges from the Army. The number of soldiers discharged for both a physical and mental reason has increased 174% from 2005 to 2009. Unfortunately, the military does not seem to recognize the signs and symptoms of PTSD and other mental illnesses until it is so severe that the soldier must be discharged says veterans groups. The problem is becoming so severe that for the first time in 15 years, mental health issues caused more hospitalizations than any other cause, including battle wounds.

While I don’t agree with either “war” we’re fighting now, I don’t hold the soldiers responsible for the incompetence of the leaders. These young men and women who are putting their lives on the line because they’re told to deserve better treatment by the military. They deserve to have their problems recognized and treated before it destroys their lives or the lives of other families that may be impacted by the soldier’s behavior.

Clay and Harold were partners for more than 25 years. When Harold was hospitalized, Clay was forbidden from visiting him. He himself was forced to move into a nursing home— a different one than the one Harold was placed in after leaving the hospital— and then the county sold off not only Harold’s belongings but Clay’s as well. (I posted about this story here.)

So here’s the update.

Clay just settled out of court with the county. The county still admits no wrongdoing— they said they settled so that they’d limit their losses. They’d have spent more than a million dollars defending the case and, in the event they won, they’d have had little chance of collecting any of that money from Clay.

The settlement was for $600,000. But here’s the part that pisses me off to no end. Clay gets $275,ooo. Harold’s estate will get $25,000 (which is how much the state made selling off the couple’s assets). And the attorneys? They’ll take home $300,000. I get that they have to pay their bills and their employees. But to take 50% of the settlement?

I have a real love/hate relationship with contingency lawyers. While I think they’re necessary for those people who really can’t afford an attorney but have a legitimate case, I also think that they have helped create a sue-happy society where everyone’s looking for that fast buck. Your car slid on some gravel on a road? God forbid you chalk it up to an accident! Let’s sue the state! They should have someone out there sweeping the gravel off every stretch of every road 24/7! Some of the commercials for these ambulance chasing lawyers are the most obnoxious I’ve ever seen. And, as demonstrated in this case, they’re not really doing it because it’s the right thing to do or they want to help: they’re doing it for the money.

So while I’m happy for Clay that he got a settlement, I wish the attorneys weren’t so damn greedy. (I know I’m going to hear about how much money they had to spend working on this case, but truth of the matter is, they charge exorbitant rates anyway. But let’s not go there…)

We see it so many times on TV that we could probably repeat it when we were five.

You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed to you. Do you understand these rights as they have been read to you?

It is such a common concept that we often don’t remember that prior to 1966 there were no Miranda rights. But this year, some disturbing talk is going around Washington that they want to modify Miranda rights. Specifically, they want to be able to detain and question suspected terrorists without telling them about their right to remain silent or to have an attorney present at questioning.

There is already an “exception” to Miranda rights if there is an urgent concern for public safety. In 1984, the US Supreme Court heard the case of New York v Quarles in which a rape suspect was apprehended by police in a crowded supermarket. Upon frisking the suspect, police found an empty shoulder holster and asked the suspect where his gun was. The suspect indicated the location and said “the gun is over there.” The suspect later wanted that statement thrown out as inadmissible because he had not yet been read his Miranda rights. But the court ruled 5-4 (along ideological lines) that the statements were admissible because the police were seeking to protect the public safety by not having a potentially loaded weapon unattended in a crowded public venue. So the Supreme Court has narrowly upheld the government’s right to withhold Mirandizing a suspect until there is no immediate public safety threat.

But the Obama administration is seeking to work with Congress on writing a new law that would allow authorities to not Mirandize terrorist suspects for up to 48 hours in the interest of discovering where any bombs may be planted or what flights may be threatened. Unfortunately, there are a whole lot of people who seem to think this is a good idea. After all, it’s only 48 hours…. And how long have those people been in Guantanamo without any formal charges or trials? It seemed like a good idea then to many to suspend some of the rights we take for granted for the good of the public interest. And here it is 9 years later and those people are still sitting in those cells waiting to be charged and tried.

I’m against any exception. It would have taken the police a grand total of about 12 seconds to read Mr. Quarles his rights. And about another ten seconds to ask him the same question. If there was someone actively looking for a gun and a way to hurt others, IF they had seen Mr. Quarles put the gun down and IF they were able to get to where he had placed it, they MIGHT have been able to hurt someone. But that’s a lot of ifs. So maybe it would have meant emptying the store and searching for the gun. But to allow an exception based on the perception of public safety is opening the door for a whole host of abuses. And each one will eventually find its way to the US Supreme Court, either to be heard or denied.  It’s time consuming, costly and it sets a dangerous precedent by relying on the “intent” of the arresting officer at the time. An intent we can’t know for sure was the true intent and not simply the intent s/he was told to have in order to give the police a better chance of getting a conviction.

