Saturday, June 4, 2011

Obama’s Head In The Sand Iran Policy

President Barack Obama’s strategy of denying Iran access to atomic-weapons isn’t having its intended effect. Rather Tehran is dangerously close to possessing nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles which will fuel a regional arms race and could spark another war. It is time to issue Iran an ultimatum.

Last week President Obama vowed to maintain pressure on Iran. On May 22 he told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee “We’ve imposed the toughest sanctions ever on the Iranian regime” and then he promised “We remain committed to preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.”

But evidence is mounting that Obama’s talk and sanctions strategy isn’t stopping Tehran’s march to nuclear arms status. Consider what our intelligence community, the United Nations and others say about Iran’s escalating atomic missile program.

James Clapper, the U.S. Director of National Intelligence, testified “Iran is technically capable of producing enough highly enriched uranium for a weapon” … “has the scientific, technical, and industrial capacity to eventually produce nuclear weapons” and “it continues to expand the scale, reach and sophistication of its ballistic missile forces, many of which are inherently capable of carrying a nuclear payload.”

Clapper’s warning is validated by two new reports from the United Nation’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).


The IAEA reports it has new information regarding Tehran’s work on a nuclear warhead for a missile. The nine page report dated May 24 states its own inquiries showed “the possible existence in Iran of past or current undisclosed nuclear related activities involving military related organizations, including activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile.”

The IAEA indicates since its last report this February it has “received further information” related to these undisclosed military related activities, which it is currently assessing. Those concerns prompted IAEA director Yukiya Amano to demand of Iran “prompt access to relevant locations, equipment, documentation, and persons.”

Director Amano is especially concerned about seven weapons-related activities. The list includes experiments involving the explosive compression of uranium deuteride to produce a short burst of neutrons (a possible atomic trigger like that used by the Chinese), uranium conversion to produce uranium metal and missile re-entry vehicle redesign activities.

Harold Agnew, a former director of the Los Alamos weapons laboratory, told the New York Times the compression of uranium deuteride suggested work on an atomic trigger. “I don’t know of any peaceful uses [for uranium deuteride],” Agnew said.

Besides the weapons activities the UN report confirmed Iran continues uranium enrichment operations contrary to Security Council prohibitions. It continues to increase its stockpile of low-enriched uranium (3.5% uranium-235) to 9,130 pounds and so far 125 pounds of 20% enriched uranium. The regime’s 8,000 known uranium enriching centrifuges continue to produce more and richer outputs every day.

Highly enriched uranium, the fissile fuel used in nuclear weapons, usually contains at least 90% concentration of uranium-235. Currently Iran has enough low-enriched uranium to produce four atomic bombs if it is further enriched. By comparison America’s very first uranium bomb, Little Boy in 1945, used 141 pounds of 80% enriched uranium-235.

The second UN report was leaked two weeks ago. That report by a panel of experts monitoring arms proliferation points an accusing finger at Iran. It states “Iran’s circumvention of sanctions across all areas is willful and continuing.” UN sanctions ban trading items that contribute to uranium enrichment and conventional arms like missiles.

The panel discovered prohibited activities being carried out by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps using a network of foreign suppliers and front companies. For example, South Korea seized rolls of phosphor bronze mesh wire bound for Iran which, according to the UN panel, could be used for Tehran’s heavy water reactor – a source for weapons grade plutonium. Singapore intercepted 302 barrels of aluminum powder from China which the panel said could be used to produce 100 tons of rocket propellant.

But Iran’s worst proliferation partner is fellow rogue regime North Korea. "Prohibited ballistic missile-related items are suspected to have been transferred between the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and the Islamic Republic of Iran on regular scheduled flights of Air Koryo and Iran Air," the UN report said.

The Iran-North Korea collaboration was evident last October at a military parade staged in Pyongyang at which North Korea unveiled its new Nodong missile. The Nodong warhead has “a strong design similarity with the Iranian Shahab 3 triconic warhead,” according to Reuter’s news service. But Iranian officials reject the allegation it collaborates with North Korea.

Iran’s foreign ministry, according to Fars News Agency, disputes the UN report, arguing that Tehran does not need outside help. But that statement is contradicted by a report in the May 16 edition of the Japanese newspaper Mainichi Shimbun that contends North Korea recently sent more than 200 people to Iran to transfer military technology for developing Iran’s nuclear and missile programs.

