Jesus Trojan Lunch

By Jeff Simpson 

In Middleton, WI, a select group of parents have turned the local high school into a modern day City of Troy.  

Despite the seperation of church and state being the law of the land, since a January 1, 1802 letter by Thomas Jefferson, addressed to the Danbury Baptist Association inConnecticut, and published in a Massachusetts newspaper. Jefferson wrote,

“

"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 & State."[1]

”

Jefferson was echoing the language of the founder of the first Baptist church in America, Roger Williams who had written in 1644 of "[A] hedge or wall of separation between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world."Article Six of the United States Constitution also specifies that "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."

Jefferson's metaphor of a wall of separation has been cited repeatedly by the U.S. Supreme Court. In Reynolds v. United States (1879) the Court wrote that Jefferson's comments "may be accepted almost as an authoritative declaration of the scope and effect of the [First] Amendment." In Everson v. Board of Education (1947), JusticeHugo Black wrote: "In the words of Thomas Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect a wall of separation between church and state."^[2]

In the Middleton, WI school district just outside of Madison, WI, these parents have started baking brownies and bringing in food to entice young children to listen to their version of the Bible over the lunch hour.  

On one side is a group of Christian moms armed with Chick-fil-A sandwiches and 400 homemade brownies. On the other side are public school administrators who believe that Jesus and plump juicy chicken breasts are “divisive.”
The controversy surrounds an off-campus lunch event involving students at Middleton High School known as “Jesus Lunch.”  

The public park, across the street from the school is leased by the school district and the school correctly feels that these lunches should not be on campus and should stop immediately.

The school district leases the park during school hours, the email said, so policies that apply to the school campus extend to the park during that time. Those include rules about food safety and food preparation, food allergy procedures and visitor policies.
“We believe that religious or political events do not have a place in our school or on our campus, except when sponsored by a student group in accordance with our rules, which require prior approval,” the email said. “In addition, many students have conveyed to us their concern about a group offering free food to incentivize participation in a religious event on campus.”

Setting aside that it is creepy for a few parents to use brownies to lure kids into your trap, it is blatant illegal and goes against everything that we stand for in this country.  

This story has been getting some coverage locally and even nationally, but no one sees it for what it is.   There was a clue though that does(emphasis mine).

A statement from the organizers provided by parent Beth Williams asserted the group is legally allowed to hold the lunch at the park and said students aren’t required to participate in the religious message portion to partake in the food. “Fireman’s Park — a public park owned by the city of Middleton — remains accessible to everyone in the public for the purposes of assembly and free speech,” the statement said. “By law, the lease agreement between the city and the school district of Middleton does not privatize the park.”

Plank and Johnson said in the email to parents that the organizers have threatened legal action against the school district.

If you do not think that the dark money of Michael Grebe and the Bradley Foundation are not controlling every move of these "Christian" parents, just waiting for the School District to stop this so they can sue, then I have a Governor who cares about creating jobs to sell you.   

Here is what is planned.  They want these parents to be kicked off the school grounds so they can sue.  It will cost the Middleton Cross Plains School District tenss of thousands of dollars, to defend, while Mike G will send his gopher Rick Esenberg to defend these parents pro bono.   Esenberg will get shot down in all of the lower courts, but contnue appealing until he can get it in front of the Wisconsin Supreme Court. 

Then his cowaorkers on the Supreme Court of Wisconsin, will rule in his favor and open the floodgates for "Christianity" to take over our public schools.  

You heard it here first, watch and see how this plays out!  

"And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. - Matthew 6:5. 

ALEC and You!

By Jeff Simpson

Wait a minute, sorry for the misleading headline.  It should read ALEC could care less about you!  

For those people who have been living under a rock lately, or too busy working three jobs and trying to take care of your kids after the George Bush recession and the Scott Walker forced pay cuts, there is a group that has been around for a long time but only recently have people been paying attention. 

They call themselves the American Legislative Exchange Council  or ALEC:  Our friends at the Center for Media and Democracy are the ones to thank for exposing this shado, clandestine, anti- American(more on this later) group to the public!  

ALEC is not a lobby; it is not a front group. It is much more powerful than that. Through ALEC, behind closed doors, corporations hand state legislators the changes to the law they desire that directly benefit their bottom line. Along with legislators, corporations have membership in ALEC. Corporations sit on all nine ALEC task forces and vote with legislators to approve “model” bills. They have their own corporate governing board which meets jointly with the legislative board. (ALEC says that corporations do not vote on the board.) Corporations fund almost all of ALEC's operations. Participating legislators, overwhelmingly conservative Republicans, then bring those proposals home and introduce them in statehouses across the land as their own brilliant ideas and important public policy innovations—without disclosing that corporations crafted and voted on the bills. ALEC boasts that it has over 1,000 of these bills introduced by legislative members every year, with one in every five of them enacted into law. ALEC describes itself as a “unique,” “unparalleled” and “unmatched” organization. We agree. It is as if a state legislature had been reconstituted, yet corporations had pushed the people out the door.

