Understand.  This is GW's true legacy.  Long after we have stopped being angry about Iraq, the conservative Supreme Court will continue to support unsettling agendas like the faith based initiatives.  A court properly stacked can sway the country for decades.

[edit: sp]

Eddie Tabash touches on these concerns on the recent CFI trip.

Pt1:

>

Pt2 Q&A:

won't embed for some reason, here's the link:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4191917977194347234

Certainly true, which is why we should all be thankful that I am not calling the shots because I have lost all hope in our government system ever being anything but a vile nest of corruption...second in villainy only to the media.

Hopefully no more of them leave before Bush is finally out. And hopefully a few of the far right ones do with the next president. The fascist current supreme court is more evidence of the damage Bush did to this country.

This is a bitter disappointment, but hardly a surprise. This, on the days after Dick Cheney declared himself a branch onto himself.

Now, we can't even sue OUR government! At least it USED TO BE our government.

Oh wow Rab, that article is disgusting.

I did not only throw up in my mouth a little, lost my lunch from the last week and a half. This administration has completely bastardized the goverment most americans learned about in goverment / civics class. 

The washington post did a story on this:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/25/AR2007062500531.html?referrer=email&referrer=email&referrer=email

Justices Quash Suit Over Funds For Faith Groups

By William BraniginWashington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 26, 2007; Page A06

The Supreme Court ruled yesterday that federal taxpayers cannot challenge the constitutionality of White House efforts to help religious groups obtain government funding for their social programs, handing a victory to President Bush's faith-based initiatives program.

In a 5 to 4 decision, the court blocked a lawsuit by a Wisconsin-based group of atheists and agnostics against the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. The court ruled that the suit, by the Freedom From Religion Foundation and three of its taxpaying members, could not go forward because ordinary taxpayers lack legal standing to challenge executive branch expenditures. The ruling reversed a January 2006 decision in favor of the foundation by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit.

Liberal groups blasted the court's decision in Hein v. Freedom From Religion Foundation as a setback for the First Amendment and a sop to the religious right, while the White House and religious conservatives hailed it as a major triumph for Bush's program.

The foundation had complained that parts of the program favored religious groups over secular ones, violating the establishment clause of the First Amendment, which says in part that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion."

The administration argued that the foundation's taxpayer plaintiffs lacked standing to sue because the faith-based initiatives office was not specifically funded by Congress.

In an opinion joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote that "the payment of taxes is generally not enough to establish standing to challenge an action taken by the federal government." If it were, and every taxpayer could sue to challenge any government expenditure, the federal courts would be relegated to "general complaint bureaus," he wrote.

Alito's opinion stopped short of repudiating a 1968 Supreme Court ruling in Flast v. Cohen, in which the court recognized a narrow exception to the rule against federal taxpayer standing in an establishment-clause case.

While denouncing the decision, groups supporting separation of church and state took heart that only two justices favored overturning Flast. This means that most church-state lawsuits can proceed, they said.

Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas concurred in the judgment but held that Flast should be overturned because it has spawned "notoriously inconsistent" rulings.

Justice David H. Souter wrote a dissenting opinion joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer. Yesterday's decision "closes the door on these taxpayers because the Executive Branch, and not the Legislative Branch, caused their injury," he wrote. "I see no basis for this distinction in either logic or precedent."

Where's cancer when you need it? 

[Mod Edit: joined from a similar thread] 

http://ffrf.org/news/2007/heinvFFRF.php

above is the webaddress where you can read the article with links to the actual court decision.

Today is a sad day not only for Atheists Agnostics and Freethinkers, but for all Americans.

Not only does the Establishment Clause of our First Amendment no longer apply to the Executive Branch of the US Government, But now American Taxpayers do not have the ability to challenge any Presidential Discresionary Spending.

President Bush can fund any religious organization he chooses with Taxpayers money, and is entirely protected under this supreme court ruling from any legal action from American Taxpayers.

I honestly thought Hein vs. FFRF was a slam-dunk for the FFRF. Ive Been Sick all morning thinking about the Ramnifications of this ruling.

There is no Freedom From Religion in America, We are heading toward Theocratic rule. Period.

What most Christians who are applauding this don't realize is that now large numbers of them can be screwed over and they don't have the standing to sue on it.

If a Catholic president decides to use the general appropriations fund and an executive order to funel money into Catholic churches only, the Methodists, Baptists, and Lutherans are out of luck. Thanks to this ruling they'll just have to deal with it.

If the Department of Homeland Security issues an executive order that those funds be used to build Mosques in every major city to deter Islamic discontent, the members of the Fundamentalist church down the street has no say in their members taxes being used to do so.

By this precident, every single American can now have their personal beliefs stamped into the ground by way of an executive order and their own taxes. Its time to be loud and disobediant. In the words of Jefferson, "God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. ... What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."

I really hope it doesn't come to that, but the government seems to think that it is free from the judgement of its people these days.