Freedom of Religion is perhaps the most frequently misunderstood right Americans are granted in the first ten amendments to the Constitution.

When they noticed a Ten Commandments monument in a public park in the Pleasant Grove City, Utah, the Summum church, a small and eccentric group, decided to dedicate a copy of its ‘Seven Aphorisms’ to the Church. The city rejected the monument, claiming that the other fifteen donated monuments in the park, including the Ten Commandments, were reflective of the city’s history, implying that the Seven Aphorisms were not.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court unanimously held that the city could legally reject the ‘Seven Aphorisms’ monument.

Associate Justice Samuel Alito framed the issue as being a question of a government’s right to expression.  While I’m not well versed enough in the law to comment on government expression, I do wonder if ‘government expression’ could lead to the municipal governments ‘expressing’ a preference for things like, the Ten Commandments, say.

Despite the fact that the Ten Commandments will remain in the park – that wasn’t what this case was about – the ruling against the Summum church is most definitely a victory for those who care about a separation between church and state.

We shouldn’t think about this case as encouraging an unhealthy liaison between church and state because the local government is allowed to keep a monument to only one religion in its park. Rather, this ruling constitutes a decisive victory for civil rights activists.

The most important message of the ruling is that the way to deal with religion in the public place is not to sanction more religion. That the Court has not encouraged the government to become more involved in the religious debate as a way to promote religious equality is extremely heartening.

The relationship between church and state is healthiest when non-existent.

The State of Texas, credited with being one of the nation’s biggest buyers of textbooks, is considering revising its science curriculum.

In the past, the board of education has lacked a sufficiently conservative membership to pass the changes, which would force science teachers to use materials that emphasize what conservatives say are potential faults with evolutionary biology.

But the changes the board proposes to make would do more to harm the minds of young children than to promote a healthy skepticism.  The chairman of the board, for example, is a dentist who has stated he believes the world is merely a few thousand years old, not 4.5 billion years old as scientists project.

Rather than insinuating that some of the best minds in the world are completely erroneous for their belief in evolution, it just might – perhaps – be virtuous to teach students the facts about evolution so they will have a solid grounding in science and will be able to dispute unrealistic claims analyzing real facts and current, academic debate.

But the plan is problematic regardless of what you think of the substance of the proposed changes.  If passed, educators worry that they would be able to get their hands on text books that would satisfy legal requirements for classroom use.  Textbook suppliers aren’t likely to make changes for a single state.

And even if they are willing to do so, textbooks are costly.  Purchasing new books in order to teach an unrealistic, religiously-motivated view of science will be costly.

Both the quality of Texas education and its economic accessibilty will suffer if Texas introduces such draconian measures into its curriculum.

In a case with major implications for Americans’ right to privacy, the Supreme Court today decided that evidence gathered as a result of police misconduct is now admissible in our courts.

The New York Times reported that the case arose when an Alabama man arrived at a police station to claim his impounded vehicle.  As he was leaving, the police found a warrant had been issued for his arrest in a neighboring county.  They allowed him to drive away from the police station and then arrested him.  He was illegally carrying a weapon and was also in posession of meth.

Subsequently, however, law enforcement officers found that the warrant had been retracted and a professional error had been made by the police in not taking the warrant off their computer system.  When the Alabama man appealed his conviction on the basis that the evidence against him was inadmissible since the police had no probable cause to search his vehicle without the faulty warrant, his appeal was denied.  Even by the Supreme Court.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that the price of excluding evidence

“is, of course, letting guilty and possibly dangerous defendants go free.”

But when did our system of law decide that the right to privacy of one’s home and person might be violated by incompetent or misinformed police officers so we could say “got-cha” to more criminals?

Punishing criminals is a means to preserve these important rights.  Punishment is only useful so far as it provides that these rights may be freely exercised.  In and of itself, punishment is not the reason we have laws.

I think the problem here is that the court’s decision does not, in fact, protect the rule of law. Holding law enforcement to less scrupulous standards will not promote a more desirable society. This ruling signals that we have become so obsessed with enforcing the laws on our books that we no longer care if we have to ride roughshod over the spirit of liberty to enforce them.

