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Via Pharyngula, the Public Expression of Religion Act. The meat of it:
Notwithstanding any other provision of law, a court shall not award reasonable fees and expenses of attorneys to the prevailing party on a claim of injury consisting of the violation of a prohibition in the Constitution against the establishment of religion brought against the United States or any agency or any official of the United States acting in his or her official capacity in any court having jurisdiction over such claim, and the remedies with respect to such a claim shall be limited to injunctive and declaratory relief.
Explanation (disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer): The First Amendment to the US Constitution says, among other things, that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion" (the 'Establishment Clause').
It's not always clear just what counts as an 'establishment of religion'. Institutionalised prayer in public schools? Displaying the Ten Commandments in a church house? These and more have been argued at length. Ultimately, it's the responsibility of the courts to make that call, and the courts' decisions have not always agreed with the religious-conservative wing of the Republican Party (which, lately, has been flapping harder than the rest of that particular bird put together).
Said wing would dearly love to scrap the Establishment Clause altogether, but that's not in their power as yet. Instead, what they're doing here is setting a very large obstacle in front of anybody who might go to court to fight for their First Amendment rights.
Attorneys cost money - a lot of money - and that can limit the ability of people to fight for their legal rights. To counter this, it is normal for a court to have the power of awarding costs. If you rear-end my car and refuse to pay, and I take you to court and win, the judge can hold you responsible for my legal costs. This hopefully ensures that when one side is clearly in the wrong, they bear the costs of righting that wrong.
What this bill does is to remove that option. Supposing a state school were to require your children to share a prayer (Wiccan, Christian, Scientologist, pick something that offends you). This would be clearly illegal, and any court in the land would probably find as much... but you would still be left paying the fees for your attorney, no matter how flagrant the violation was. The most the court can do is say "stop doing this" ('injunctive relief') and state what your rights are ('declaratory relief').
And if you can't afford to go to court for your rights, why then, you don't have those rights any more.
The optimist in me wants to take the craziness of these last few months as a sort of 'going out of business' sale - Everything Must Go, because we'll be out of the building come November! But even if that is the explanation, even if the Democrats take both Congress and Senate, and pick up the White House in 2008, it will take years to undo the damage to the country.
While I'm here, Robert Harris has written a rather good op-ed: Pirates of the Mediterranean. In the autumn of 68 B.C. the world’s only military superpower was dealt a profound psychological blow by a daring terrorist attack on its very heart. Rome’s port at Ostia was set on fire, the consular war fleet destroyed, and two prominent senators, together with their bodyguards and staff, kidnapped. The incident, dramatic though it was, has not attracted much attention from modern historians. But history is mutable. An event that was merely a footnote five years ago has now, in our post-9/11 world, assumed a fresh and ominous significance. For in the panicky aftermath of the attack, the Roman people made decisions that set them on the path to the destruction of their Constitution, their democracy and their liberty. One cannot help wondering if history is repeating itself...
Notwithstanding any other provision of law, a court shall not award reasonable fees and expenses of attorneys to the prevailing party on a claim of injury consisting of the violation of a prohibition in the Constitution against the establishment of religion brought against the United States or any agency or any official of the United States acting in his or her official capacity in any court having jurisdiction over such claim, and the remedies with respect to such a claim shall be limited to injunctive and declaratory relief.
Explanation (disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer): The First Amendment to the US Constitution says, among other things, that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion" (the 'Establishment Clause').
It's not always clear just what counts as an 'establishment of religion'. Institutionalised prayer in public schools? Displaying the Ten Commandments in a church house? These and more have been argued at length. Ultimately, it's the responsibility of the courts to make that call, and the courts' decisions have not always agreed with the religious-conservative wing of the Republican Party (which, lately, has been flapping harder than the rest of that particular bird put together).
Said wing would dearly love to scrap the Establishment Clause altogether, but that's not in their power as yet. Instead, what they're doing here is setting a very large obstacle in front of anybody who might go to court to fight for their First Amendment rights.
Attorneys cost money - a lot of money - and that can limit the ability of people to fight for their legal rights. To counter this, it is normal for a court to have the power of awarding costs. If you rear-end my car and refuse to pay, and I take you to court and win, the judge can hold you responsible for my legal costs. This hopefully ensures that when one side is clearly in the wrong, they bear the costs of righting that wrong.
What this bill does is to remove that option. Supposing a state school were to require your children to share a prayer (Wiccan, Christian, Scientologist, pick something that offends you). This would be clearly illegal, and any court in the land would probably find as much... but you would still be left paying the fees for your attorney, no matter how flagrant the violation was. The most the court can do is say "stop doing this" ('injunctive relief') and state what your rights are ('declaratory relief').
And if you can't afford to go to court for your rights, why then, you don't have those rights any more.
The optimist in me wants to take the craziness of these last few months as a sort of 'going out of business' sale - Everything Must Go, because we'll be out of the building come November! But even if that is the explanation, even if the Democrats take both Congress and Senate, and pick up the White House in 2008, it will take years to undo the damage to the country.
While I'm here, Robert Harris has written a rather good op-ed: Pirates of the Mediterranean. In the autumn of 68 B.C. the world’s only military superpower was dealt a profound psychological blow by a daring terrorist attack on its very heart. Rome’s port at Ostia was set on fire, the consular war fleet destroyed, and two prominent senators, together with their bodyguards and staff, kidnapped. The incident, dramatic though it was, has not attracted much attention from modern historians. But history is mutable. An event that was merely a footnote five years ago has now, in our post-9/11 world, assumed a fresh and ominous significance. For in the panicky aftermath of the attack, the Roman people made decisions that set them on the path to the destruction of their Constitution, their democracy and their liberty. One cannot help wondering if history is repeating itself...
