Another Sign of the Time - Sorry, Newsweek

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For general interest from mi wuman:

http://www.wcnc.com/news/local/Church-f ... 69444.html

Here is one with a different twist of the branch:

After a Christian mayor had discovered "The Ten Commandments" standing behind an overgrown tree/bush of some kind in front of the city courthouse, he had some city employees remove/trim the bush/es in order to make the plaque visible to all passersby ...

... and then the Supreme Court ultimately made the city remove the 1958 plaque!

It does not matter if the plaque was built in 1958 it was in violation of the constitution back then and it still is. If the major had any respect for US freedom of religion, his job was to remove it promptly before any scandal rather than make it more visible.

Whatever any of my grandfather's senior colleagues may say to the contrary, I do not see how a decalogue plaque on the courthouse grounds or a classical quotation engraved over the courthouse door or a statue of Justice or a Latin or Engish phrase or a fresco symbolically employing Greek mythology or a quote from any book whatever used as, perhaps, a town or state motto constitutes "an establishment of religion."

If that be so, Then let Philadelphia and Joliet AND St Louis and Olympia and Providence and Deer Park and Medina and a myriad other towns whose names commemorate or could be construed as referring to people, places, or concepts conndected to any of the planet's myriad religions change their names at once. HOW demeaning for an honest Muslim or Baptist or atheist to have to live in a city named after a saint of the Roman church [and a French king at that!]. Why, I feel harassed and hate-speeched as aonce atheist Christian to have spent my youth - some of it - in a state where there is a town named Canaan. WHY MUST THEY MAKE JUDAISM THE ESTABLISHED RELIGION HERE?

I understand. I just found/find it ironic that nobody complains about "the Ten Commandments" actually being "in place" (the base for all law) on the *insides* of our courthouses as long as they are not directly visible outside!

In that particular case, however, the plaque eventually got moved onto private property at the north end of downtown and just across the sidewalk from northbound traffic lanes in such a manner that it is now virtually impossible to *not* see its content right there in plain sight. And of course, I think only the actual *removal from* the previous site was paid from city coffers.

Correct, and I wonder how many people are aware of what hangs on the walls of even the Supreme Court.