More of the guilty may soon be punished.  But it will be fruitless, because we are selling our precious liberty in order that we may delight in the spectacle that is the cheap and masochistic punishment petty-law breakers.

UPDATE: To those who doubt the capacity of those lacking legal credentials to care about rulings affecting their lives, I offer up a gem of wisdom I stumbled across in the biography of another man without a legal education who, despite such a deficiency, still managed to contribute to the quality of American life.

Ben Franklin, who had but a year of formal education, said:

Vicious actions are not hurtful because they are forbidden, but forbidden because they are hurtful, the nature of man considered.

Federally-indicted Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojavich was impeached by his state’s House of Representatives today.  Though the vote against him was 114-1 (and not a single member of the House defended the Governor – who is accused of conspiring to sell Obama’s vacated senate seat), he called a press conference soon after his impeachment in which he

denounced the state legislature, quoted inspirational poetry and recited a litany of accomplishments.

Apparently attempting to portray himself as a populist, Mr. Blagojavich also

he brought to stand beside him a dozen Illinois residents who he said had benefited from his policies. They included a man in a wheelchair wearing a neck brace and two young children who played on the floor throughout his remarks.

“Is that an impeachable offense?” he asked repeatedly, after describing ways he had helped individuals.

It seems the governor’s understanding of the proceedings are as fantastically disconected from reality as his apparent belief that he – an Elvis acolyte – can be the incarnation of his hero by copying his hair and quoting him frequently.

Despite his offensive stunt, Blagojavich would do well to remember that breaking the law to enrich himself is a serious crime in no way mitigated by claiming to have helped the elderly and disabled. Someone so lacking in either competence or shame deserves to be ousted from office and quickly.

On that note, the Illinois Senate will meet Jan. 26 to decide whether or not Blagojavich is guilty.  If the Senate does determine the evidence against the Gov. to be so compelling, he would be removed from office at that time.

He was for the loser dropping out before he was against it.

After opposing Democratic candidate Al Franken was shown to be losing the race against incumbent Republican Senator Norm Coleman (MN), Coleman declared that he would step down if he were Mr. Franken.

Apparently he only meant he would step down if he literally were Mr. Franken.  Because now that he’s officially been declared the loser by the state Canvassing Board – by a margin of just 225 votes – Mr. Coleman has decided to file a lawsuit designed to deprive the people of Minnesota of constitutional representation.

According to the StarTribune of Minneapolis

Coleman attorney Fritz Knaak said their case will pivot in part on constitutional issues, such as the equal protection clause, that typically are decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Thanks for drawing out the battle Mr. Coleman.  Good thing for your neck that a deepening recession and the threat of a trillion dollar deficit make the stakes less urgent.

Americans have scourged their national backyard.

Imagining ourselves to be an ecological-savy, erosion-preventing society, American farming turned to no-till planting (to leave less soil exposed to the elements and prone to running off into streams and rivers.)  But to avoid tilling their soil excessively, American farmers were forced to spray vast amounts of chemical weed-killers over their fields.

Our new tactics poisoned the soil we were working hard to keep viable. In a superbly written New York Times Op-Ed piece, Wes Jackson and Wendell Berry articulate the need for a new farm bill: one that allows American society to finally disabuse itself of chemically-based agriculture.

While we hear much about farm subsidies and gleefully purchase ‘organic-certified’ foods, most of us don’t care to know too much about the corporate irresponsibility that has made our low food prices possible.

Jackson and Berry beautifully call our attention to that catastrophe by noting that:

To the problem of soil loss, the industrialization of agriculture has added pollution by toxic chemicals, now universally present in our farmlands and streams. Some of this toxicity is associated with the widely acclaimed method of minimum tillage. We should not poison our soils to save them.

And why should we care about the chemicals in the soil we don’t see, the soil we don’t touch, the soil we personally don’t sow with seeds?

According to the authors:

Our present ways of agriculture are not sustainable, and so our food supply is not sustainable. We must restore ecological health to our agricultural landscapes, as well as economic and cultural stability to our rural communities.