Now the government wants to go not from just a momentary failure to Mirandize but actually allow that to not happen for up to 48 hours in terror cases. So what’s going to stop them from saying “We need more than 48 hours to find out all we can from this suspect” and pass a new law extending it to 30 days. Or a year. Then, all in the name of public safety, the list of crimes that we can do that for grows as well. And eventually, Miranda rights will be a thing of the past.

The erosion of our rights will continue as long as we allow it. It’s time to stand up and say “No more!” In fact, it’s long past that time.

Many consider PFC Bradley Manning a traitor. Many consider him a hero. Manning, who many experts believe did not act alone, is at the center of the release of more than 90,000 classified documents about the war in Afghanistan. WikiLeaks published the information online and essentially put it in the public domain. Government specialists were initially saying everything from the information is just the same old rhetoric and it’s no big deal that it was released to this could severely harm our soldiers in Afghanistan. Not really sure what the official line on all of this is now, but that’s not the point of this post.

First, I’m completely behind the release of these documents. It shows the utter hopelessness of ever winning a war with weapons against the idealism of a group of extremists. We should have learned that lesson in Viet Nam where US military power far outgunned the NVA and yet the willingness of the people of North Viet Nam to die for what they believed in turned the tide in their favor.

The same thing is happening in Afghanistan. Forget that the US didn’t learn from the Russian invasion of Afghanistan that it’s virtually impossible to fight a war in that country’s terrain with any degree of success. Forget that the people of Afghanistan, who are the ones who are suffering the most from the US invasion, had nothing to do with 9/11 or bin Laden. Forget that we didn’t learn our lesson from Viet Nam. There’s nothing we can do to change the past. But we can change the future. And that means getting our troops out of Afghanistan and rebuilding what we destroyed for the Afghan people.

Second, the leaking of these documents demonstrates that we really can’t trust our government to tell us the truth. Not that many of us believe that we can, but there are those who still seem to think that the government (or the military complex) is infallible.

Third, there is now an unprecedented insight into the US military operations in a “time of war” (although it’s not officially a war) that allows other governments and other citizens of the world to see just how much deception goes on in the US government. And perhaps in their own governments as well. I think the transparency issue will be something that many people will demand now from the military. Of course there’s no guarantee they’re going to get it and my guess is that whatever means PFC Manning used to get these documents has been sealed by new protocols. But that can’t prevent what already happened.

And finally, does anyone else find it a bit fishy that the founder of WikiLeaks is now facing criminal charges in Sweden? The most serious of which the Swedes later said lacked substance? The man is in Sweden seeking legal protection for the WikiLeaks website. I don’t purport to know what happened or the guilt or innocence of the man. I just find it a bit suspicious that the founder of the website that made the US government/military look like incompetent fools is suddenly facing criminal charges unrelated to the release of the classified documents.

A wealthy Buffalo businessman who is running for governor of New York has come up with a “novel” plan to help ease the state’s budget woes: house welfare recipients in prison “dorms”. While there, he says, they could work in state sponsored jobs, get employment training and learn “personal hygiene.” Of course, the program would be voluntary. How out of touch with reality is this man? And does it surprise anyone he’s running as the GOP candidate with a strong backing from the Tea Party?

His suggestions are insulting and degrading on so many levels.

First, he insinuates that the poor have no personal hygiene skills. It’s kind of hard to wash your hands or your clothes when you have no electricity in your apartment or running water in your house because you couldn’t afford to pay the bill. And if it comes down to a choice between buying soap/detergent and buying food, does he suggest that the poor buy the soap/detergent instead? Deodorant? That’s just not an essential when you don’t have anything in your house for your kids’ next meal.

He bases his remarks on his days of training “inner-city” (read “black and Latino”) kids in the Army and how they didn’t know these skills because they’re from “dysfunctional” families. Aside from the fact that there are really very few families who are not (or at least were not) dysfunctional at some point, this against ignores the very real truth that bathing on a daily basis is a privilege that most of us take for granted. In the hills of West Virginia and Kentucky and Tennessee— in fact, up and down Appalachia, far from the “inner city”— there are families living without running water or electricity. Many have wells that dry up in the summer or water pumps that freeze in the winter. They’re so far from main roads that when power lines go down, it can be months before they can get them back up again.