Iran and North Korea are motivated to collaborate by the mutually held view that atomic-tipped ballistic missiles are their best deterrent from regime change led by the U.S. That line of thought is voiced by A.Q. Khan, the father of Pakistan’s atomic weapon, who wrote in Newsweek “Had Iraq and Libya been nuclear powers, they wouldn’t have been destroyed in the way we have seen recently.”

That view likely prompted both nations to launch aggressive programs to field survivable mobile atomic weapons and build hardened and deeply buried facilities to hide those systems. Elbridge Colby, a research analyst at the Center for Naval Analyses and an expert advisor to the Congressional Strategic Posture Commission, warns that states like Iran and North Korea are locating their “most valued assets underground in facilities effectively immune from missile, air, or naval attack.” Colby surmises these states armed with mobile atomic weapons could hold “the threat of nuclear attack over Washington to deter any attempt to disarm them or occupy their countries.”

Iran’s rapidly emerging threat is evidently credible which begs the question: Do we have the right strategy to deny the rogue atomic weapons?

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair criticized President Obama for being too soft on Iran, urging him to deal with a "looming and coming challenge" from the Islamic Republic, according to Agence France-Presse. "At some point,” Blair said, “we have to get our head out of the sand and understand they [Iran] are going to carry on with this [nuclear weapons program]."


What then should be Obama’s strategy to wean Iran from its atomic ambitions? Clearly the status quo – talks, sanctions, incentives – is not working. That leaves two options.

We can accept a nuclear-armed Iran and the risks that create for the region and America’s global interests. Otherwise, as Blair said, “they’ll carry on doing it [seeking atomic weapons] unless they are met by the requisite determination and if necessary, force.”

Obama’s strategy should include an ultimatum backed by visible attack preparations by a joint force that could conceivably topple the regime, achieve our political objectives and allow the IAEA unencumbered access to suspect nuclear facilities. Failing that, force will be ready and should be applied.



Maginnis is a retired Army lieutenant colonel, and a national security and foreign affairs analyst for radio and television.

The Source of Republicanism!



In my last article “The Soul of Republicanism” two items sparked controversy in the discussions the article spawned. One being some taking umbrage at my giving praise to David Barton at the end of my article.

Apparently, there is criticism aimed at Barton’s work, accusations of misrepresentation and lying. The criticism comes most often from those who hate the very idea of our nation having Christian origins.

I was unaware of these criticisms and I will investigate them for myself! I have read enough directly from the Founders themselves -- apart from Barton’s work -- to stand behind the Christian premise.

The other item was a statement I made within the text of the article:

"However, it does not follow that because we have religious freedom in America, all faiths are equally valid, or are equally useful in determining American morality or political thought."

I was asked in a thread to clarify this statement. Before I had the chance to respond, a reader did an excellent job of explaining it for me. Mark Pepin wrote:

“I'll take a stab at it and see if Hassan and I agree. It will also be added clarification for RHS: My understanding of that statement is that the founding of this nation, being dominated by Christian thought, was intended to support the morality of the Christian religion. Not all religions have morality systems that are equal to Christianity, and therefore, not all should be favored. The fact is, many of our laws come straight from the Bible, while others are derived from Biblical thought.”


I do indeed agree – Mark gave a very good explanation of my statement. I’m afraid I originally failed if my statement was not universally understood in the context Mark affirms, I thought it was clear cut. I will however go further than Mark’s clarification since the question affords me the opportunity to so.

Truth is, there is an exclusion of any other faith besides Christianity in the founding principles used in determining our system of government. (Note that I am saying “faith,” there were civil considerations. After all, the Founders did not invent republicanism).

If you assign equal validity to the world’s various faith traditions, you effectively invalidate them all. We can all be wrong, but as they all contradict each other, logically, we cannot all be right.

I have said this before in various discussions over the years, primarily with atheists. It is impossible for man to have created God. Man does not currently, nor has he ever had, the power to create ex nihilo “out of nothing”. Everything man has produced has a frame of reference. There could be no god concept apart from God having first revealed Himself to man.

If God revealed Himself to man it is prima facie that He did so in a particular way. It is the responsibility of man to determine the way. Creation itself is the only safe objective medium to use in determining which tradition is reliably the way God revealed Himself.

