Supreme Court says "no" to an additional monument next to 10 Commandments

Under its analysis of the First Amendment's freedom of speech clause, the U. S. Supreme Court recently ruled that a religious group could not compel a municipality to accept its gift of a religious monument to be displayed in a park along with an existing Ten Commandments monument. Here is the New York Times story on the Court's decision.

Beginning of Lent (AKA day after pancake race)

Yesterday, for Shrove Tuesday, citizens of Liberal, Kansas and of Olney, England raced for the 60th annual Internation Pancake Day race. This year, a member of the Kansas team won. A short news story, from Wichita television station KAKE (I'm not making that up), describes the events history.

A slightly longer news story, from the Wichita Eagle, elaborates on this year's race. An earler Wichita Eagle story explained how last-minute individual donors came to the event's rescue after the long-time donor--a pancake and muffin mix company--chose not to donate the pancake mix for this year's event. By the way, besides the 5,000+ pancakes made for the event (eaten by hungry crowds, I presume), another 100 "super-duper extra tough" pancakes were made for the flipping race.

U. S. Supreme Court to consider religious military memorial

Supreme Court cases involving government and religion are always interesting. Often the outcomes seem to vary depending on the particular facts of a case. Usually that means that the Court is trying to balance expression of religion and the governmental "entanglement" with religion.

In October, the Court will consider a case involving a cross erected as a military memorial in a federal preserve. Here is the L. A. Times story on the case.

Two years ago, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals . . .declared the cross an "impermissible governmental endorsement of religion."

. . .

Bush administration lawyers appealed to the Supreme Court last fall and said the "seriously misguided decision" would require the government "to tear down a cross that has stood without incident for 70 years as a memorial to fallen service members."

. . .

In a friend-of-the-court brief, the VFW, American Legion and other veterans groups said the 9th Circuit's ruling, if allowed to stand, could trigger legal challenges to the display of crosses at Arlington National Cemetery and elsewhere.

As you may recall, the U. S. Constitution does not contain the phrase "separation of church and state."

(Photo by Clearly Ambiguous; used by permission.)