Monday, March 30, 2009

Obama Judicial Nominee Says Prayers to Allah OK... But Not to Jesus

From Gateway Pundit:

It figures. Obama's first judicial nominee is a raving lunatic.

Judge David Hamilton ruled that prayers in Jesus Name at the Indiana House of Representatives was unconstitutional, but prayers to Allah were not.
Traditional Values Organization reported, via LGF:

True to his campaign promises, President Barack Hussein Obama has picked a rabid judicial activist as his first federal court pick. Judge David Hamilton has been chosen by Obama to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit.

Hamilton is precisely what Obama wants in a judge: Someone who ignores the Constitution and imposes his own liberal ideas on each case. Hamilton will have what Obama calls “empathy” for the poor, child molesters, abortionists, murderers, etc. 

Hamilton has ideal liberal credentials. He is a former ACLU lawyer and was a fundraiser for the corrupt group known as ACORN. This organization engages in fraudulent voter registration campaigns and is deeply involved in housing and poverty issues. Obama was an attorney for ACORN when he worked as a “community organizer” in Chicago. ACORN will be gathering data for the 2010 Census. 

...Hamilton is also an enemy of the First Amendment and religious freedom. Interestingly enough, Hamilton has ruled that prayers in Jesus Name at the Indiana House of Representatives was unconstitutional, but prayers to Allah were not.

18 comments:

Damien said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Damien said...

Pastorius,

Even if you knew nothing about Islam or Islamic theology wouldn't this upset you? I mean this would have upset me, even before 9/11. Even if we're wrong and the Islamic religion is no better or worse than Christianity, why do something like this? Liberals claim to support the separation of church and state. Well I support a genuine separation of church and state, but apparently unlike me, David Hamilton does not. If you want to support secularism, you can't make arbitrary exceptions. For the separation of church and state to be meaningful, it must include all religions. If its okay for Muslims to pray, why not Christians. If this is true, I definitively don't want this guy on the bench. Can you back up the claims made by the Traditional Values Organization and LGF?

Quoting the Wikipedia article you sited,
-----------------------------------------------------------
In November 2005, Hamilton drew headlines for ruling that the Indiana state legislature is not permitted to begin its sessions with Christian prayers, and that invocations must not use names like Jesus Christ or Christian terms like savior. Hamilton concluded that using proselytizing words in invocations at the statehouse violated the United States Constitution. "All are free to pray as they wish in their own houses of worship or in other settings," Hamilton wrote. "Those who wish to participate in a practice of official prayer must be willing to stay within constitutional bounds."
-----------------------------------------------------------

Now, can you back up the claim that he said there was nothing wrong with praying to Allah under a similar circumstance, where he had ruled it wasn't okay to mention Jesus?

The Traditional values Oranization article that you sited, states,
-----------------------------------------------------------
Hamilton is also an enemy of the First Amendment and religious freedom. Interestingly enough, Hamilton has ruled that prayers in Jesus Name at the Indiana House of Representatives was unconstitutional, but prayers to Allah were not.
-----------------------------------------------------------

Can you backup the entire statement using another source? because they don't go into any detail. I was able to backup the part about prayers in Jesus Name at the Indiana House. can you maybe find another source?

Damien said...

Pastorius,

I mean, if what they are saying is true, it should be possible to find at least one other source that backs up all of the Traditional Values Organization's claims and goes into much more detail.

Damien said...

Pastorius,

They don't even seem to site a source and this is something pretty serious to take on face value.

Anonymous said...

I have not found the opinion yet, but the crux of the argument he made, per reports, was that "Allah" is a generic name for "God", whereas "Jesus" is definitely specific to one religion and one religion only.

If that is the argument, it fails in that as used in Islam, "Allah" is NOT always a generic word for God. Just look at Malaysia, where Christians cannot use it anymore, per recently published news reports.

So, a Christian cannot invoke Jesus, Hindus cannot invoke Krishna, etc. But anyone can say "God" or "Allah" b/c they are supposedly generic enough.

Ro

Pastorius said...

Damien,
Thanks for pointing out that there are no other sources.

I'm going to have to be more wary of Gateway. This is the second time in the past few weeks that I've found weakness in his arguments.

Anonymous said...

I will try to find the published opinion and get a cite.

Ro

Damien said...

Pastorius,

You wrote,
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Damien,
Thanks for pointing out that there are no other sources.

I'm going to have to be more wary of Gateway. This is the second time in the past few weeks that I've found weakness in his arguments.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You're welcome. Glad you saw my comments. I'll let you know if I find anything on Judge Hamilton. Hopefully we will be able to confirm or debunk some of the bad things they said about him in that article.

Anonymous said...

http://indianalawblog.com/archives/2005/11/ind_decisions_f_6.html

This link takes you to the first reporting of the decision. Indiana Law Blog has a list of all his decisions - at least the ones appealed to the Seventh Circuit.

The site is pretty slow - guess lots of folks are researching this fellow.

Ro

Damien said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Damien said...

Ro,

Thanks,

Here's a direct link to the article you sent us. It only backs up part of this post's title, "Obama Judicial Nominee Says Prayers to Allah OK... But Not to Jesus" I can't find anywhere where it mentions Allah at all, and some of the links on that site were broken. I would however, like to find some articles backing up the other claims the Traditional values Organization made about some of the other rulings he made. They make him sound horrendous.

Anonymous said...

As you have discovered, most published legal decisions are not published on public-access websites.

I can check on Westlaw,(I have some other stuff I need to research, too) but that will take a day or two.

I don't know if I can link directly to the opinions; but will try to find some commentary regarding the opinions that may help.

I tried to e-mail you by clicking on your name, but nothing came up.

So check back here over the next day or so. I will post / link what I can.

Ro

Damien said...

Ro,

If its all true, we need to be able and should be able to back it up using some reputable source. We can't take stuff like this on faith because some bias blog told us so. It won't help, if we are proven wrong.

I'm sorry that I have to make it a policy not to make my email public, but I have my reasons.

Anonymous said...

I would never give out my e-mail address. Too many scary people.

OK - I also clicked on MR's and nothing came up either, and he indicated that his was available.

I only say this because it may be a copyright violation to actually post the opinions or copyrighted commentary on them. (I will check that out.) I could do a summary, but that is not authoritative. If I sent it to you or MR, however, you could at least read it and comment on it, if not publish it.

Everything public I found in a quick search is either blogs or newspapers.

I will get back to you one way or another.

Later,

Ro

Pastorius said...

Ro,
We don't necessarily have to have links. If all you can provide is old-fashioned citations, that will be good enough.

That way, people can reference what we are posting.

This blog is as much a record of these events (for future purposes) as it is a news, humor, and commentary site.

That's why I put up so many stories. I just think it's important to have a record of this progression towards the inevitable awful world war that is coming.

Damien said...

Pastorius,

Except we should have at least some standards, don't you think, so as to make sure that at least a majority of what is said here is correct?

Pastorius said...

Damien,
The old-fashioned way was to cite footnotes and bibliography. In the case of some law articles, that may be the best we can do. Law Journals are not, generally, published online, at least not without subscriptions.

We are an ABSOLUTELY NOT-FOR-PROFIT BLOG. We will not take money from any advertiser EVER.

Therefore, we have no money to pay for subscriptions. Everything done here is voluntary.

If we have information provided by one of our contributors, including you or any commenter, which is sourced material from a publication, we can post it, and others can fact-check it.

If it seems particularly dubious, then we ourselves would question it.

Doesn't that seem reasonable?

Damien said...

Pastorius,

Most certainly, it does sound reasonable.