These kids don’t have good personal hygiene skills but it’s not because they’re dysfunctional: they simply don’t have the capabilities of maintaining good hygiene. And the ones in Appalachia are  spread too far apart for it to be worth an Army recruiter’s time to try to enlist them when they can get far more recruits by going to the inner city schools to tell them whatever they want to get them to enlist. (You can also check out Michael Moore’s “Bowling for Columbine” for a section on Army recruiters in inner city schools. But I digress…)

Second, who is going to take care of the kids of parents who get welfare checks when the parents go off to their “prison dorms” to learn new skills and get new training? Many parents receiving welfare are single parents (and if the states would cover birth control pills as a prescription, they might not “keep having more kids” while on welfare). What’s going to happen to their kids? Are only those people willing to “jail” themselves going to be offered training and education and job opportunities?

Third, what ever gave this man the idea that uprooting someone from their family and support system was a way to help them “better” themselves? Especially if it means having to sleep in a jail cell every night!

Fourth, I know some jail guards and some former jail guards. I’ve watched reality shows about jail guards. I also wrote to inmates all over the country for many years who talked about their jailers.  I am absolutely certain that there are some very caring and concerned jail guards who would make great counselors. But for the most part, I’m not sure that jail guards have the right personality traits to be a counselor. They are used to giving orders that are to be obeyed without question and using overwhelming force, if necessary, to insure compliance. As a counselor, they wouldn’t be in charge of a “captive” population anymore. Old habits can die hard….

But here’s the most telling part of this man’s “idea”. And so typical of those who scream about welfare recipients.

This man promises a 20% reduction in the budget and a 10% cut in income tax, and when asked how he’d pay for all this job training and relocation and converting prisons to dorms and paying salaries of the new “state employees”, and feeding them (unless he expects them to use their salaries to support two households), he said he’d know. So let’s cut how much money we’re bringing in in taxes and at the same time, increase how much money the state’s going to be paying out in new programs. That makes a whole lot of sense.

Seventeen days ago, there was a mine collapse in Chile. Thirty-three miners were trapped underground and rescuers had had no word from any of them. Relatives of the miners were camped out on the surface as rescuers began drilling narrow shafts in an attempt to locate and communicate with the miners.

Yesterday, the drills came up with notes attached to them from the miners, who are trapped 2,297 feet below the ground. All 33 miners are alive, although weak and hungry. Now that is a miracle!

The bad news is that it could take up to four months— yes, months— to drill a wide enough and safe enough shaft to get them out. However, now that contact is made, the immediate focus will be on widening that probe shaft to send down food, water, medicine and other amenities as can be found.

Please keep sending prayers, positive energy, light your candle or whatever other means you use to communicate with the Creator, by whatever name you use, to watch over these men and their families until they’re brought back to safety.

But this choice isn’t really about how you live your life, but about how you leave it. Death with dignity. The ability to choose when and how you leave this life. Two states now offer physician assisted suicides: Oregon and Washington. And all told, about 400 people have made use of the fatal prescription given them by a doctor after a lengthy process of making sure its what they really want. But there is a growing trend among the elderly who do not live in states that offer this final act of mercy: suicide pacts.

Couples who have been married for half a century, who are facing the very real possibility that one or both of them will end up in a nursing home, possibly draining all their financial resources they worked so hard to get and want to leave to their children. (Not that anyone should be encouraged to end their life simply so their kids get their inheritance.) These elderly, often parents, don’t want to become a burden to their children. They don’t want their children to have to disrupt their lives to come visit them in a home. They don’t want their children to see them suffering in a nursing home, possibly not even knowing them when they come to visit. They don’t want their children to have to make end of life decisions for them. They want to die on their own terms.

Many of the comments posted after this story on the ABCNews.com site were very critical of those who opt to take their own lives. They call it an act of selfishness and say that the ones left behind are the ones who suffer. I can see where that might be the case if there is no discussion about the issue before it is carried out. But that means having a discussion that most people find difficult to handle. It means being open to allowing your loved ones to make their own choices and live— and die— as they see fit. It means respecting their decision even if you don’t agree with it. And if you have told your elderly parents you won’t respect their wishes, then maybe they just won’t tell you about it before they do it. That’s your doing, not theirs. That’s your selfishness, not theirs.

I’ve been on both sides of the nursing home issue. I’ve had family members who required placement in a nursing home near the end of their lives. And I’ve worked as a nurse aide in a nursing home. Many people say it is the best home in the area. (And, for the record, these are my personal thoughts and are in no way to be construed to represent that of the nursing home.)

Let me just say this. I never, ever, ever want to be a resident in a nursing home. Unless it’s for rehab or something and I’m able to do most of my own care and go back home after a couple weeks.  But if I am dependent on others to do even the simplest of things, if I don’t know my own family members anymore, if I am stuck in a bed, being kept alive with IV fluids and dietary supplements, I would rather be dead.

