Palin is a religious freak, and take a look at the damage religious freaks cause throughout history. Look at the mideast today?

Like Thomas Jefferson said, we need a "wall of separation" between church and state. I firmly believe that.

The minute I heard all that Jesus rhetoric she totally turned me off. Not that I don't believe in God, it doesn't belong in politics.

Crooks spouting the bible. Gimme a brake! The mafia is more honest than Cheney, Rove and the rest of that crew.

What a load of BS!!!!!!

Let me try and enlighten you a little Borredo.

"Seperation of church and state" -- the expression Justice William Rehnquist described as "a misleading metaphor" appeared in an exchange of letters between President Thomas Jefferson and the Baptist Association of Danbury, Connecticut.

The election of President Jefferson - America's first anti-Federalist President - elated many Baptists since that denomination was, by-and-large, strongly Anti-Federalist. This political disposition by the Baptists was understandable; from the early settlement of Rhode Island in the 1630s to the time of the federal Constitution in the 1780s, the Baptists had often found themselves suffering from the centralization of power.

Consequently, now having a President who had not only championed the rights of Baptists in Virginia, but who also advocated clear limits on the centralization of government powers, the Danbury Baptists wrote Jefferson a letter of praise on Ocotober 7, 1801, telling him:

Among the many millions in America and Europe who rejoice in your election to office, we embrace the first opportunity...to express our great satisfaction in your appointment to the Chief Magistracy in the United States...[W]e have reason to believe that America's God has raised you up to fill the Chair of State out of that goodwill which he bears to the millions which you preside over. May God strengthen you for the arduous task which providence and the voice ofthe people have called you...And may the Lord preserve you safe from every evil and bring you at last to his Heavenly Kingdom through Jesus Christ our Glorious Mediator.

However, in that same letter of congratulations, the Baptists also expressed to Jefferson their grave concern over the entire concept of the First Amendment:

Our sentiments are uniformly on the side of religious liberty: that religion is at all times and places a matter between God and individuals, that no man ought to suffer in name, person, or effects on account of his religious opinions, [and] that the legitimate power of civil government extends no further than to punish the man who works ill to his neighbor. But sir, our constitution of goverment is not specific...[T]herefore what religious privileges we enjoy (as a minor part of the State) we enjoy as favors granted, and not as inalienable rights.

The inclusion of Constitutional pretection for the "free exercise of religion" suggest to the Danbury Baptists that the right was government-given (thus alienable) rather than God-given (hence inalienable), and that therefore the government might someday attempt to regulate religious expression. This was a possibility to which they strenously objected--unless someone's religious practice caused him, as they explained, to "work ill to his neighbor."

Jefferson understood their concern; it was also his own. He made numerous statements declaring the inablity of the government to regulate, restrict, or interfere with religious expression. For example:

[N]o power over the freedom of religion..[is] delegated to the United States by the Constitution. KENTUCKY RESOLUTION, 1798

In matters of religion I have considered that its free exercise is placed by the Constitution independent of the powers of the general [federal] gevernment. SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRES, 1805

[O]ur excellent Constitution..has not placed our religious rights under the power of any public functionary. LETTER TO THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, 1808

I consider the government of the United States as interdicted [prohibited] by the Constitution from intermeddling with religious institutions...or exercises. LETTER TO SAMUEL MILLER, 1808

Jefferson committed himself as President to pursuing what he believed to be the purpose of the First Amendment; not allowing the Episcopalians, Congreationalists, or any other denomination to achieve the "establishment of a particular form of Christianity."

Since this was Jefferson view, in his short and polite reply to the Danbury Baptists on January 1, 1802, he assured them that they need not fear; the free exercise of religion would never be interfered with by the government. As he explained:

Gentlemen, - The affectionate sentiments of esteem and approbation which you are so good as to express toward me on behalf of the Danbury Baptist Association give me the highest satisfaction...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 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 extablishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of seperation between Church and State. Adhering to this expresion 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 to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natrual right in oppososition to his social duties. I reciprocate your kind prayers for the protection and blessing of the common Father and Creator of man, and tender you for yourselves and your religious asociation assurances of my high respect and esteem.

So clearly did Jefferson understand the Source of America's inalienable rights that he even doubted whether America could survive if we ever lost that knowledge. He quiried:

And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure if we have lost the only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath?

Jefferson believed that God, not government, was the Author and the Source of our rights and that the government, therefore, was to be prevented from interference with those rights. Very simply, the "fence" of the Webster letter and the "wall" of the Danbury letter were not to limit religious activities in public; rather they were to limit the power of the government to prohibit or interfere with those expressions.

Earlier courts long understood Jefferson's intent. In fact, when jefferson's letter was invoked by the Court (only once prior to the 1947 Everson case--the Reynolds v. United States case in 1878), unlike today's Courts which publish only his eight-word serperation phrase, that Court published Jefferson's full letter, and then concluded:

Coming as this does from an acknowledged leader of the advocates of the measure, it [Jefferson's letter] may be accepted almost as an authoritative declaration of the scope and effect of the Amendment thus secured. Congress was deprived of all legislative power over mere [religious] opinion, but was left free to reach actions which were in violations of social or subversive of good order.

That Court then succinctly summarized Jefferson's intent for "seperation of church and state":

[T]he rightful purposes of civil government are for its officers to interfere when priniples break out into overt acts against peace and good order. In th[is]...is found the true distinction between what properly belongs to the church and what to the State.

With this even the Baptists had agreed; for while wanting to see the government prohibited from interfering with or limiting religious activities, they also had declared it a legitimate function of government "to punish the man who works ill to his neighbor."

Borredo, why don't you learn from history instead of the DailyKos and moveon.org for you information. Now you know the truth.

- 67GTO