Crooked Media - Deus Exodus Machina

“I can’t wait to be sued,” goaded Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry (R-LA), while signing the state’s new, first-in-the-nation law requiring public schools to display a poster-sized copy of the Bible’s 10 Commandments “printed in a large, easily readable font” in classrooms. 

• Civil liberties and religious freedom groups quickly obliged him. The ACLU announced it’s preparing a lawsuit challenging HB 71 for violating the First Amendment’s establishment clause. That’s the one stating “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”—you know, the separation of church and state. Pretty fundamental.

• The ACLU also noted different religious denominations use different wordings and interpretations of the Bible story. And lots of students don’t believe in them at all. “The government should not be taking sides in this theological debate, and it certainly should not be coercing students to submit day in and day out to unavoidable promotions of religious doctrine,” the group’s statement said. 

• Republicans in Texas, Oklahoma, and Utah are trying to pass laws like Louisiana’s but none have succeeded. Still, if “10 Commandments in the classroom” gives you a “televangelists of the Disco era” vibe, you’re right on! Kentucky already tried to enact a similar law in 1980. The Supreme Court struck it down for having a plainly religious, and therefore unconstitutional, purpose.

So if SCOTUS has already rejected this, why would Louisiana Republicans try again? 

• Normally, the High Court operates on a principle respecting precedent. Cases that are decided are decided, unless circumstances drastically change or the Court committed a grave and identifiable error. But this is no normal Court. Several conservative Justices implied or outright stated that Roe’s right to abortion was settled law, only to turn around and overturn it with the Dobbs decision. More recently, Justice Samuel Alito was caught on tape making pining for America as “a place of godliness.” 

• In the meantime, religious conservatives get to open up another front in their good-vs.-evil culture war. But even some conservative Republicans have spotted the irony here, pointing out that Louisiana’s public schools are an underfunded, underperforming mess where less than half of third-graders are reading on grade-level. 

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Next week, Judge Aileen Cannon is holding several hearings in the Mar-a-Lago case charging Donald Trump with dozens of counts of mishandling classified documents as well as felony obstruction. Democrats and most reputable legal experts have watched in horror as Cannon has slow-walked this case to a near-guaranteed post-election trial, all while stymying Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team at every turn. Now there’s evidence that even Cannon’s colleagues were worried about her competence to take on the trial, and possibly her fairness. 

According to The New York Times, two of Cannon’s colleagues on the U.S. District Court for Southern Florida—including its chief judge—urged her to give up the case when it was handed to her at random last year. One of the judges argued that the court’s Miami branch, where Trump was indicted, had better infrastructure to handle the case. The chief judge warned Cannon that presiding over the case would be a bad look after she intervened on Trump’s behalf after Mar-a-Lago was searched, and was reversed by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.