Separation of Church and State
The first amendment in the Bill of Rights states: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” This statement expressing a separation of church and state is a fundamental precept of our government. Or should I say was. That is until President Bush decided that our federal government had gone too far in “discriminating” against religion, and should — as part of his Faith Based Initiative — embrace it instead. As the President has said “For too long, for too long, some in government believed there was no room for faith in the public square.” In light of the President’s own statements and actions respecting religion, I found it hard to believe that I saw this item in the Washington Times. “As the president talked about “a strong nationalism” in Iraq that led him to believe that there would be “a separation of church and state” in the new government. What? Since when did President Bush start channeling Thomas Jefferson?
A little bit of background on where Bush’s quote came from. On Air Force One, press secretary Ari Fleischer briefed the press about the upcoming roundtable in Dearborn Michigan. You can read the whitehouse version here or the more interesting snippet from Lloyd Grove of the Washington Post here. Basically, Ari Fleischer had decided that only Arab or Middle-Eastern reporters were going to be allowed to cover the roundtable in Dearborn. After a couple of reporters protested, Fleischer relented and allowed one pool reporter to cover the roundtable. Richard Stevenson of the New York Times was tabbed as the pool guy and filed this dispatch.
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