It's a Sad Day For the Future Of American Children.

Dan Carroll writes:

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For instance, the first amendment only says that Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech.

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But the Fourteenth Amendment explicitly extends these protections to the State level. The First Amendment says that the Federal government cannot abridge your speech. The Fourteenth says that that the State government cannot do it, either:"No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States"It isn't a question about "intent." In fact, if I recall correctly, some cases before the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment hinged on the fact that what was being done was a State action, not a Federal action, and thus the US Constitution didn't apply. This concept still applies, but in a much more limited way. That is, before the Fourteenth Amendment, if you had a Federal right, the State government could supercede it. Now, if the Federal government is silent on the matter, the State government is free to do whatever it wants.F'rinstance, when the same-sex case was making its way through Hawaii, there could be no appeal of their decision. That's because the case was being decided on the basis of Hawaii's Equal Rights clause. There is no Federal ERA, but Hawaii's constitution has one. If the court decided that the Hawaii ERA allowed same-sex marriage, there could be no appeal to the Feds.

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Even though there's nothing in the constitution that says the mayor of Chicago can't pass a law forbidding the Tribune from running a negative opinion piece about him

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Yes, there is. The Fourteenth Amendment.------------------
Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

Oh, indeed, Dan. The First Amendment clearly indicates that the government and the church are not supposed to get entangled with each other.I can't remember who came up with it (it was on another discussion board I was on), but the deal was this:We'll teach science in the public schools in relation to the scientific literature. For every subject that we decide is important to teach, we will survey the scientific literature and build the curricula accordingly.Thus, if we're talking about the diversification of life on this planet, if the scientific literature splits 90% evolutionary topics and 10% creationist topics, then the curricula will spend 90% of its time discussing evolution and 10% of its time discussing creationism.Isn't that what we want? Don't we want to teach our children what the scientific community understands about our world?Of course, no creationist has ever signed onto this concept since there are no creationist articles in the scientific literature and thus, no time would ever be spent on creationism.------------------
Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!