In other words, the tradition whose source makes the most accurate statements about the universe and reality is most likely the Creator of the universe. The source most adept at describing man’s nature objectively as opposed to the way man wishes to see himself, is the Creator of man.

The God of the Holy Bible expresses this in what amounts to a challenge to man and all who would espouse false beliefs. It is a recurring theme in the Holy Bible:

“The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.” Psalm 19:1

The Psalm goes on to describe the movement of the sun, declaring that only God could put such a thing in action.

“Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: “ Romans 1:19,20

The God of the Holy Bible is saying examine the world and compare it to what I have revealed to you. Many of history’s greatest scientists understood this and expressed as much.

In a beautiful letter to his wife Maria Christina, Nobel Laureate in Physics, Guglielmo Marconi wrote:

“I know how much you love and cherish the beautiful Nature - the expression of God’s Will - where one can find the ideal eternal values: the Truth, the Beauty and the Good (and you possess the three of them). The harmonious unity of causes and laws forms the Truth; the harmonious unity of lines, colors, sounds, and ideas forms the Beauty; while the harmony of emotions and the will forms the Good, which in being the ultimate expression of the Eternal and Supreme Creator brings man to completion and drives us to seek absolute perfection.”

He also stated:

“The more I work with the powers of Nature, the more I feel God’s benevolence to man; the closer I am to the great truth that everything is dependent on the Eternal Creator and Sustainer [Creatore e Reggitore Eterno]; the more I feel that the so-called ‘science’ I am occupied with is nothing but an expression of the Supreme Will, which aims at bringing people closer to each other in order to help them better understand and improve themselves.”

Physics Nobel Laureate Arno Penzias, in a statement to the New York Times on March 12, 1978 on the Big Bang Theory remarked:

“The best data we have are exactly what I would have predicted, had I had nothing to go on but the five books of Moses, the Psalms, the Bible as a whole.”

Nobel Laureate in Physics, William Phillips in a letter to T. Dimitrov May 19th, 2002; in reply to several questions as to whether he believed in the existence of God:

“I believe in God. In fact, I believe in a personal God who acts in and interacts with the creation. I believe that the observations about the orderliness of the physical universe, and the apparently exceptional fine-tuning of the conditions of the universe for the development of life suggest that an intelligent Creator is responsible. …I believe in God because of a personal faith, a faith that is consistent with what I know about science.”

There can only be one truth and therefore only one good source to base our society on. The Founders understood that premise back in the 18th century. If one takes a practical look by eliminating the idealistic, when engaged in comparative theological study, you have to determine that there are many false religions in the world, but only one that lines up with reality.

Not all faiths can be equally valid because all faiths do not equally reflect reality. Why would God tell the Hebrews the earth is round and that it hangs in space, but then tell the Hindus the earth is flat and it sits on the backs of elephants standing on turtles? Why give one group the more accurate, demonstrable truth and lie to another group?

Why tell the Muslim the sun sets in a pool of mud and slime? If the Qur’an gets that wrong, if it is wrong on natural things, why should I believe what the Islamic god says about the supernatural. If Allah gives false reports about creation, and the tangible, how can I believe him when it comes to my soul and the intangible?

The wanton barbarity of those who follow the Qur’an strictly and the tragic state of affairs in Islamic nations, who base their laws on the Qur’an’s brand of morality, stand as a testament to this truth, particularly as it pertains to human rights.

Plainly, if you do not think it would be pleasant to live under Sharia, which is based on the faith of Islam, then Islam is not morally equal to the faith that served as the source of American republicanism.

If you chafe at the very idea of living under a caste system like the one India employs, inspired by the Vedas. A system where people starve under the feet of a fat, well fed, and I might add tasty and nutritious “sacred cow”, working out karmic destiny, then Hinduism is simply not an equally valid source to structure a society around.

Nor is a lack of religious conviction a good starting point for government. One merely has to look at societies founded upon humanism and secularism to see that an atheistic perspective can be down right deadly on a massive scale.

The horrors of the French revolution; the tens of millions slaughtered by atheistic socialism in Soviet Russia; Communist China; and sundry other socialist Asian states. Let’s not forget, Fidel Castro and Che Guevara’s nightmarish excesses. Even Hitler’s Nazism like the others, was based on naturalism at it’s core and the list goes on and on.

If there is a God, as it seems logical to assume, then as He says-there is also an adversary working against man. The Adversary, like man lacks the ability to create from nothing, but he is very good at inspiring man to do what is counter to man’s own well being.

