Plead the First

This past week the High Point City Council got a bit of a reprimand due to the content of their pre-session invocations:

High Point City Attorney Fred Baggett has issued a stern warning to the High Point Council about the content of their invocations.

Baggett said he received a phone call from the ACLU in Raleigh, which received a complaint from someone in attendance at a High Point council meeting. The complaint alleges that during an invocation, one council member used the word “Jesus.”

Baggett said city policy requires generic terms for God and also states that an invocation can’t reflect a specific faith’s belief.

I think their policy of non-sectarianism makes sense. The Council is a government entity, and opening it with a sectarian prayer is a de facto endorsement of a specific religion. Of course, that’s not acceptable to some:

“Don’t ask me to pray again,” Councilman Latimer Alexander directed at Mayor Becky Smothers. “When I am asked to pray, I will pray to the Father I know, believe in and worship in my faith.”

Councilman Mike Pugh echoed Alexander’s comments and requested he not be asked to give the prayer either.

Are Alexander and Pugh worried that God won’t know He’s being addressed if they call Him “God”? The founding fathers often used very generic, all-encompassing terms for God – “Nature’s God”, “Creator” and “Divine Providence” to quote a few from the Declaration of Independence. It’s strange that such grand, yet non-sectarian titles are fine for the architects of our government, but not good enough for the High Point City Council.

This week’s cartoon, a little late.

State legistlators need to find a way to cover the projected $1 billion budget shortfall. Here’s one suggestion.

According to the News and Record, budget writers covered the shortfall last year “with money that was a one-time windfall” – so maybe this isn’t so far-fetched after all.

Ok, I had a little trouble getting into blogging mode after the holiday, but I think I’m back now. Hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving.

I probably won’t have a chance to post much until after the holiday, so I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving.

On Friday, House Speaker Jim Black’s lead in his bid for reelection increased ever so slightly to 29 votes over his opponent. Considering all the scandal surrounding Black, I’m surprised that it’s even this close.

Addressing a recent action alert by the Thomas More Law Center, Ed Brayton at Dispatches From the Culture Wars had this to say:

Who wrote the Pledge of Allegiance? A man named Francis Bellamy. Who was Bellamy? Well, he was a Baptist minister. And a socialist. And his original pledge, the one used in schools after 1892, did not include the phrase “under God” at all (that part was added in 1954). And Bellamy wrote that his purpose in writing the pledge was to teach children the importance of obedience to the state, a socialist ideal if ever there was one. The pledge written by a socialist to inculcate socialist values is now being promoted by conservatives who are outraged that a socialist would object to saying it. Yet another irony meter down the drain.

I was unaware of that – the socialist part, that is, not the “under God” part.

Greensboro City Councilmember Dianne Bellamy-Small denies being the source of the leaked copy of the RMA report that showed up on local blog aggregator Greensboro101. Despite that denial, quite a bit of circumstantial evidence is suggestive of her involvement, from a dodged lie detector test, to a missing staple, and now the forensic analysis that matched 31 markings shared between her copy of the report and the one posted to the web.

Marcus Kindley, Chairman of the Guilford County GOP, has his sights set on a statewide position.

Unfortunately, his blog – The Chairman’s Corner – has gone AWOL.

Fortunately (for someone – not necessarily Marcus) The Chairman’s Corner lives on in Google Cache. By phrasing your search just right, and by clicking on the “cached” link for any search result, we can essentially resurrect Kindley’s blog, complete with comments.

So, as a public service, I present The Chairman’s Corner.

Update: As darkmoon pointed out in the comments below, Google cache does not last forever, so the link above no longer works.

Support the memory of our troops. Hoggard has more. So does Wharton.

I’m a little behind the curve, but last week I finally started reading Jerry Bledsoe’s “Cops in Black and White” series in The Rhino Times (pick through their archives to find the earlier installments). I’m about halfway through, but so far my initial take on it is that the News and Record should be embarrased that they didn’t do something like this themselves. Bledsoe is doing a great job at looking at the big picture and tying together all the disparate threads of the story.