Comments on: Carroll County Maryland Employees to Take Bible Class?

By: protectpluralism

protectpluralism — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 21:00:29 +0000

The instructor is not just any “conservative Christian minister.” He’s the chaplain for both Maryland’s League of the South and the Southern National Congress! And the organization producing the classes is run out of the law offices of Michael Peroutka, former presidential candidate for the theocratic Constitution Party.
http://www.talk2action.org/story/2012/2/24/184312/553

By: F

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 23:37:14 +0000

I mean, don’t even bother hiring an actual Constitutional scholar who happens to lean to the right or anything.

By: aleksandrfilipovich

aleksandrfilipovich — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 17:50:21 +0000

In the Baltimore Sun article it says that David Whitney is a lecturer at the Institute on the Constitution. Poking around their site, it seems that it is a local Maryland group. They offer courses, so they probably also offer stuff on local governments. Unfortunately, my state’s constitution does have those words at the beginning:

We, the People of the State of Maryland, grateful to Almighty God for our civil and religious liberty, and taking into our serious consideration the best means of establishing a good Constitution in this State for the sure foundation and more permanent security thereof, declare:

We are also one of the states that has a religious test for office:

That no religious test ought ever to be required as a qualification for any office of profit or trust in this State, other than a declaration of belief in the existence of God; nor shall the Legislature prescribe any other oath of office than the oath prescribed by this Constitution.

Maryland’s constitution is a mess. We need to change it. Here’s the whole thing: http://www.msa.md.gov/msa/mdmanual/43const/html/const.html

By: Chris Campbell

Chris Campbell — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 17:09:20 +0000

Don’t know what document by the Founders they’re looking at the “front and center” of. That phrase (“grateful to Almighty God “) doesn’t occur in either the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution.