Topic category:  Other/General

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani was right when he said in his speech at the 2008 Republican National Convention that there is good change and bad change.

In 1947, in Everson v. Board of Education, the United States Supreme Court made a terrible change in proclaiming that the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause means that government must be neutral between religion and irreligion.

America’ Founders would have been aghast. Their Declaration of Independence recognized God (“Creator”) and proclaimed that the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness were received from God, not a king or society. They certainly did not expect America to stop gratefully acknowledging God, less non-believers’ sensibilities be offended.

In 1985, in Wallace v. Jaffree, the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist, then a Justice, rightly wrote in dissent:

“The true meaning of the Establishment Clause can only be seen in its history. See Walz, 397 U.S. at 397 U.S. 671-673; see also Lynch, supra, at 465 U.S. 673-678. As drafters of our Bill of Rights, the Framers inscribed the principles that control today. Any deviation from their intentions frustrates the permanence of that Charter, and will only lead to the type of unprincipled decisionmaking that has plagued our Establishment Clause cases since Everson.

“The Framers intended the Establishment Clause to prohibit the designation of any church as a ‘national’ one. The Clause was also designed to stop the Federal Government from asserting a preference for one religious denomination or sect over others. Given the ‘incorporation’ of the Establishment Clause as against the States via the Fourteenth Amendment in Everson, States are prohibited as well from establishing a religion or discriminating between sects. As its history abundantly shows, however, nothing in the Establishment Clause requires government to be strictly neutral between religion and irreligion, nor does that Clause prohibit Congress or the States from pursuing legitimate secular ends through nondiscriminatory sectarian means.”

The late Chief Justice Rehnquist was exactly right about that.

I am confident that four of the current nine United States Supreme Court would so decide if the opportunity was presented to them.

That means a suitable replacement for one of the judicial activists among the Supremes would bring great and good change.

One change that America needs greatly is an end to judicial activism and revisionist history and a return to constitutional fidelity, historical awareness and principled decision-making.

Would rookie United States Senator and 2008 Democrat presidential candidate Barack Hussein Obama, Jr., the person rated the No. 1 liberal by non-partisan National Journal permit that change by appointing suitable justices and judges?

Of course not.

Tragically, Obama’s years at Harvard Law School apparently taught him that judges are robed politicians empowered to implement their personal political preferences disguised as legal interpretation and he would appoint people who fit that description.

Veteran United States Senator and 2008 Republican presidential candidate attended the United States Naval Academy, where there was daily voluntary prayer, and is pledged to appoint to the bench persons who follow the law instead of make it up.

Make it McCain (unless you want atheism/agnosticism to reign).

Michael J. Gaynor

Biography - Michael J. Gaynor

Michael J. Gaynor has been practicing law in New York since 1973. A former partner at Fulton, Duncombe & Rowe and Gaynor & Bass, he is a solo practitioner admitted to practice in New York state and federal courts and an Association of the Bar of the City of New York member.

Gaynor graduated magna cum laude, with Honors in Social Science, from Hofstra University's New College, and received his J.D. degree from St. John's Law School, where he won the American Jurisprudence Award in Evidence and served as an editor of the Law Review and the St. Thomas More Institute for Legal Research. He wrote on the Pentagon Papers case for the Review and obscenity law for The Catholic Lawyer and edited the Law Review's commentary on significant developments in New York law.

The day after graduating, Gaynor joined the Fulton firm, where he focused on litigation and corporate law. In 1997 Gaynor and Emily Bass formed Gaynor & Bass and then conducted a general legal practice, emphasizing litigation, and represented corporations, individuals and a New York City labor union. Notably, Gaynor & Bass prevailed in the Second Circuit in a seminal copyright infringement case, Tasini v. New York Times, against newspaper and magazine publishers and Lexis-Nexis. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed, 7 to 2, holding that the copyrights of freelance writers had been infringed when their work was put online without permission or compensation.

Gaynor currently contributes regularly to www.MichNews.com, www.RenewAmerica.com, www.WebCommentary.com, www.PostChronicle.com and www.therealitycheck.org and has contributed to many other websites. He has written extensively on political and religious issues, notably the Terry Schiavo case, the Duke "no rape" case, ACORN and canon law, and appeared as a guest on television and radio. He was acknowledged in Until Proven Innocent, by Stuart Taylor and KC Johnson, and Culture of Corruption, by Michelle Malkin. He appeared on "Your World With Cavuto" to promote an eBay boycott that he initiated and "The World Over With Raymond Arroyo" (EWTN) to discuss the legal implications of the Schiavo case. On October 22, 2008, Gaynor was the first to report that The New York Times had killed an Obama/ACORN expose on which a Times reporter had been working with ACORN whistleblower Anita MonCrief.

Gaynor's email address is gaynormike@aol.com.