UPDATE::Aaron And Melissa Klein Head For Big (Money) Leagues With New Attorney - The New Civil Rights Movement

None of this will Aaron or Melissa Klein ever admit to in public, nor, likely, will their new attorneys.

The Kleins have received well over half a million dollars from concerned and supportive conservative Christians outraged that the husband and wife, "good Christians," "lost their business," or so the Kleins claim, and were themselves subjected to harassment.

The Kleins have also started a new business, of sorts: they are now stars on the religious freedom talk circuit, making the rounds to events sponsored by the likes of the Family Research Council and other anti-gay groups.

“The past three years have been devastating,” Melissa Klein says in a press release today from First Liberty, formerly the Liberty Institute. “Just because we couldn’t participate in an event that violated our religious beliefs, we lost our business. We were committed to serving everyone regardless of their circumstances at all other times.”

First Liberty in their press release describes Melissa Klein as the "former owner of Sweet Cakes by Melissa," and to show just how much compassion the young couple deserve, First Liberty proudly has placed a photo of the Kleins in front of their van, their van that says, "Sweet Cakes by Melissa," with a web address: SweetCakesWeb.com. If you click on it you might be confused, because the Kleins, as you can see, are still very much in business.
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The Kleins have apparently dropped their now-former attorney and, like elected officials who want to make big money after doing their stint of public service, have signed on to a top firm. The only difference is instead of a signing with a speakers firm, they've signed with a law firm. First Liberty, headed by the infamous Kelly Shackleford, says it is the "largest legal organization in the nation dedicated exclusively to defending religious freedom."

But just like a speakers' firm, the Kleins have their own page at Fist Liberty, and you can even use it to "Book an interview" with them.

Aaron And Melissa Klein Head For Big (Money) Leagues With New Attorney - The New Civil Rights Movement

Vindicated: Navy Finds No Fault in Christian Chaplain Who Comforted Dead Sailor's Family — Charisma News

In their recent coverage concerning the Modder Matter, Charisma made the following statement,

While the Liberty Institute defended Chaplain Modder against these bogus charges in Navy proceedings, AFA Action Alert supporters flooded members of Congress with an amazing 75,395 emails, faxes and phone calls, urging that elected officials stop this witch hunt by homosexual hate.

There's no doubt that elected officials got involved as a result of the urging of these supporters. We know that many representatives and senators contacted Navy leaders after hearing from them.

Today, we're pleased to announce that the U.S. Navy has completely exonerated Chaplain Modder from the bogus charges!

I want you to read that again, focusing on this, "AFA Action Alert supporters flooded members of Congress with an amazing 75,395 emails, faxes and phone calls,,, U.S. Navy has completely exonerated Chaplain Modder" and it's implications for future jurisprudence.

Since when does public sentiment - 75,395 emails, faxes and phone calls - have any say in a matter before a court (whether military or civilian).

Politically-correct forces want to drive religious liberty and influence from key areas of American society, including the U.S. Military.

As Chaplain Modder’s legal defense moves forward, Americans need to support Chaplain Modder and stand up for the religious freedom of chaplains, and other brave members of our armed forces.

Please sign the “STOP THE UNLAWFUL ACTION AGAINST CHAPLAIN WES MODDER, AN AMERICAN HERO” petition below, addressed to The Hon. Ray Mabus, Secretary of the United States Navy.

The law is on the side of Chaplain Modder, all chaplains, and all members of the U.S. Military who want to exercise their faith.  But a public outcry is needed to wake up officials so that violations like this come to a stop. [Emphasis in original]

Since when are members of the judiciary allowed to become activist judges? Oh, that's right, when the ruling suits those within the Reich and their agenda.  "Today, we're pleased to announce that the U.S. Navy has completely exonerated Chaplain Modder from the bogus charges!"  And no, I am not insinuating that took place in this case,

But a high-level review at Navy Personnel Command rejected the commander's recommendation to fire the chaplain, a move that will clear the way for Modder to retire in good standing as he nears his 20th year of service.

Top Navy officials said there was limited hard evidence of Modder's alleged misconduct. Investigating chaplains is uniquely difficult because conversations between service members and chaplains are typically considered confidential.

