[url=http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17152227/]Atheist group challenges Bush faith initiative: Freedom From Religion Foundation will argue case before Supreme Court
[/url]

MADISON, Wis. - Annie Laurie Gaylor speaks with a soft voice, but her message catches attention: Keep God out of government.

Gaylor has helped transform the Freedom From Religion Foundation from obscurity into the nation’s largest group of atheists and agnostics, with a fast-rising membership and increasing legal clout.

Next week, the group started by Gaylor and her mother in the 1970s to take on the religious right will fight its most high-profile battle when the U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments on its lawsuit against President Bush’s faith-based initiative.

FFRF is an excellent organization. If anyone can make a case for keeping religion out of govenment, it will be Annie Laurie Gaylor. Although she will probably feel like she's in the "Lion's Den" with Alito, Roberts, and Scalia sitting on the Supreme Court Thrones. I wish her good luck.

I wish her good luck too. Our Supreme Court has anything but supreme people on it. Five sure votes against the people.

This is why i sent them a check!

Here is a link to more from this site:

http://www.ffrf.org/news/2007/supremebrief.php Oral arguments were heard on Feb. 28...
http://www.ffrf.org/legal/hein_supremecourt07/

I have never found atheists to be antagoniststic to religion. They are just antagoniststic to being bibly thumped--an action, not religion itself.

Wanted to read the Center for Free Inquiry/Center for Secular Humanism amicus brief but it is in PDF form and the print is always so small I can't read it.

While I was still able to donate, I belonged to five of the organizations listed on the side of ffrf. Hadn't heard of ffrf itself at that time or I would have been a member there also.

Thank you Catherine, for the info.

Faith-based program at issue in case

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration tried to shield its Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives from a legal challenge Wednesday, urging the Supreme Court to block a claim that it violates the constitutional separation of church and state.

At issue is whether a Wisconsin-based group of atheists and agnostics has legal standing, as taxpayers, to bring its complaint in the federal court system. The group, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, characterizes the White House's initiative as a singling out of faith-based organizations to the exclusion of other organizations.

Taking one extreme, Justice Stephen Breyer asked a lawyer for the White House during arguments before the high court whether a taxpayer would be able to challenge a law in which Congress sets up a government church at Plymouth Rock where people can worship in the Puritan religion.

"I would say no," responded the administration's lawyer, Solicitor General Paul D. Clement, but he added that such a church could be challenged in other ways — such as by members of other religions — just not on the basis that a taxpayer has been injured.

Taking the opposite extreme, Justice Antonin Scalia asked a lawyer for the Freedom From Religion Foundation whether taxpayers would be able to sue over the use of security money for a trip where the president addresses a religious group.

More at the link.

Well, the Freedom From Religion Foundation LOST this very important case, thanks to none other than...big DRUM ROLL...SAMUEL ALITO!

Supreme Court hands victory to Bush on faith-based initiatives

On a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that a group of taxpayers did not have standing to sue the US government for its funding of faith-based initiatives with federal money. The decision, Hein v. Freedom From Religion Foundation, was written by Samuel Alito, the second Supreme Court Justice appointed by President George W. Bush, according to the website SCOTUSBlog.

The group People for the American Way slammed the decision as threatening the First Amendment.

"It’s a bad day for the First Amendment. The Supreme Court just put a big dent in the wall of separation between church and state, and a big smile on Pat Robertson’s face," said Ralph Ness, the group's president, in a statement. "Today’s ruling will make it more difficult for citizens whose tax dollars are being unlawfully spent to subsidize religion to bring a complaint in court. It is also consistent with a broader strategy by right-wing judges and activists to restrict standing for average Americans to challenge powerful government and business interests."

Some very interesting comments at the link...

This is an Editorial written in the New York Times on June 26 after the SC and its new conservative majority gave Bush another religious victory and cut into the heart of the Constitution one more time:

Three Bad Rulings

Chief Justice Roberts and the four others in his ascendant bloc used the next-to-last decision day of this term to reopen the political system to a new flood of special-interest money, to weaken protection of student expression and to make it harder for citizens to challenge government violations of the separation of church and state. In the process, the reconfigured court extended its noxious habit of casting aside precedents without acknowledging it — insincere judicial modesty scored by Justice Antonin Scalia in a concurring opinion.

You can read a letter about the SC decision written on June 28 by Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor, posted at the website of the Freedom From Religion Foundation Imperial Presidency Can Now Promote Religion: The Supreme Court has barred the courtroom door.

And another statement here: http://ffrf.org/news/2007/heinvFFRF.php

All of these decisions should be a wake-up call to the People and to Congress. With Roberts, Alito, and Scalia on the SC, the foxes are indeed in the hen house!

Quote: the foxes are indeed in the hen house!

Trouble is .. There are more foxes then they are hens.

What did Stalin say?- or not say? Something like- "It's not the people who vote that count. It's the people who count the votes."- but this has a nice continuity to it. http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/dubiou ... _quote.htm

At the bottom of catherines URL is some more info on this case-
This is a very scary and important issue. Hitler used the same tactic of getting the church on board!!