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posted by martyb on Thursday April 13 2017, @01:03AM   Printer-friendly
from the it-is-not-the-law...-yet dept.

Alabama lawmakers have voted 24-4 to allow Briarwood Presbyterian Church in Birmingham to establish a police department. The church has over 4,000 members and is also home to a K-12 school and a theological seminary with 2,000 students and teachers:

"After the shooting at Sandy Hook and in the wake of similar assaults at churches and schools, Briarwood recognized the need to provide qualified first responders to coordinate with local law enforcement," church administrator Matt Moore said in a statement, referring to the mass murder of 20 first graders and six teachers at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut by a deranged man with an AR-15 style rifle just before Christmas 2012. "The sole purpose of this proposed legislation is to provide a safe environment for the church, its members, students and guests." The church would pay the bill for its officers.

[...] "It's our view this would plainly be unconstitutional," Randall Marshall, the ACLU's Acting Executive Director, told NBC News. In a memo to the legislature, Marshall said they believe the bills "violate the First Amendment or the U.S. Constitution and, if enacted, would not survive a legal challenge." "Vesting state police powers in a church police force violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment," his memo states. "These bills unnecessarily carve out special programs for religious organizations and inextricably intertwine state authority and power with church operations."


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  • (Score: 5, Touché) by goody on Thursday April 13 2017, @03:08AM (7 children)

    by goody (2135) on Thursday April 13 2017, @03:08AM (#493236)

    In 1978 the ACLU defended the rights of the Nazis' free speech, so there's an example of the ACLU caring about conservatives speaking.

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  • (Score: 3, Disagree) by jmorris on Thursday April 13 2017, @04:36AM (6 children)

    by jmorris (4844) on Thursday April 13 2017, @04:36AM (#493254)

    No, National Socialists aren't Conservative; Pretty much the opposite in point of fact. Find anything in the Conservative Canon that supports any other opinion. Start with Kirk's The Conservative Mind, include National Review or any other widely read material in the Conservative movement. Or just go straight to Burke if you want. I'll wait. [Jeopardy music plays]

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 13 2017, @09:00AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 13 2017, @09:00AM (#493310)

      At first glance it looks like you are defending conservatives from the accusation of being nazis.
      But in fact you are a (((nazi]]] [soylentnews.org] who does not want to be associated with conservatives.

    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by goody on Thursday April 13 2017, @11:33AM (4 children)

      by goody (2135) on Thursday April 13 2017, @11:33AM (#493328)

      I'm not sure why you're using the "National Socialists" term, but I presume it's because that's the literal German term for Nazis, and some US conservatives often use this to claim Nazis are socialists and therefore leftist and/or liberal. They're not. The German term means nationalist. Note that I'm using the common US meaning of liberal and conservative which aligns more with left and right, and not the textbook one. Libertarians are essentially liberal right-wingers, but don't use that L word in front of them.

      My comment was somewhat tongue-in-cheek, and conservatives aren't Nazis, but there are plenty of Nazis that agree with and align themselves with conservatism or consider themselves conservatives and totally reject liberalism. Proper and educated conservatives like Kirk, Brooks, Buckley, and others may reject Nazism but the fact is many rank and file conservatives quietly agree with it. "Proper conservatives" for the most part rejected Trump, but you see what happened there, and Trump did get the Nazi vote out.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 13 2017, @03:57PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 13 2017, @03:57PM (#493460)

        He hopes that the only reason we think Nazis are deplorable is because they're called National Socialists.

        Perhaps he actually believes we've been brainwashed (by (((them)))) to hate only the name Nazi.

        Then he feels that he's justified in being a deplorable because he's not in an organization called National Socialism.

      • (Score: 2) by jmorris on Thursday April 13 2017, @04:30PM (2 children)

        by jmorris (4844) on Thursday April 13 2017, @04:30PM (#493479)

        No there aren't. There are government educated morons who neither know what a Nazi or a Conservative is, who LARP online. There are some in the Alt-Right however, although most of them are also just LARPing, they are the 1488 types who hang out at Stormfront and get abuse from all sides, because the real Nazis at Stormfront know they aren't on the Right and the rest of the Alt-Right knows Hitler was a Socialist and that Nazis are losers. Don't waste time feeling sorry for em though because they are f*ckin' Nazis.

        The German term means nationalist.

        No it doesn't. Nazi is a acronym and it means exactly what it says, National Socialist German Workers Party. You can find their official political Platform online with a click these days so ignorance is not excusable. Leave out the jew hate planks and Bernie Sanders would only object that the remainder doesn't go far enough. WWII was a fight between International Socialism (Russia, U.S. and England) and the heresies of National Socialism (Germany, sorta Italy) + Fascism ( Japan, sorta Italy).

        You guys really need to evolve your vocabulary beyond just calling anyone who isn't a Progressive a Nazi. It isn't working anymore.

        • (Score: 2) by goody on Thursday April 13 2017, @05:19PM (1 child)

          by goody (2135) on Thursday April 13 2017, @05:19PM (#493500)

          The Nazis weren't true socialists in the way we use the term in the US today. It's a typical conservative tactic to stress the word "Socialist" and deceive people into linking socialism in the US with Nazism. I'd like to say that isn't working anymore, but it's working quite well. If you pick and choose planks from their platform you can find compatibility with both left and right views in the US. But for some reason they're real keen with the right and Trump. You have to ask yourself, why is that?

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 13 2017, @08:05PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 13 2017, @08:05PM (#493607)

            Because Trump is a socialist just as surely as they are.