Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Aqizzar]

For reference, the man in question is Rich Iott.  He explains this as a perfectly innocent hobby (as he explained it, if you're going to hold a Civil War reenactment, someone has to be the Confederates), which he got into as a father-son activity.  Bear in mind, he specialized in dressing up as the SS division that went into the Caucasus.  But I'll give him all that and take him at his word.

That being said, let's face the obvious.  If you're going to run for a public election, in America or anywhere, and there exists in the world a photo of you dressed as a Nazi and happy about it, you have to either track down and burn every copy of that photo, or kiss your electoral chances goodbye.

[Eugenitor]

Hitler has something to say about that.

[Tsarwash]

It's pretty careless of him to let this happen. As a potentially powerful politician, I would give him dispensation for not playing the Nazi. Nazi or Taliban are the two things that ANY politician should not dress up as nowadays. It does remind me of the Father Ted scene, where Ted Krilly asks the other priest if collects any Allies' paraphernalia, after seeing his extensive Nazi collection. He replies, ' Oh no Ted. That kind of thing wouldn't interest me at all.'

[Lord Shonus]

This was from well before he entered politics, back when he was just a businessman. I wasn't going to vote for him anyway, but I still think that this is a bit ridiculous.

[Karnewarrior]

This, right here, is the entire reason we have not yet reached the moon.

Wait wut?

I meant mars. In my defense, it was 11:30 PM and I went to bed immediately after, giving almost no chance for my Second Thoughts to catch it.

Still a incredibly silly slip of the tonguehand.

[Leafsnail]

I dunno, really.  You can say "It was a bad idea, in retrospect" and "It was going to damage his reputation", but that doesn't really make him a worse candidate.

And besides, think of all the headlines if he did win the election.

[Nikov]

Well its a good thing Iott isn't running for office south of the Mason-Dixon, or else this picture would surface.



Forcing your son to eat hardtack! Someone call child protective services!

[Servant Corps]

'Where in the constitution is the separation of church and state?'

Uh...you do realize O' Donnell is right? The words 'seperation of church and state' appears in one of Thomas Jefferson's letters, and was not in the consitution itself. Wikipedia also alleged that James Madison cared about the seperation of church and state, but the concept in and of itself was not in the constitution.

"Seperation of church and state", as part of US law, originated in Everson v. Board of Education in 1947, where Justice Hugo Black's majority opinion mentioned the seperation of church and state. It is this mention that ended up guiding Supreme Court desicions for decades to come.

As the Seperation of Church and State is not in the consitution, it is up to the Supreme Court to decide of its existence. If the Supreme Court has said, "There is no seperation of church and state, Jefferson is an idiot," then there would be no seperation of church and state. Refusing to acknowledge the Court's influence is itself a misunderstanding of the Constitution, which specifically allows for the Court to interpret the Consitution however it wants! Argh.

[Earthquake Damage]

stuff

I suppose you could say "the First Amendment, as interpreted by the Supreme Court, implies a separation of church and state."  Much (all?) of U.S. law depends on how the written law is interpreted by the courts (ultimately the Supreme Court).

[Nikov]

Servant Corps, I present to you the "Balls-Out" award for the ballsiest statement of this thread.

I refer, of course, to engine governors.

[Aqizzar]

As the Seperation of Church and State is not in the consitution, it is up to the Supreme Court to decide of its existence. If the Supreme Court has said, "There is no seperation of church and state, Jefferson is an idiot," then there would be no seperation of church and state. Refusing to acknowledge the Court's influence is itself a misunderstanding of the Constitution, which specifically allows for the Court to interpret the Consitution however it wants! Argh.

This is true, yes.  However, think about what you're essentially implying.  Could a later ruling by a later court invalidate that prior ruling?  Yes, and it would require a majority of the Supreme Court Justices to decide to overturn many decades of precedent and countless lower-court decisions based on such, derived from an interpretation of the Constitution so ingrained in the public psyche that sixty-three years ago it was worth pissing off Catholics for, and has ever since to been taught to schoolchildren of all ages.  It's about the one part of derived Constitutional precedent everyone (outside the Tea Party anyway) can agree on outside of the abolition of separate-but-equal.

Point being, it's almost inconceivable that such a decision would ever be made, thus making the issue a distinction without meaning.  For anyone except Constitutional law scholars, saying, "the First Amendment provides for the separation of church and state" really should be more than enough.

And it's separation.  Separation.

[Leafsnail]

I'd say "Separation of church and state" is a perfectly fair interpretation of "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion".  It's not the only possible one, I guess, but isn't working out that stuff part of the Supreme Court's job?

[Nikov]

Separation of Church and State is to keep the State from co-opting the Church and the Church from co-opting the State. Usually its being used as a way to invalidate conservative canidates who are serious about their faith, on the fear that they will pass crazy laws enforcing religious lunacy on us all. Which makes this article kind of ironic.

Pelosi went on to say that, "Some oppose immigration reform are sitting in those pews, and you have to tell them that this is a manifestation of our living the gospels."

And that is politicians using religion to acheive a political end, not religion using politics to acheive a religious end. So lets be clear, the separation goes both ways. And when a politician tells you its your religious duty to support their agenda, we have a far worse scenario than a president who prays about tough decisions.

[CobaltKobold]

The fun part is, the U.S. Senate has ratified the following (as part of the Treaty of Tripoli)

... the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion ...

[Leafsnail]

Ah, yeah.  Although you can't really stop pastors from giving political messages to their flocks short of mass censorship (I still find it kindof weird when they tell people to vote in a specific direction, but whatever).

Hmm... could Pelosi argue she was talking in a personal capacity, and thus just excercising freedom of speech?