It is the Adversary that inspires atheism and false religions and, therefore, the faulty human states including the ones our Founders fled.

I could site example after example! All those lands and others are hemorrhaging people and those people are coming where? Here! Whether you accept Christianity or not; whether you find David Barton an honest broker or not. The premise of “The Soul of Republicanism” is sound and worth remembering!

Digital Publius

Federal Reserve bank flies the rainbow flag

Officials working on 'response' after flood of complaints


By Bob Unruh

© 2011 WND



Delegate Bob Marshall

A state delegate in Virginia has sent a letter to the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, demanding that it remove a "rainbow" flag from the flagpole that also holds Old Glory.

"Dear President [Jeffrey M.] Lacker," wrote state Delegate Bob Marshall, "Flying the homosexual flag just under the American flag outside Richmond's Federal Reserve Bank building is a serious deficiency of judgment by your organization."

Marshall said the Federal Reserve policies are supposed to "contribute to the strength and vitality of the U.S. economy," but "a flagpole in front of a federal building is not a commercial or political message board."

How to fight "politically correct" agendas? The prescription is Joseph Farah's "Taking America Back"

"What does flying the homosexual flag, or any other similar display, have to do with your central banking mission under the Federal Reserve Act passed by Congress?"

"The Richmond Fed's endorsement of costly, anti-social, immoral behavior is rejected by 6,000 years of Western religious and moral teaching. You want the American people to trust your judgment in economic matters when your spokesperson celebrates an attack on public morals? Why?" Marshall continued.

(Story continues below)



"Mr.Lacker, take down that flag!"


Marshall told WND that his letter to the bank must have "set off a firecracker," because there had been hundreds of responses via email and the like already.

"This guy has no business taking an institution Congress created for financial dealings and turning it into a political billboard," he said.

Bank spokesman Jim Strader told WND that Marshall's letter had been delievered and "we are reviewing his letter and we will respond."

He refused to say what the response would be or when it would come.

But he said the "pride flag is flying at our bank as a symbol of our commitment to diversity and inclusion."

He said bank managers got a request from "an employee group" and the request to fly the flag was approved.

Strader said it coincides with Barack Obama's "proclamation" that June is the "Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month."

"This month … marks the 30th anniversary of the emergence of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, which has had a profound impact on the LGBT community," Obama said. "Though we have made strides in combating this devastating disease, more work remains to be done, and I am committed to expanding access to HIV/AIDS prevention and care."

Strader refused to respond to questions about whether the statement of a social agenda was a precedent for the bank, or whether other employee or interest groups could take advantage of the forum and proclaim their campaigns, also.

"I can't comment on that," he said.

He said the bank, too, has gotten comments on the "pride flag" flying in front of the institution assigned to manage the nation's fiscal policy.

Officials with the Federal Reserve's Board of Governors refused to reply to WND requests for comment.

But Marshall said, "This is a celebration of a behavior that is still a class six felony in Virginia."

This dispute is not the only headache the Federal Reserve could be facing. WND recently reported on a series of grass-roots lawsuits that are being developed against the Fed.


U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas

And U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas long has advocated an audit of the intensely secret organization, as well as a shutdown of its operations.

The lawsuit plans come from the PatriotStorm organization at its SuetheFed.com website. The plan envisions teams of attorneys analyzing data, demanding information, verifying damages and arguing court cases.

"Our litigation plan will be loosely patterned after the tobacco litigation model executed during the 1980s and 1990s; only far more organized, coordinated and focused in order to provide shared access of all discovery materials and briefs developed to all of our network law firms and prosecutors nationwide," the website explains.

"The litigation activities will be divided among three broad areas: a) research; b) analysis and dissemination of discovery materials and briefs, and c) litigation coordination. The company will recruit several hundred to several thousand highly respected small to mid-sized litigating law firms to pursue the class action litigation for their representative plaintiffs (live persons, companies, municipalities, etc.) residing in their respective geographic areas."

Congressman Paul long has argued that the Federal Reserve simply is illegal. Some of his concerns have revolved around Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, which assigns to Congress the right to coin money.

There is no mention in the Constitution of a central bank, and it wasn't until the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 that the Fed was created.