Perhaps one of the most polished rallying cries for rural and food issues that I’ve heard…

The organization that still bans atheists and gays from serving as scout leaders has agreed that its mostly white and decrepit membership will no longer be enough to keep its membership numbers afloat in the 21st Century.

Remaining staunch as ever that it must uphold “traditional” values, the Boy Scouts of America is therefore turning to Hispanics to revitalize its ranks. Although one in five American children is Hispanic, they account for a mere three percent of Boy Scout membership.

While it is touching that the Boy Scouts have finally recognized that their organization must change if it is to remain an thriving institution, it’s unfortunate that they’ve merely recruited a demographic they believe will support much of the problematic Boy Scout dogma.  2010 – the 100th Anniversary of the Boy Scouts – would be the perfect time to instead unveil an organization retooled to help children succeed in the 21st Century.

Alas, it seems all the centenial will bring is more of the same.

Opposition leaders in South Korea aren’t letting politesse get in the way of their agenda.  CLICK here to see some amazing pictures of what happens when Legislators get out of control.  Apparently the opposition began using sledge hammers and fire hoses to break down a barricade to the committee room where other lawmakers were holed up intending to pass a trade agreement favorable to the United States.  Beware, the pictures get messy.

They also make our staff ed “State representatives gone wild” seem meek and mild.  Korean lawmakers need more than a brethalyze: they need a chill pill.

In an intensely comical moment, a 29-year-old Iraqi journalist – Muntader al-Zaidi, chucked his shoes at George W. Bush during the President’s final visit to Iraq.

It made me glad I chose to study Arabic:

It seems Mr. al-Zaidi was yelling “Ibn al-hooza,” what international news organizations have translated as “son of a shoe.” It is one of the worst insults in Iraq.

When the firey journalist was finally floored by a posse of security guards, he continued screaming, in the midst of which I believe I can make out the words “dog” – kalb – and “forty” – arbiyoon.

I’m dissappointed in major American news organizations.  So many reported only that Mr. Bush had been called a dog, completely missing on the opportunity to highlight the “son of a shoe” line for their audiences. Then again, what can you expect from the country whose linguistically inept president has to giggle to himself when he hears himself speaking one of them “fo-rine” languages two seconds before the shoes are chucked?

Americans missed out on much of the humor of the incident thanks to the lack of contextualizing their news did for them.  It was a funny scene. Projectiles and a lot of international anger were heaved at Mr. Bush even as he managed to escape unharmed.  If anything worse had happened to the President, the incident would hardly have been funny.

The lesson of the day seems to be that until Americans learn to speak the languages of the world, we won’t share in laughter – the international language – as much either.

As she sat on a park bench one day in Tehran, Ameneh Bahrami was approached by a stalker and had a bucket of acid dumped on her head. The attack left her blinded and severely disfigured and is but a single incident in a broader trend of violent abuse against women.

Are the men who have begun using acid against women some sort of psychopaths?  Has something gotten in the water that makes them crave the horror of a woman’s burning flesh and horrible screams?  No.

Scarily enough, throwing acid on a woman who rejects you for marriage – as in Ameneh’s case – or on a wife who files for divorce has become an acceptable response for men from Pakistan to Morocco.  It is unimaginable that women can be turned into such a disposable commodity.

SO IRAN HAS STRUCK BACK.

In a twist only the contradictory strictures of Islamic Law could have wrought, the country was forced to forgo exacting cash payment from Ameneh’s attacker.  Instead, as she legally demanded, a judge ordered that he will have five drops of acid dripped in each of his eyes… effectively blinding him.

It is a poetic response to the utter cruelty this woman has suffered.  But it is not a poetic justice.  Perhaps dripping acid in this one man’s eyes will serve as a disincentive to those men who would otherwise like to acid attack the women who inconvenience them.

However, I worry that Iran’s acid attacking of even the worst offender only continues the trend of bodily mutiliation as an acceptable outlet for anger.

Iran and other nations should work to reform their judicial systems to minimize such violent behavior rather than continuing its perpetuation through state-sanctioned punishment.