The U.S. Supreme Court has resolved just how much prayer is OK at government meetings, but California’s law is a fresh and different battleground, according to a lawyer suing Eureka over city-backed religiosity.
So yes, the U.S. president can have a prayer breakfast if he wants, but mayor Frank Jager? Well, attorney Peter Martin said the state’s constitution is stricter, prohibiting any kind of promotion of religion.
On behalf of Eureka resident Carole Beaton, Martin is asking Humboldt County Superior Court to ban the city from holding prayers at city meetings and from using the mayor’s office to promote prayer.
That sort of thing should stop, he said, because article 16, section five of the state constitution forbids promoting religion. Martin said he hasn’t seen any case law that fully interprets that part of the constitution, so this could be a first.
Bring it on, said Jager, who by the way is leading a mayor’s prayer breakfast at 7 a.m. on Feb. 7 at the Wharfinger building in Eureka. “If they want to sue us, fine, we’ll take them on.”
Jager said he is definitely holding the breakfast in his official role as mayor, and not as a private citizen. Donations and ticket sales will pay the $700 rental fee for the city-owned building, he said, unlike last year when prayer space was provided for free.
After earlier complaints, Eureka clarified its invocation policy in May 2012, asking potential pray-ers to sign a volunteer form acknowledging that courts don’t allow references “to a specific religion, prophet or deity.”
Jager said that policy has been followed since, although Martin disagreed, saying a Hindu prayer back in August stepped over the sectarian line.
The mayor said Monday afternoon that he hadn’t yet seen the suit, which was filed on Friday and amended on Monday. But he knows the lawyer involved. “Peter Martin, he’s a good buddy of mine. We’ll invite him to the prayer breakfast. And if he doesn’t come, we’ll pray for him.”
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This article appears in Charter School Rift.
I’d be happier of grown adults — city employees — didn’t talk to their imaginary friends on the public’s dime.
I was dumbfounded when I saw this on the news! It’s so wrong!!
So will there be a voodoo priestess officiating? Because if you look at the empty storefronts, it doesn’t look like the standard religions have been doing too good a job of bringing down the mannah for Eureka.
So will there be a voodoo priestess officiating? Because if you look at the empty storefronts, it doesn’t look like the standard religions have been doing too good a job of bringing down the mannah for Eureka.
So will there be a voodoo priestess officiating? Because if you look at the empty storefronts, it doesn’t look like the standard religions have been doing too good a job of bringing down the mannah for Eureka.
“After earlier complaints, Eureka clarified its invocation policy in May 2012, asking potential pray-ers to sign a volunteer form acknowledging that courts don’t allow references “to a specific religion, prophet or deity.””
A N I N V O C A T I O N F O R E U R E K A
To Whom it May Concern,
Whoever you might be, we humbly ask thee to send lots of money. We’re not terribly worried about whom thee might take it from, and we note that Crescent City has a decent-sized payroll due to Pelican Bay. Just a thought.
We beseech thee, oh supernatural-being-who-we-cannot-name, to be kind to us, to grant us good health and joyous lives. Please get rid of the poor people in our streets, verily they are keeping customers from our doorsteps. Move the afflicted, in your divine wisdom, to someplace else. Tell the homeless to scram, oh magnificent but unnamed one (or several; delete the inapplicable).
Let our political leaders be wise, or at least get them reelected. With your generic superpowers, please stuff the ballot boxes on their behalf.
In the name of something-supernatural-but-legally-nonspecific, we, your humble servants, do pray.
Perhaps Mr. Jager will recall Jesus teaching that prayer should be a private rather than a public exercise. Indeed, the Gospel of Matthew tells us Jesus warned: “Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. . . . And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” — Matthew 6:1, 5-6 (NIV).
Julia, part of being a Christian is cherry-picking the parts of the Bible you want to follow, and which parts of God’s immutable truth you want to discard. You can lecture Christians about their own holy book, but they’ll counter by creatively reinterpreting God’s immutable truth, or openly ignoring God’s immutable truth.
one of the most memorable Eureka city council meetings ever featured a preacher wearing a Hawaiian-style shirt with American flags who belted out God Bless America to the tune from a little portable stereo…I was dumbfounded that this would go on at a public meeting. What a circus!
