The Justice Department has ordered that a replica Mojave cross put in the place of the original, which was stolen, be taken down:
Once federal officials discovered Thursday that it was a replica of the stolen cross, the Justice Department said it had to be taken down.
“It just gets crazier and crazier,” said Wanda Sandoz, who together with her husband, Henry, has acted as a caretaker for the cross for more than 25 years.
The employees removed the replica because a court injunction is in place that prevents any cross from being displayed at the site, Linda Slater, a spokeswoman for the National Park Service, said in a phone interview.
To verify the authenticity of the cross, the Park Service turned to their expert. On Thursday afternoon, the maintenance man tasked with replacing the plywood box when it is ripped away or covered with graffiti examined the new cross.
After determining that it had had none of the scratches and nicks the previous one had, he determined that it was a replica.
“We’re still under a court injunction,” Slater said. “We have to take it down.”
The Supreme Court has already ruled that the cross can stand, however, Eric Holder and the Obama Justice Department say different.
The issue here is the ACLU’s radical idea of the First Amendment. The left’s position is that the Founders’ original intent is that there be a wall between church and state, meaning that at no time could any government, federal, state or local, mention, participate in or generally appear to be a participant of.
They get this from Thomas Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptist Association in 1802:
Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man & his god, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state.
Funny how the left has no problem with original intent when it can be used to further their agenda, but original intent on matters like the Second Amendment have to be subjected to the “Living Constitution.”
Regardless, what Jefferson is talking about is an official state church. Jefferson, and the other Founders, were against the federal government nationalizing the churches and telling people they could only worship in the official church of the state. Someone explain to me how a memorial featuring a cross, built by veterans to honor and remember their friends lost in war, is equal to a “law respecting an establishment of religion” or prohibits the free exercise thereof?
Can a Wiccan not go to that cross, sit before it and worship the rock it sits on? Is there a federal marshall of Religion standing there preventing said worshipping?
This is an example of the left’s continued attempt to drive religion out of the country so that in the vacuum, the state can take its place.