"There is no documentation of poor performance in his personnel record," said one official familiar with the investigation, who asked for anonymity to discuss a personnel decision.

But what I find so fascinating, the hypocrisy of it all - activist judge(s) for me, not for thee - forgetting what Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor once opined, in McCreary County v. American Civil Liberties Union (2005).

By enforcing the Clauses, we have kept religion a matter for the individual conscience, not for the prosecutor or bureaucrat. At a time when we see around the world the violent consequences of the assumption of religious authority by government, Americans may count themselves fortunate: Our regard for constitutional boundaries has protected us from similar travails, while allowing private religious exercise to flourish.,,, Those who would renegotiate the boundaries between church and state must therefore answer a difficult question: Why would we trade a system that has served us so well for one that has served others so poorly?
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When the government associates one set of religious beliefs with the state and identifies nonadherents as outsiders, it encroaches upon the individual’s decision about whether and how to worship. In the marketplace of ideas, the government has vast resources and special status. Government religious expression therefore risks crowding out private observance and distorting the natural interplay between competing beliefs. Allowing government to be a potential mouthpiece for competing religious ideas risks the sort of division that might easily spill over into suppression of rival beliefs. Tying secular and religious authority together poses risks to both.

It is true that many Americans find the Commandments in accord with their personal beliefs. But we do not count heads before enforcing the First Amendment,,, There is no list of approved and disapproved beliefs appended to the First Amendment—and the Amendment’s broad terms (“free exercise,” “establishment,” “religion”) do not admit of such a cramped reading. It is true that the Framers lived at a time when our national religious diversity was neither as robust nor as well recognized as it is now. They may not have foreseen the variety of religions for which this Nation would eventually provide a home. They surely could not have predicted new religions, some of them born in this country. But they did know that line-drawing between religions is an enterprise that, once begun, has no logical stopping point. They worried that “the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other Sects.”. The Religion Clauses, as a result, protect adherents of all religions, as well as those who believe in no religion at all.*

In other words, what O'Connor and the Court is saying, no activist judges (or politician for that matter) in regards to maintaining the wall between religion and government.  They must remain neutral and rule according to applicable law and precedent.  This point echoes O'Connor's concurrence in Lynch v. Donnelly (1984) as well.

The Establishment Clause prohibits government from making adherence to a religion relevant in any way to a person's standing in the political community,,, The second and more direct infringement is government endorsement or disapproval of religion. Endorsement sends a message to nonadherents that they are outsiders, not full members of the political community, and an accompanying message to adherents that they are insiders, favored members of the political community. Disapproval sends the opposite message. 

But here is the kicker and why I say that the Reich is being hypocritical in their stance concerning the Modder Matter and other faux persecution case (cough,,,cough,,,Kim Davis).  The losing lawyer in McCreary, none other than Mat Staver of Liberty Counsel.  Though not associated professionally with Kelly Shackelford's Liberty Institute, they are compadres within the Reich and share the same agenda.  What was being argued, a reformulation or abandonment of the "Lemon test"  as set forth in Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971), which applies to religious displays on government property and to other Establishment Clause issues.

Although Shackelford et al prevailed in this case, the tactics employed - petitioning those within the political and judiciary community - are clearly outside the bounds of established precedent.  The Reich can bitch all they want about activist judges, but before they do they need to take a very long look in the mirror.
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*FYI:: In November 2010, counties in Kentucky filed a new appeal to the Supreme Court. In February 2011, the Supreme Court without comment declined to review the case.

Vindicated: Navy Finds No Fault in Christian Chaplain Who Comforted Dead Sailor's Family — Charisma News

Hate Peddlers | Americans United

Americans United enjoyed a dubious distinction late in February: Within the space of a week, the organization was singled out for attack by two Religious Right groups.

First out of the gate was the Liberty Institute, a Religious Right legal group based in Texas. The Institute published an article titled “5 Dangerous Enemies Against Your Christian Faith” on the website Charisma News. Americans United was among the five.

In a brief synopsis, Liberty Institute noted that Americans United was founded in 1947. Just about everything else it reported after that was a lie, a half-truth or an inflammatory distortion.

According to the Liberty Institute, AU has “worked to ban ‘God’ from graduation speeches, shut down the activity of prison ministries, outlaw school vouchers allowing parents to send children to religious schools, and tear down veterans memorials.”

