Topic category:  Government/Politics

Shameless New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is a secular extremist who abuses the power with which voters entrusted him and his ban on clergy speaking at the ceremony commemorating the tenth anniversary of September 11, 2001 proves it.

Bloomberg should read the following American Minute with Bill Federer on Justice Joseph Story:

"The Son of one of the Boston Tea Party 'Indians,' he graduated from Harvard and eventually became Massachusetts Speaker of the House.

"At age 32, he was appointed as the youngest Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, where he served 34 years and helped establish the illegality of the slave trade in the Amistad case.

"His name was Joseph Story, and he died SEPTEMBER 10, 1845.

"A founder of Harvard Law School, Justice Joseph Story stated in a speech at Harvard, 1829:

"'There never has been a period of history, in which the Common Law did not recognize Christianity as lying at its foundation.'

"In 1832, Joseph Story responded to a pamphlet titled The Relation of Christianity to Civil Government in the United States, written by Rev. Jasper Adams, President of the College of Charleston, South Carolina

"'Government can not long exist without an alliance with religion; and that Christianity is indispensable to the true interests and sold foundations of free government."

"In Vidal v. Girard's Executors, 1844, Justice Joseph Story wrote:

'Christianity...is not to be maliciously and openly reviled and blasphemed against, to the annoyance of believers or the injury of the public....

'It is unnecessary for us, however, to consider the establishment of a school or college, for the propagation of...Deism, or any other form of infidelity. Such a case is not to be presumed to exist in a Christian country...

'Why may not laymen instruct in the general principles of Christianity as well as ecclesiastics...And we cannot overlook the blessings, which such laymen by their conduct, as well as their instructions, may, nay must, impart to their youthful pupils.

'Why may not the Bible, and especially the New Testament, without note or comment, be read and taught as a Divine Revelation...its general precepts expounded, its evidences explained and its glorious principles of morality inculcated?

'What is there to prevent a work, not sectarian, upon the general evidences of Christianity, from being read and taught in the college by lay teachers? It may well be asked, what is there in all this, which is positively enjoined, inconsistent with the spirit or truths of the religion of Christ? Are not these truths all taught by Christianity, although it teaches much more?

'Where can the purest principles of morality be learned so clearly or so perfectly as from the New Testament?'

"Appointed to the Supreme Court by James Madison, the person who introduced the First Amendment, Justice Joseph Story commented on it in his Familiar Exposition of the Constitution of the United States, 1840:

'At the time of the adoption of the Constitution, and of the Amendment to it now under consideration, the general, if not the universal, sentiment in America was, that Christianity ought to receive encouragement from the State so far as was not incompatible with the private rights of conscience and the freedom of religious worship.

'An attempt to level all religions, and to make it a matter of state policy to hold all in utter indifference, would have created universal disapprobation, if not universal indignation.

'But the duty of supporting religion, and especially the Christian religion, is very different from the right to force the consciences of other men or to punish them for worshipping God in the manner which they believe their accountability to Him requires...

'The rights of conscience are, indeed, beyond the just reach of any human power. They are given by God, and cannot be encroached upon by human authority without a criminal disobedience of the precepts of natural as well as of revealed religion.'

"Justice Story continued:

'The real object of the First Amendment was not to countenance, much less to advance Mohammedanism, or Judaism, or infidelity, by prostrating Christianity, but to exclude all rivalry among Christian sects and to prevent any national ecclesiastical establishment which should give to a hierarchy the exclusive patronage of the national government.'

"In his Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833, Justice Joseph Story explained that the Federal Government had no jurisdiction over religion, as religion was under each individual State's jurisdiction:

'In some of the States, Episcopalians constituted the predominant sect; in other, Presbyterians; in others, Congregationalists; in others, Quakers; and in others again, there was a close numerical rivalry among contending sects.

'It was impossible that there should not arise perpetual strife and perpetual jealousy on the subject of ecclesiastical ascendancy, if the national government were left free to create a religious establishment.

'The only security was in the abolishing the power.

'But this alone would have been an imperfect security, if it had not been followed up by a declaration of the right of the free exercise of religion...

'Thus, the whole power over the subject of religion is left exclusively to the State governments, to be acted upon according to their own sense of justice and the State constitutions.'

The Fourteenth Amendment was adopted AFTER Justice Story died and secures free exercise of religion against arbitrary secular extremist state government action.

Secular extremism is NOT the kind of "fundamental transformation" Americans, whose basic rights come from God (see the American Declaration of Independence) want!

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.