ALEC realized LONG ago that there is no need to waste money lobbying the federal level when buying state politicians was so much more cost effective!    While ALEC does buy bipartisan legislators, the vast vast vast majority of representatives they buy are republicans(I know surprise surprise).  In Wisconsin, ALEC is almost the sole driving force behind the extreme right wing agenda that has been forced through our state legislature.  

Just as Mark Pocan did last year, Future Governor Chris Taylor has done this year, attend the ALEC convention.    I admire the courage of an out gay man and a strong woman heading to a conference full of rich white men with 1920's attitudes!    Future Governor Taylor has chronicled her adventure here! 

One special interest lobbyist I spoke with advocated a convoluted constitutional amendment strategy to require that all federal agency regulations receive Congressional approval. When I responded that voters might not be that excited about changing the constitution for regulatory “reform,” he responded that you didn’t really need the consent of the people if you had Republican control of enough states and the corporate money that would surely fund such an initiative. In the ALEC universe, policies no longer have to be by the people or for the people.

More on ALEC here and here and if you have an hour watch this GREAT Bill Moyers show on the United States of ALEC (Special guest star - Wisconsin).  

Finally back to the Anti-American comment from above.  At their recent convention in Chicago, ALEC let Leah Vukmir present the (I sh*t you not) Thomas Jefferson award to OK Governor Fallin(aptly named).  

 OK Gov. Fallin receiving the Thomas Jefferson Award @ the American Legislative Exchange Council - so honored to present this award to a great leader and supporter of Jeffersonian principles!

Thomas Jefferson is rolling over in his grave after seeing this, I can not think of a worse way to honor his legacy!!

Speaking of "Jefferson principles" Leah:

“I hope we shall...crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and to bid defiance to the laws of our country.”

--Thomas Jefferson, letter to George Logan, November 12, 1816

D'OH!

2nd Amendment

Thanks to the vast right wing echo chamber, it appears that we cannot have a real debate on guns until we first make clear what the Founders had in mind when they authored the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution.

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

Unfortunately, the right wing echo chamber has been hard at work trying to convince people that the 2nd Amendment was written to protect people from their "tyrannical Government"!   Studying the Founders, we realize that is wrong and just plain silly!

 We also know that Founders wanted every man to be part of a "well regulated militia" instead of have a standing army.  They wanted everyone to band together to protect out country when the time came, instead of having a standing army.  Standing armies scared them:  Thomas Jefferson himself called them "an engine of oppression."

Later, in an 1814 letter to Thomas Cooper, Jefferson wrote of standing armies: “The Greeks and Romans had no standing armies, yet they defended themselves. The Greeks by their laws, and the Romans by the spirit of their people, took care to put into the hands of their rulers no such engine of oppression as a standing army. Their system was to make every man a soldier and oblige him to repair to the standard of his country whenever that was reared. This made them invincible; and the same remedy will make us so.”

Had the early framers of the Constitution embraced a standing army during times of peace, then there would be no need for a regulated militia, and thus no need for the 2nd Amendment.

 Need some more:

In fact, during that first gun debate, the state of New Hampshire introduced an amendment that gave the government permission to confiscate guns when citizens “are or have been in Actual Rebellion.” To those early legislators in New Hampshire, the right to bear arms stops as soon as those arms are taken up against our "we the people" government.

Just ask the ancestors of those who participated in the Whiskey Rebellion. In 1794, armed Americans took up guns against what they viewed as a tyrannical George Washington administration imposing taxes on whiskey. President Washington called up 13,000 militia men, and personally led the troops to squash the rebellion of armed citizens in Bedford, Pennsylvania. No Army. No right to have guns to overthrow the oppressive US government.

Need some more let's look at the 1794 Whiskey Rebellion:

On August 1, 1794, President George Washington was once again leading troops. Only this time Washington was not striking out against the British but rather against fellow Americans. The occasion for this was the Whiskey Rebellion. Various efforts had been made to diminish the heated opposition towards the tax on distilled liquors. However, there was only one man who has derived the best course of action. That man, President George Washington, deserves all the credit and recognition for his actions concerning the Whiskey Rebellion. In September 1791 the western counties of Pennsylvania broke out in rebellion against a federal “excise” tax on the distillation of liquor. After local and federal officials were attacked, President Washington and his advisors decided to send troops to assuage the region. On August 14, 1792, under the militia law, Henry Knox (secretary of war) had called for 12,950 troops.

The Founders who had just overcome the British to form our own country, had no interest in the people that they governed doing the same thing to them.  So when there was that possibility George Washington squashed it quickly!

So its time to listen to people like General McChrystal:

 “I spent a career carrying typically either an M16 or an M4 Carbine. An M4 Carbine fires a .223 caliber round which is 5.56 mm at about 3000 feet per second. When it hits a human body, the effects are devastating. It’s designed for that,” McChrystal explained. “That’s what our soldiers ought to carry. I personally don’t think there’s any need for that kind of weaponry on the streets and particularly around the schools in America.”

By the way, Hitler encouraged the ownership of guns....he didn't take your guns!  

Thomas Jefferson Warned Of The Republican Vision 200 Years Ago