Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Shut up and pray

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Reuters)--The Bush Family's Supremely Awesome Court ruled on Monday that lowly taxpayers have no right to challenge President George W. Bush's use of taxpayer funds to enrich the religious groups he pays for their support.

By a 5-4 vote, the high court's conservative majority thanked the Bush Crime Family for stacking it that way by ruling that a Wisconsin group called the Freedom From Religion Foundation had no legal right to bring the lawsuit in the first place, and should probably be sent to Gitmo.

The ruling only addressed whether taxpayers--who are the scum of the earth--can bring such challenges, not how badly the program itself violated the U.S. Constitution's requirement on the separation of church and state.

The majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito--who was appointed to the high court by President George W. Bush in spite of being woefully underqualified--overturned a previous ruling that allowed the lawsuit to proceed. Bush's other high court appointee, singularly unimpressive Chief Justice John Roberts, also joined the ruling.

In January 2001, soon after seizing power, Bush issued an executive order creating the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives as payback to the Jesus freaks who supported him in spite of his corruption, incompetence and chronic drug abuse.

One of the goals Bush set was to help the paleo-conservative religious wingnuts who stumped for his election to get a Jesus-sized slice of the Clinton surplus while the getting was good.

The lawsuit said the Family violated the Constitution by organizing national and regional conferences at which religious groups received favored treatment over secular groups who might not be trustworthy Republican fronts.

It said that Bush Crime Family soldiers made public appearances and gave speeches throughout the United States intended to promote and advocate funding for the religious groups who support them.

Bush Family lawyers said a 1968 Supreme Court precedent allowed such taxpayer challenges in religion cases only if the program had been funded under a specific congressional appropriation. Bush's program was not financed through such an appropriation, but through a White House slush fund created for the purpose.

"This is a very significant victory that sends a powerful message that atheists and others antagonistic to religion do not get an automatic free pass from the fires of Hell," said Jay Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice.

Alito said in the majority ruling that it has long been established that payment of taxes is generally not enough to establish the legal right to challenge a federal government action, and that the way to do it is to start a church, refuse to pay taxes, and give the money you save to the RNC.

"If every federal taxpayer could sue to challenge any government expenditure, the federal courts would cease to function as courts of law and would be cast in the role of general complaint bureaus, which would be an abomination in the eyes of American Jesus and the Republican faithful who invented him," Alito wrote.

The court's four liberals dissented. Souter wrote for the dissenters that the taxpayers in the case had alleged sufficient injury to bring the lawsuit, but probably misunderstood the nature of our theocracy.

2 comments:

shishkabob said...

Bob: that’s some really good shit you’re doing. Just came over from bartcop.com. Will check your blog out frequently.

Bob said...

Thanks. You don't think I'm too subtle? My wife thinks I'm too subtle.