And I’m putting that out there so that if that time ever comes, there is no question as to what I want to do. It’s a matter of public domain now! I do not want any extraordinary measures taken to prolong my life. No feeding tubes. No IV fluids. No resuscitation if I stop breathing or my heart stops. No pacemakers put in when I’m 85 years old and can’t remember what happened five minutes ago.

This is a decision I have talked over with my wife and my kids. It’s not something that will come as a surprise to them if the time comes that I decide it’s time to die. There are many organizations out there that offer support for those who have chosen to end their life on their terms. There are books written on how to safely and effectively end your life with little or no pain. They help you get your final affairs in order and let you know what pitfalls or roadblocks you may come up against and how to get past them. They tell you where you can buy medications or supplies to help you end your life.

Death is the end of this life and the birth into the next. It is a natural part of the changing seasons and tides. It is the next step on the journey of our soul. And it’s not something that should be relegated to whispered conversations and sneaking around. Technology has allowed us to keep people alive longer than they’d live without intervention. Then we are loathe to “play God” and “pull the plug.” As one doctor put it, you’ve already played God by intervening. By unplugging the machines, you’re only giving back to God what is God’s. (And if you don’t believe in God, that’s fine.)

I have, in my mind, a minimum level of functionality that, if I slip underneath it, life will no longer be an enjoyable experience. If the time ever comes, I will know. And if that time comes, I’m gonna have a plan in place and I’m going to make use of it. It will be, in my mind, an act of love for myself and my family.

Ninety years ago, on August 26, 1920, Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, and women were finally given the right to vote. (Voting is not one of those unalienable rights, although determining what kind of government we have is. Go figure!) Since then, women have gone from being primarily nurses, school teachers, waitresses and housewives/mothers to being virtually anything they want to be.

However, the proverbial “glass ceiling” still exists and there is some blatant discrimination going on in major companies all across the US. WalMart is embroiled in what is poised to be the biggest class action suit in the history of this country, representing women who were, according to the lawsuit, routinely passed over for promotions and paid lower wages than male counterparts.

If you peruse the  CEO list of the Fortune 500 companies, you’ll find that only 15 of those companies are run by women.

If you look at the elected officials in the US Congress, there are only 17 women in the Senate and 76 women in the House of Representatives. So out of the 535 elected officials in Washington, only about 17% are women, despite the fact that women make up more than 50% of the US population.

In all the elections since this nation was founded, only two women have ever been officially a candidate of a major party for the office of vice president during the election: Geraldine Ferraro and Sarah Palin. And only one woman has seriously been considered as a viable contender for the office of president: Hillary Clinton. That really is a sad commentary on the political system in the US.

Despite the advances women have made over the last ninety years, misogyny (hatred/distrust/dislike of women) has not really loosened its grip on the soul of this nation yet. Here are some disturbing statistics.

• Forty percent of teenage girls ages 14 to 17 say they know someone their age that has been hit or beaten by a boyfriend.
• 60% of young women, ages 15 to 24, were currently involved in an ongoing abusive relationship and all participants had experienced violence in a dating relationship.
• 38% of date rape victims were young women from 14 to 17 years of age and date rapes account for 67% of all sexual assaults.
• Six out of 10 rapes of young women occur in their own home or a friend or relative’s home, not in a dark alley.
• According to the U.S. Surgeon General, domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women in the United States.
• A woman is abused every 12 seconds in the United States.
• 35% of all emergency room calls are a result of domestic violence.
• 32% of female homicide victims are killed by their intimate partners.

Then there are all the double standards between men and women.

• A woman with multiple sex partners is a slut or a tramp; a man with multiple sex partners is a stud or a hunk or “just doing what boys do.”
• A male newscaster can go grey or bald, develop a beer belly the size of a keg and still keep his job. A female newscaster has to maintain a shapely figure and young looking appearance.
• A man who dates younger women is fine, but a woman who dates younger men is a “cougar”: a dangerous animal.
• Women in magazine ads are almost always skimpily dressed. Men in magazine ads are almost always dressed in classy outfits.
• It’s okay to discuss a women’s intimate hygiene (douches, feminine itch, periods, etc.) but it’s not okay to discuss men’s intimate hygiene (like jock itch.)

The numbers are disturbing enough and the double standards are frustrating, but I believe that the far more damaging attitudes are the words we use for women and the subtle message those words send that strong, powerful, independent women are not real women.

They’re bitches, whores, vulgar names for intimate body parts, broads, chicks, hoochies….the list is virtually endless.

And sadly, not all those attitudes are exclusively held by men! Women shoot themselves in the foot all the time with some of the things they say and do.

