I’ll be posting a story in a few hours. By “story,” I mean a more traditional news story than you typically read on HA.
This is all part of the grand experiment Goldy and I are up to: Goldy assigned me to cover the local ’08 races—Gregoire vs. Rossi, Reichert vs. Burner, and some of the statewide contests further down the ticket like the actually-kind of-thrilling race for Commissioner of Public Lands.
In addition to the hard-hitting analysis and dogged partisan offense that you’ve come to expect on HA, we want to add some original news reporting to the mix to see if we can turn this new media thing into a full-fledged new media thing, man. That’s a translation of me and Goldy after a few drinks.
First, though, here’s something I came across while doing the reporting for my story (an outtake, I guess): Along with voting for a voucher school program; voting to cut $7 billion in student aid; voting to freeze Pell Grants; and voting to repeal the estate tax (which would have torpedoed education funding) to earn his lowly C rating from the National Education Association after his first term in office, Rep. Dave Reichert also voted for this.
The successful amendment to the 2005 bill reauthorizing Head Start funding repealed established civil rights protections by allowing federally funded Head Start programs with religious affiliations to hire and fire teachers and staff and volunteers based on religion.
At the time, an alarmed ACLU fired off this letter to protest the amendment.
Wouldn’t civil rights enforcement infringe on other citizens’ freedom to discriminate?
The freedom to say what everyone else is saying and to deny things to people who do not look or believe as you do has been a hallmark of the American experience since Western European colonists first set foot on this continent.
Reichert is the kind of ‘originalist’ who is so consistent that he interprets what the founding fathers thought of the Bill of Rights BEFORE it was written.
Now that’s thorough!
Here is the link to the bill: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/.....:h.r.02123:
The amendment in question rollcall, http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/D?d109:12:./temp/~bdK6WC::, and the rollcall http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2005/roll492.xml
Further to Josh’s posting:
Here is the link to the bill, The amendment in question, and the rollcall.
So a comment with a few links on the matter is considered spam? We’ve got a problem Houston.
“Did You Know Reichert Voted to Scrap Separation of Church and State?”
Ha! Did YOU know that the very phrase is from an obscure letter from Thomas Jefferson explaining to a pastor why it was unconstitutional for the Federal Government to mess with his ministry? Did YOU know that Jefferson and MOST of the signers of the Constitution thought religion and morals were an integral PART of early education, and He doesn’t mean some obscure reference to a Creator…. Jefferson actually promoted the positive and pro-active use of words and ideas in public education that left-wing-kook-fascist-NEA-homosexual-lobby-Marxist folks like the ones who frequent THIS web site fear most:
“Bible”, “Ten Commandments”, “Christian”, “Morals”, and, worst of all “Jesus” and “Christ”.
You people are SOOOOOOO pathetic in your lack of knowledge!
irrational hyperbole.
check.
seething hatred of all things Republican.
check.
subsisting on $$$ from people who feed on the above.
check.
sheesh, Josh, looks like you’re right at home whoring yourself out to your new pal Goldy.
But hey, it’s not like you were ever an “objective journalist” before, so no biggie, right?
@3 “Bible”, “Ten Commandments”, “Christian”, “Morals”, and, worst of all “Jesus” and “Christ”.
Jesus? I recall you freaks kicking Jesus out of the church. He was too fucking liberal for you.
@3 sigh…
Yes, the wall of separation idea from Jefferson came from a letter he wrote to the Danbury Baptists. He more or less said that the first amendment was to keep the government out of your religion.
That said, he also wrote extensively that there should be no religious test for participation in society, or civic duty.
1) No state sponsored religion
2) No religious litmus test
So Jefferson, based on his writings, would likely not have approved of a bill that allowed people to be hired or fired based on their religion.
And yes, Jefferson was for teaching morals based on those of his writings that I’ve read. However, in his Bill for the more general diffusion of knowledge, he doesn’t mention religion at all if I recall correctly.
In addition, you’re making a flawed assertion in that you imply that the signers thought there should be religion in public education. Public education wasn’t the norm until long after *all* the signers were dead. Most education was home schooling. Parents could choose how to educate their children. In fact, for the public education that existed (and there was very little to none for early education), Jefferson proposed that each religious sect should have their own professor at the University of Virginia just to make sure that no single view was put forward by public funding.
Can you point me at a document where Jefferson argued that Jesus should be taught in public education?
The bill, the amendment, and the rollcall.