If one wants serious proof that today's GOP has become a sectarian party that seeks to over throw the United States Constitution look no farther than North Carolina where the North Carolina GOP wants to make Christianity the official state religion. These folks must be drinking the same Kool-Aid as Ken Cuccinelli and his puppeteers at the heinous coven of would be traitors at The Family Foundation. Don't believe me? Then check out a story at WRAL that looks at this unconstitutional effort. Here are some story highlights:
A resolution filed by Republican lawmakers would allow North Carolina to declare an official religion, in violation of the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Bill of Rights, and seeks to nullify any federal ruling against Christian prayer by public bodies statewide.
The resolution grew out of a dispute between the American Civil Liberties Union and the Rowan County Board of Commissioners. In a federal lawsuit filed last month, the ACLU says the board has opened 97 percent of its meetings since 2007 with explicitly Christian prayers.
Overtly Christian prayers at government meetings are not rare in North Carolina. Since the Republican takeover in 2011, the state Senate chaplain has offered an explicitly Christian invocation virtually every day of session, despite the fact that some senators are not Christian.
In a 2011 ruling on a similar lawsuit against the Forsyth County Board of Commissioners, the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals did not ban prayer at government meetings outright, but said prayers favoring one religion over another are unconstitutional.
House Joint Resolution 494, filed by Republican Rowan County Reps. Harry Warren and Carl Ford, would refuse to acknowledge the force of any judicial ruling on prayer in North Carolina – or indeed on any Constitutional topic:
"The Constitution of the United States does not grant the federal government and does not grant the federal courts the power to determine what is or is not constitutional; therefore, by virtue of the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, the power to determine constitutionality and the proper interpretation and proper application of the Constitution is reserved to the states and to the people," the resolution states.
"Each state in the union is sovereign and may independently determine how that state may make laws respecting an establishment of religion," it states.
Eleven House Republicans have signed on to sponsor the resolution, including Majority Leader Edgar Starnes, R-Caldwell, and Budget Chairman Justin Burr, R-Stanly.
Sadly, too many people do not want to believe just how extreme and anti-constitutional government the GOP has become. The goal of the Christofascist base is nothing less that an over throw of the United States Constitution and the implementation of a Christofascist theocracy. These people are down right scary.
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