If women are still being treated this way after more than 90 years, is it really any surprise that racial/religious/orientation discrimination is still so rampant and blatant?

Personally, I find it a sad commentary on America that we ever needed a law to give women the right to vote or own property or that we ever needed a law granting blacks the right to vote and making it illegal to discriminate based on gender or race. And I find it a sad commentary that we still need to pass a law banning discrimination based on gender identity and orientation and we still have to repeal Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell and we still have to overturn laws banning gay marriage….So much for the land of equality.

I’m really getting quite tired of all this fear-mongering and hate-mongering going on around the issue of the cultural center to be erected by the Muslim community in downtown Manhattan. No one’s up in arms about the Muslims in the Pentagon using the chapel for their daily prayer services. The chapel was built right where the plane crashed into the Pentagon and Muslim employees use it on a daily basis to worship Allah according to their faith.

Then came the poll from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life that says that about 1 in 5 people believe Barack Obama is Muslim despite his repeated assertions that he is Christian. Now we have Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham, weighing in on the matter saying that Barack Obama was born Muslim because his father was Muslim and one is Muslim if one’s father is Muslim just like one is Jewish if one’s mother is Jewish.

This is utterly ridiculous because the Jewish “seed” that is passed from mother to child is talking about an ethnic group, not the religion. One is a Jew in faith if one believes the tenets of the Jewish faith regardless of who one’s mother was. Islam is not an ethnic group. It is purely a religion and one must believe the tenets of Islam in order to be considered a Muslim. Of course, Mr. Graham either is ignorant of the fact or chose to not mention that Mr. Obama’s father was an avowed atheist long before  his son was born.

Additionally, Graham, who has a history of harsh words about Islam, almost suggests that he too believes that President Obama could be a Muslim when he says, “Now it’s obvious that the president has renounced the prophet Mohammed, and he has renounced Islam, and he has accepted Jesus Christ. That’s what he says he has done. I cannot say that he hasn’t. So I just have to believe that the president is what he has said.” In other words, “He says he is, so I guess we have to take it on faith, but there’s no real proof.”

But what’s really frightening is that this whole business of what the president’s faith is should be moot. This is the United States of America where every single person is guaranteed freedom of religion by the First Amendment to the US Constitution. What faith Obama holds is really of no importance! And yet the fact remains that in the land of the free, there are only two elected representative to the US Congress who are Muslim and two who are Buddhist  and all have been elected since 2006.

Polls have shown that Americans would be less likely to vote for a candidate based on faith than on race or gender. Tom Minnery, senior vice president for Focus on the Family believes it is “important for candidates to have a biblical world view.”  Obviously Mr. Minnery has either never read Article VI of the US Constitution or the First Amendment or he doesn’t think it applies to the office of the president or Christianity.

Yet this kind of “Christian privilege” is not unusual. Courts have been overturning laws that enshrine “Christian privilege” and this has roused cries of “Activist judges!” from the rrr.  But there can be no denying that Christians have greater privileges than other faiths.

• Mormons were forced to give up their beliefs in and practice of polygamy in order to avoid being prosecuted and persecuted by the US government.
• Some Native American faiths are still illegal to practice in today’s society.
• If one’s faith involves animal sacrifice, one can find oneself up on charges of cruelty to animals.
• If one’s faith involves a willing human sacrifice, you’re going to find yourself facing murder charges.
• Christians are the only faith to have one of their holy days made into a national holiday: Christmas. (Even though biblical scholars are virtually all in agreement that Jesus was not born on December 25.) In many businesses that are staffed 24/7, Easter also is a holiday.
• The Christian God is honored on US money and in the Pledge of Allegiance. (And for those who say that the God is not named, the history is very clear that it was Christians who pushed for these unconstitutional breaches of the wall of separation of church and state.)
• For centuries, witnesses in trials had to swear to tell the truth by placing their hand on the Bible. (That unconstitutional practice has now been discontinued.)
• It seems okay to ask people to pray a Christian prayer, but if you ask them to pray any other kind of prayer, people are likely to walk out, like many of our esteemed elected officials did when a Muslim cleric led the opening prayer in Congress several years ago.
• There are still public schools in the US that use the public address system to lead students in Christian prayer.

But if you really don’t think that Christianity is being shoved down the throats of those who believe differently, check out this article about US soldiers who were punished for not attending a Christian rock concert.

If Christians want a Christian nation, they can move somewhere that will accommodate their beliefs. There are many nations in Europe where there is a state religion. But this is the United States of America. It was never meant to be, is not and hopefully will never be a Christian nation. We are a constitutional republic, NOT a theocracy.