Ben Bernanke

Paul previously has said, "Throughout its nearly 100-year history, the Federal Reserve has presided over the near-complete destruction of the United States dollar. Since 1913 the dollar has lost over 95 percent of its purchasing power, aided and abetted by the Federal Reserve's loose monetary policy."

And he's proposed repeatedly – and again in this Congress – the idea of auditing the Fed to determine exactly what it has been doing and then begin making corrections. With a book titled "End the Fed," he's made no secret of his ultimate goal.

That the Fed is at least partly to blame for the financial problems that have developed in the U.S. seems not to be in dispute.

It was longtime Federal Reserve chairman Ben. S. Bernanke who admitted as much.

Bernanke said it was the Fed that caused the Great Depression, the worldwide economic downturn that persisted from 1929 until about 1939. It was the longest and worst depression ever experienced by the industrialized Western world. While originating in the U.S., it ended up causing drastic declines in output, severe unemployment and acute deflation in virtually every country on earth. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, "the Great Depression ranks second only to the Civil War as the gravest crisis in American history."

At a Nov. 8, 2002, conference to honor economist Milton Friedman's 90th birthday, Bernanke, then a Federal Reserve governor, gave a speech at Friedman's old home base, the University of Chicago.

After citing how Friedman and a co-author documented the Fed's continual contraction of the money supply during the Depression and its aftermath – and the subsequent abandonment of the gold standard by many nations in order to stop the devastating monetary contraction – Bernanke added:

Before the creation of the Federal Reserve, Friedman and [Anna] Schwartz noted, bank panics were typically handled by banks themselves – for example, through urban consortiums of private banks called clearinghouses. If a run on one or more banks in a city began, the clearinghouse might declare a suspension of payments, meaning that, temporarily, deposits would not be convertible into cash. Larger, stronger banks would then take the lead, first, in determining that the banks under attack were in fact fundamentally solvent, and second, in lending cash to those banks that needed to meet withdrawals. Though not an entirely satisfactory solution – the suspension of payments for several weeks was a significant hardship for the public – the system of suspension of payments usually prevented local banking panics from spreading or persisting. Large, solvent banks had an incentive to participate in curing panics because they knew that an unchecked panic might ultimately threaten their own deposits.
It was in large part to improve the management of banking panics that the Federal Reserve was created in 1913. However, as Friedman and Schwartz discuss in some detail, in the early 1930s the Federal Reserve did not serve that function. The problem within the Fed was largely doctrinal: Fed officials appeared to subscribe to Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon's infamous "liquidationist" thesis, that weeding out "weak" banks was a harsh but necessary prerequisite to the recovery of the banking system. Moreover, most of the failing banks were small banks (as opposed to what we would now call money-center banks) and not members of the Federal Reserve System. Thus the Fed saw no particular need to try to stem the panics. At the same time, the large banks – which would have intervened before the founding of the Fed – felt that protecting their smaller brethren was no longer their responsibility. Indeed, since the large banks felt confident that the Fed would protect them if necessary, the weeding out of small competitors was a positive good, from their point of view.

In short, according to Friedman and Schwartz, because of institutional changes and misguided doctrines, the banking panics of the Great Contraction were much more severe and widespread than would have normally occurred during a downturn. …

Let me end my talk by abusing slightly my status as an official representative of the Federal Reserve. I would like to say to Milton and Anna: Regarding the Great Depression. You're right, we did it. We're very sorry. But thanks to you, we won't do it again.

G. Edward Griffin, in "The Creature from Jekyll Island," explains the cause of wars, boom-bust cycles, inflation, depression, prosperity and more – and calls the Fed the most blatant scam of all history.

History records that in 1913 President Woodrow Wilson approved the Federal Reserve Act but later reflected that his actions "unwittingly ruined my country."

Wilson said that since the U.S. system of credit is concentrated in the hands of a few, "we have become … one of the most completely controlled and dominated governments in the civilized world."

Paul recently announced, as chairman of the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy and Technology, a plan to audit the Fed.


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Guess what lawmakers want counties to post!

LAW OF THE LAND

Resolution affirms government 'rooted in belief in Almighty God'


By Drew Zahn

© 2011 WND



The Ten Commandments once posted in County Circuit Judge Roy Moore's courtroom

"Throughout America's rich history," asserts a Tennessee House Resolution that was passed 98-0 this week, "both the citizenry and their elected officials alike have deeply respected the Ten Commandments, its profound influence on the formation of American legal thought and its fundamental place in the history of law and government."

