In the second half of the 19^th century there was a move to ensure that Catholic schools wouldn’t get funded by tax dollars. When the Federal effort failed to produce a Constitutional amendment the states passed their own version of the Blaine Amendment, and they are still in most state constitutions.

Since they couldn’t actually say that the amendments were targeting the Catholics, the language was very generic and usually just said religious schools and religion, because [wink, wink, nudge, nudge] it would never be applied to Protestant institutions.

Well, it applied to all religions, and is the reason that “school voucher” programs keep getting thrown out in Florida and other states, i.e. the vouchers cannot be given to religious schools.

Steve Bates notes that Texas state Representative Leo Berman (R) wants to introduce an amendment to the Texas constitution that says:

“A court of this state shall uphold the laws of the Constitution of the United States, this Constitution, federal laws, and laws of this state. A court of this state may not enforce, consider, or apply any religious or cultural law.”

Rep. Berman intends to make it impossible for Sharia law to be used in the state of Texas, but he can’t single out one religion, so he is going generic [wink, wink, nudge, nudge] feeling that judges will understand what he means.

After reflecting on the wording of the amendment, I think that Log Cabin Republicans, the ACLU, and PZ Myers should all send letters of support to Mr. Berman. They will offset the campaign of the usual suspects, DonoWho, Focus on the Family, et al., who will attack him for seeking to destroy the “Judeo-Christian foundation” of the country, and David Barton will probably build a “Wall” around him, but the man who is willing to give up his career in politics to make gay marriage possible in Texas should know that the “atheistic, socialist fringe” supports him.

So the media called in their “experts” to confirm the conventional wisdom that the shooter was a disturbed individual acting alone with three names, just like all of the other assassins in recent memory [which is remarkably short in the media]. They had their consultants look at the “confused ramblings” in videos and pronounce them unintelligible ramblings.

OTOH, organizations like the Anti-Defamation League, the Southern Poverty Legal Center, Homeland Security, and individuals like David Neiwert, who track the whackoes recognized the themes.

Oly Mike at the Left Coaster provides links to sources in two posts, Loughner and the Militia Movement and Grammar, Language, Quantum Language and Money.

There are a lot of people like Mr. Loughner around. They are armed. They are dangerous.

Brave’s New World

Coming through!

[Editor: This is Brave, the tom that belongs to my new neighbors. He is hard to get a picture of because he is constantly in motion outside if there are people around. He has a wonderful pattern, but this picture doesn’t do him justice.]

Friday Ark is in Africa