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Home arrow Blog arrow Meanwhile...
Meanwhile... E-mail
Written by Don Byrd   
Thursday, 01 July 2010

All week, I've been glued to my best friend C-Span for the Supreme Court confirmation hearings (see my transcript of her remarks on religious liberty here; and liveblogs: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3). Somehow though, the world did not stop. A special thanks to the crack BJC staff (I'm looking at you, Amanda and Cody) for keeping me up to date! Here is a sampling of the church-state developments that slipped past my confirmation hearing obsession. More to come on many of these:

The Baptist Joint Committee and several other advocacy groups in the Coalition Against Religious Discrimination signed a letter to Rep. Jerrold Nadler urging him to hold oversight hearings on  "the current status of the Faith-Based Initiative." Howard Friedman has posted the letter here.

Church-state separation has become a lightning-rod issue in the Nevada Senate race between Majority Leader Harry Reid and Republican challenged Sharon Angle. You may want to follow up on that story with Brent Walker's discussion of the "Top Ten Lies About Church and State."  Just sayin.

Plaintiffs are appealing a judge's ruling that Delaware's Indian River School District did not violate the Constitution with prayers opening school board meetings. My post on that earlier decision is here.

The ACLU has filed its response in another case involving opening prayers. Forsyth County (NC) appealed to the 4th Circuit a ruling that their practice was an unconstitutional violation of church-state separation.

 
 
Back to School!
In a decision from late July that I missed, a district judge in Texas ruled against a local school in its decision to black out religious messages in some Christmas cards being sold as part of a fundraiser. Its an interesting case: school officials were concerned about running afoul of the separa...
 
Quote of the Day
From former George W. Bush speechwriter and policy advisor Michael Gerson in a Washington Post op-ed: The Christian fundamentalist view of Islam bears a striking resemblance to the New York Times' view of Christian fundamentalism -- a simplistic emphasis on the worst elements of a com...