Therefore, H.R. 107 declares, "This body hereby urges all Tennessee counties to allow the Ten Commandments to be posted in their respective courthouses."

Rep. Todd Watson, author of the resolution, explains in its text, "It is imperative that these revered tablets continue to grace our public buildings, as reminders to this generation and the next of the vital role the Ten Commandments and its Author have played in shaping our great republic."

Coupled with the more than 90 percent of Tennessee counties that have already adopted similar resolutions acknowledging the historical significance of the Ten Commandments, H.R. 107 marks a bold fusillade in the ongoing battle over America's Christian heritage, particularly in the arena of constitutional law.

The battle became a national issue nearly a decade ago, when an Alabama judge, Roy Moore, faced pressure from the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups to remove a monument that Moore had constructed in the Alabama Supreme Court building because it featured the Ten Commandments.

Get Judge Roy Moore's classic book about his battle for liberty, "So Help Me God: The Ten Commandments, Judicial Tyranny, and the Battle for Religious Freedom."

Moore, who had previously beaten an ACLU lawsuit over posting the Commandments in his courthouse as a county circuit judge, nonetheless lost a second ACLU charge and was removed from his office as the state's chief justice over the ensuing monument controversy.

The Tennessee House's resolution urges its counties to likewise refuse to bow to similar pressure.

(Story continues below)





The full text of the resolution is as follows:

WHEREAS, in order to preserve domestic tranquility and protect the blessings of liberty, the foundation of any government must rest upon both law and morality; and

WHEREAS, the underpinnings of our system of government are rooted in a steadfast belief in Almighty God and the conviction that all morality, justice and unalienable rights derive from his gracious hand; and

WHEREAS, most of the political theorists embraced by our Founding Fathers, from Locke to Blackstone, espoused the Natural Law Theory, and as John Quincy Adams explained, "the laws of nature and of nature's God … of course presupposes the existence of a God, the moral ruler of the universe and a rule of right and wrong, or just and unjust, binding upon man, preceding all institutions of human society and of government"; and

WHEREAS, the Founders' desire to publicly acknowledge God as the source of America's strength and direction is reflected in many of our founding documents and practices, from the Mayflower Compact and the Declaration of Independence to the National Motto and Thanksgiving Day celebrations; and

WHEREAS, since our nation's birth, federal, state and local governing bodies have continued to invoke Divine guidance and celebrate the role religion has played in American life by issuing faith-based proclamations and opening each legislative session with prayer and supplication, a practice instituted by the First United States Congress and which has continued unbroken for more than two centuries; and

WHEREAS, throughout America's rich history, both the citizenry and their elected officials alike have deeply respected the Ten Commandments, its profound influence on the formation of American legal thought, and its fundamental place in the history of law and government as a whole; and

WHEREAS, the Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized the historical importance of these sacred texts and even upheld Sunday closing laws, which originated in the Fourth Commandment's exhortation to remember the Sabbath Day and keep it holy; and

WHEREAS, countless depictions of Moses and the Ten Commandments can be found throughout our nation's capital as a testament to the Decalogue's undeniable role in our country's legal tradition, including the magnificent displays adorning the Supreme Court Building, the Library of Congress's Jefferson Building, the National Archives, the Department of Justice, the Ronald Reagan Building, the federal courthouse that is home to both the Court of Appeals and the District Court for the District of Columbia and the Chamber of the United States House of Representatives; and

WHEREAS, 88 Tennessee counties have already adopted resolutions acknowledging the historical significance of the Ten Commandments and pledging to defend their right to display them; and

WHEREAS, it is imperative that these revered tablets continue to grace our public buildings, as reminders to this generation and the next of the vital role the Ten Commandments and its Author have played in shaping our great republic; now, therefore,

BE IT RESOLVED by the House of Representatives of the 107th General Assembly of the state of Tennessee, that this body hereby urges all Tennessee counties to allow the Ten Commandments to be posted in their respective courthouses.

Mathew Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel and dean of Liberty University School of Law, is among those who celebrated the resolution's passage:

"The Ten Commandments are part of the fabric of our country and helped shape our laws," Staver said in a statement. "They are as much at home in a display about the foundations of law as stars and stripes are in the American flag. The Founding Fathers would be outraged that we are even debating the constitutionality of the Ten Commandments."


If you would like to sound off on this issue, participate in today's WND Poll.


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