Added the Liberty Institute, “They also constantly lobby Con­gress and threaten religious activity in local communities.”

The charges were a distortion of AU’s work that failed to tell the whole story,,,

[,,,]
Four days after that list was issued, another Religious Right group lashed out at Americans United. The American Family Association, a stridently fundamentalist outfit based in Tupelo, Miss., released a “Bigotry Map” listing “anti-Christian” groups in America.

The map, obviously based on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s map of American hate groups, broke down the groups into four categories: “Homosexual Agenda,” “Anti-Christian,” “Atheist” and “Humanist.”

Americans United was listed under the “Anti-Christian” category. These organizations, they AFA asserted, actively engage “in the complete eradication of the Christian faith from society, government and private com­merce. These groups file lawsuits and use intimidation to silence any reference to Christianity from the public square.”

Hate Peddlers | Americans United

ADDENDUM::Air Force says ‘so help me God’ is optional for enlistment oath | Fox News

Uh, translation please.  WTF is this shit?  When or why would an airmen be required to take an oath about marriage?

The Liberty Institute’s Hiram Sasser also supported the move – but for a different reason. 

“I am glad the Air Force allows airmen to omit parts of oaths with which they disagree because one day the Air Force will ask airmen to take an oath regarding controversial subjects like marriage and Bible-believing airmen will likewise refrain from such oaths,” said Sasser, director of litigation for Liberty Institute.

That aside, a few points to consider in all this, beside the utter stupidity of Sasser's comment. 

• The Air Force used to allow airmen to omit the phrase "so help me God" if they so chose. BUT an Oct. 30, 2013, update to Air Force Instruction 36-2606, which spells out the active-duty oath of enlistment, dropped that option. Since that quiet update to the AFI, airmen have been required to swear an oath to a deity when they enlist or re-enlist. 

• The issue of the Oath has been left unsettled since that time.  According to Chris Rodda,

Yes, that was the Air Force's answer. They're actually having a hard time coming to a definite, consistent decision about this. Why? Because the oath created by an act of Congress contains the words "So help me God." Apparently, the fact that the Constitution, with its "no religious test" clause, trumps any act of Congress doesn't seem to be enough for them to be "prepared at this moment to definitively answer." How could this be?

Well, this is where some revisionist history comes in. There are actually people arguing that the founders saw no conflict between the Constitution and forcing someone to take a religious oath.

Judicial Watch, the right-wing watchdog group that has taken up the cause of forcing everyone in the Air Force to swear an oath to God -- regardless of their clear constitutional right not to -- claims that the proponents of forced religious oaths in the military have history on their side, saying:

 While this oath has undergone modifications over the centuries, the phrase 'So help me God' dates all the way back to 1776. So there can be no question regarding whether or not our Founding Fathers believed there was any conflict among the reference to 'God' and our founding principles and the Constitution.

No question? Really? Then how come the military oath written by the very first Congress in 1789 left off the "So help me God" line? That's right, the very first Congress, which included a good number of the founders who actually framed the Constitution, did not make "So help me God" part of the military oath! These words were not part of any military oath until 1862, when the oath for officers needed to be changed because of the Civil War. And it wasn't until a full century after that that the words were added to the enlisted oath.

• There is no denying the influence of James Dobson's Focus on the Family as well as Ted Haggard's former New Life Church.

"You have very strong encouragement -- basically carte blanche access to cadets by the leadership of the academy by these groups," Mullin said. "It is corruption, and there is substantial religious discrimination as part of this corruption," he said.
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A 2010 survey found 41 percent of non-Christian cadets faced unwanted proselytizing, even as the religious majority felt that their freedom of speech was being infringed upon.

This is bad for cadets and bad for the country, says Mikey Weinstein, a 1977 academy graduate and founder of MRFF.

• And it is an issue that has a "long" history with an apparent in your face attitude no matter who they might hurt.

Just something small to consider.

Air Force says ‘so help me God’ is optional for enlistment oath | Fox News

UPDATE::Broward schools’ Runcie says Bible controversy ‘should’ve been handled differently’ - Schools - MiamiHerald.com

Did the teacher misbehave? An obvious yes. Did the school/school district misbehave? It definitely could have been handled a bit better.. But, is this an egregious example of Christian persecution? No!!

