Amendment would allow mandatory school prayer

The Republican Right is so antithetical to the interests of the people that it thinks it can trot out nonsense like this to win back support.

Well, it won't work.

Right-wing Rep. Jo Ann Emerson (R-Missouri) may be best known as the idiot who sent a constituent a letter that concluded, "i think you're an asshole." Now she's proposed an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would in effect make prayer in public schools mandatory.

This amendment would read in part: "Nothing in this Constitution shall be construed to prohibit individual or group prayer in public schools or other public institutions."

I'm not concerned with the part about individual prayer - only the part about group prayer. Although the amendment also says states can't require prayer, some of today's matchbook jurists seem to view public schools as not being an arm of the states. That's how we've managed to end up with bizarre rulings lately allowing school policies that 30 years ago would have been overturned.

If this amendment passes, it would be the first time that anything in the Bill of Rights was ever gutted by a later amendment.

If the Constitution is amended, it should be to make the Bill of Rights an entrenched clause that cannot be repealed with new amendments. It's a sad day indeed when public officials seriously consider gutting rights that have not only been constitutionally established for over 200 years but had already existed in nature.