Headline Bias

I suppose that this headline is technically correct: Kentucky High School Students Defy Atheist Group by Starting Football Season With Pre-Game Prayer.

Allow me to point out that this is about a public high school and that all of the praying involves the Christian God.

Why not write the headline as Kentucky High School Students Defy Constitution by Starting Football Season With Pre-Game Prayer? 

Why not write the headline as Kentucky High School Students Defy Thomas Jefferson by Starting Football Season With Pre-Game Prayer?

Quote Of Note - Thomas Jefferson

"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God; that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship; that the legislative powers of the government reach actions only, and not opinions,-I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore man to all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties." - Thomas Jefferson

Question The Existence Of God

From Thomas Jefferson: “Atheist and Leveler From Virginia” by Nick Gier:

As we celebrate Thomas Jefferson's 266th birthday this week, we need to be reminded about what a controversial figure he was. In the election of 1800 he was called "that atheist and leveler from Virginia."

Alexander Hamilton was so committed to preventing "an atheist in religion and a fanatic in politics from getting possession of the helm of state" that he urged New York governor John Jay to block Jefferson's election.

During the 1800 election campaign, rumors were spread that, if elected president, Jefferson would confiscate all the Bibles in the land and replace them with his own version, one in which all references to miracles and the Resurrection were deleted.

Jefferson was convinced that Jesus was a deist just as he was, and that the early Church had added unnecessary supernatural events to his life and teachings.

In a 1801 letter to Moses Robinson Jefferson wrote that "the Christian religion, when divested of the rags in which they have enveloped it, and brought to the original purity and simplicity of its benevolent instructor, is a religion of all others most friendly to liberty, science, and the freest expansion of the human mind."

Jefferson believed the propagation of religious dogma was the cause of much evil in the world, and he was convinced that reason alone could guide the moral life. In a 1787 letter Jefferson had this piece of advice for his nephew Peter Carr: "Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of God."

Read the rest here.

Oh! The Irony Of It All!

Monticello, Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence, people from 30 countries lined up to be sworn in as US citizens, and some very vocal anti-Bush protesters versus George W. Bush and his Jack-Booted Thugs:


More here and here and here and here.

Read the comments here to see how successfully President Bush has united the United States of America. Some commentators think that the protesters were impolite. Oh my goodness gracious! They should have been more polite, like those that overthrew the original King George!

I find it curious that President Bush chose to ignore the protesters. Except for that odd smirk and laugh he frequently does, he chose to go on about how we have the right to freedom of speech, without any sign that he was aware of what was going on before his very eyes. He could have simply addressed the protesters directly, acknowledged that they had their say, and then asked them to behave themselves out of respect for all involved. Why did he choose not to do this?

If you watch the 9:47 video submitted by msnbcReporter you may end up wondering the same thing as I. Who the hell is Bush winking at?

Quote Of Note - Thomas Jefferson

"Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories." Thomas Jefferson