In Broward, the Liberty Institute’s attorneys had threatened legal action against the school system unless it publicly apologized and allowed for the Bible to be read during “free reading” periods.

With Runcie’s public apology — and the district’s insistence that the Bible had all along been acceptable during “free reading” — those conditions appear to have been met.

The story should have ended right there. The Liberty Institute placed demands upon the school which they met. Corrections have been made. BUT,,,

Now it appears the Liberty Institute has demanded even more of the school,

But in a letter e-mailed to the school district on Tuesday, Liberty Institute director of litigation Hiram Sasser demanded assurances that Giovanni be allowed to read his Bible during “accelerated reading program” class periods as well.

“If we do not receive a satisfactory response, we will proceed with the appropriate legal steps up to and including litigation,” Sasser wrote.

So when exactly is this kid supposed to do his actual school work?  Give an inch they demand a mile!!

Broward schools’ Runcie says Bible controversy ‘should’ve been handled differently’ - Schools - MiamiHerald.com

Dad: Teacher Told My Kid to Stop Lunchtime Prayer | Todd Starnes

I have been taking a bit of a wait and see attitude with this Todd Starnes diatribe just for the simple fact that daddy dearest went the YouTube route BEFORE contacting school official. I am also having a hard time keeping up with all the antics of Reich and when this story first broke, I honestly didn't think much would come of it. Boy was I wrong!

The basic according to Starnes:

A Florida school district is giving teachers a refresher course on religious liberty after the parents of a five-year-old kindergarten student said a teacher told their daughter that she was not allowed to pray before eating her lunch time meal.

Marcos Perez, of Oviedo, Fla., said the incident occurred earlier this month in the lunch room at Carillon Elementary School.

He said his daughter was sitting at a table about to eat when she bowed her head and began to pray.

“A teacher saw her and told her, ‘you’re not allowed to do that,’” he said.

Perez said his little girl replied, “But it’s good to pray.” The teacher alleged replied, “It’s not good.”

He said his daughter tried to pray once more but was admonished by the teacher. The child was not formally punished, he said.

What is compelling about this story is not so much that Perez is vice president of sales at Charisma House (the company that is promoting Starnes' new book), but that Liberty Institute and family have now rejected the school's apology and are threatening legal action. Publicity or money?

That aside, Wonkette has once again pulled everything together concerning the initial incident and the recent aftermath.

My question remains, does anyone believe that in this day-and-age, with all the faux outrage generated by the likes of Starnes, that an educator or administration would be so naive and lax in their handling of said situation?

Dad: Teacher Told My Kid to Stop Lunchtime Prayer | Todd Starnes

Liberty Institute's Kelly Shackelford Spreads 'Fear and Misinformation' at Air Force Academy Leadership Symposium | Chris Rodda

Another excellent article by Chris Rodda - author of 'Liars For Jesus' - debunking the "Fear and Misinformation" of Kelly Shackelford, President & CEO of the Liberty Institute.

On February 27 and 28, the Air Force Academy held its annual National Character & Leadership Symposium, an event described as "one of the nation's premier symposia in the field of character and leadership development." The speakers at this annual symposium include "distinguished scholars, military leaders, corporate executives, world-class athletes, and others." The attendees are not only Air Force Academy cadets and staff, but also students and faculty from civilian colleges and universities, ROTC detachments, and international delegations.

One of the speakers at this year's National Character & Leadership Symposium was Kelly Shackelford, the President & CEO of the Liberty Institute, which describes itself as "the largest legal organization dedicated solely to defending and restoring religious liberty in America."

[,,,]
Several times during his two presentations at the NCLS, Mr. Shackelford said that the greatest "attacker" of religious liberty is "fear and misinformation." And that it absolutely true, as demonstrated by Mr. Shackelford's nearly nonstop use of fear and misinformation in his presentations -- presentations that were chock full of fear-inducing stories full of misinformation about alleged egregious violations of religious freedom and Christian persecution.

Liberty Institute's Kelly Shackelford Spreads 'Fear and Misinformation' at Air Force Academy Leadership Symposium | Chris Rodda