One can always count on Jewish protesting of Christian observance of faith ala Mitch who’s own religion spawned Israel which commits daily a huge crime against humanity, the stealing away of Palestine from Palestinians. One can count on hypocritical Jews to politically attack Christians wherever they can carrying on the Jewish religious war against Christianity that’s been going on for 2000 years. And vice-versa. What Mitch leaves out of the equation is the there was always another kind of Christianity that had nothing to do with that war between Jews and Pauline Christians, really between the Jewish priests and the Catholic priests, i.e. it was political war from the get-go. Some Christians, like some Jews, actually go beyond the constraints of their religions to find the Spirit of God. These people exist in any age but they are not the ones who participate in the religious wars of Abrahamic believers which produces the endless crap we see carried on here with atheists, mostly Jewish because Judaism’s god led them down the false path and left Jews in the lurch of reality of having a religious culture that has never learned how to be human beings, how to get along with other human beings. I mean 65 years and Israel is as hated today by every single Middle East neighbor as the day it was was established by Western power politics. I’m sorry but Judaism spawns a type of nationalistic insanity that repelled me to the point I refuse to join in my fellow Ashkenazim crime against humanity. And here I refuse to join in the Jewish attacks on Christianity when Judaism is represented by atheist Jews who war against Christian expression of Christian beliefs but when it comes to Jewish expression of Jewish beliefs, like supporting the crime against humanity that is Israel, well, the hypocrites like Heraldo Mitch will bring out the intellectual fascist weaponry quite quickly, censorship of uppity Christian critics.
Didn’t realize Mr Lewis is a bona fide nut.
But you forgot to add “anti-Semite” too in your exposure of having no reasoned argument to counter my post—thus your ADL copycat resort to slander and libel.
The “FU”/”Bring It On” arrogance at city hall is not Jager’s or George Bush’s fault.
They are victims of the legacy of plutocracy.
If you are on the side of the monied interests in your community or your nation…your electoral victory is almost always assured.
Always victorious…they can do no wrong….Eureka loves its lawsuits in defense of the indefensible…. police shootings, employee harassment, capricious firing of the police chief, settlements galore, and now…the City of Eureka is suing Eureka citizens to approve $8 million in bonds without a public vote… willing to waste additional public funds defending the self-serving spectacle of deity-worship??
Could the cumulative public-hours taken in prayer, and now in prayer’s legal defense, be better spent in more-competent pension planing?
Who will tell the people?
If one does not believe in prayer then don’t pray. If you do not believe in the mayor’s prayer breakfast then don’t go…..haters keep on hating.
And if you don’t like America, get the aich out. America: Love it or leave it.
Haters.
And your point is?
Why don’t you take your own advice, Mitch, and get out of Humboldt County, because you don’t love Humboldt County citizens or even Californians, do you, or do I have to remind you of your comment about the stupidity of Californians posted some weeks back? When we get pushy NYers here like you telling us Californians what to think and do so that your yuppie friends can feeeeel everso politically at home in Humboldt County where local working class people have lost so many jobs thanks to people like you coming here instead of fixing your own damn NY problems.
I love Humboldt County. You don’t but you won’t leave even though you do nothing to help the community here that you’re beholding to except create more senseless and needless political warfare against mainstream Americans and Humboldt County working class on your blog every day.
Sorry for again responding to Mitch’s comments but this man just won’t stop with his fascist censorship of comments on his blog. When Mitch stops censoring critics just because they post critical comments of his antics on his blog I will be happy to stop pointing out how this Prog political warfare hurts the community. What Mitch censored today was my speaking up to another enviro stupidity in action, this time enviros wanting to hurt the Willits working class people by shutting down a much needed highway bypass. And again, enviros team up with local businessmen to stop any development that would bring in big box competition so working class and poor are forced to pay their higher prices just like here with Larry Glass and Pierson teaming up with our enviro Progs to keep out Walmart and Home Depot so Larry and Bill can continue enjoying profits and monied lifestyles at Humboldt County citizen’s expense.
Mitch has a blog?
No thank-you Mitch. I already know what you have to say.
What concerns me as a resident of Eureka,
is the proliferation of half/way houses in
Eureka that are promoting religion.
When Teen Challenge (misnomer, mostly adults on probation) came to town, the then Community Development Director sat in their revival meeting clapping his hands and saying: “Yes, Jesus”. It did not matter to
him that they work the participants for free
and use our welfare services. It did not
matter to him that they were taking work from
our population. These people come from out
of town and Teen Challenge was charging $13.00 an hr. for them. No employee in town could put a person on the payroll that cheap.
We have the Mission, a religious organization and now the Catholic Charities.
If the religious issue is clouding the judgment
of those in power, then they should be recalled. Eureka is drawing in undesirable
people, our crime rate is one of the highest
in the nation. The city looks like a graveyard
for empty store fronts.
Good for those filing the lawsuit against the
Mayor.
Little known fact: Bill Pierson’s real name is Schmuel Piersonovichski. Jew.
Scraping the bottom of the barrel again for slander, Mitch? You know you could grow up and just stop your childishness. Your politics stink. Own up to it and deal with critics like a mensch instead of a nine-year-old bully using his blog toy against the locals.
While Eureka is going to HELL our mayor brings us Elmer Gantry!
There is no more “Heraldo”.
There is the laugh-riot “Mitchaldo” run by a “Mitch”.
A marvelous public display of a blogger obsessed by poster’s identities and headline stories that, inevitably, become focused on “Mitch”!
It would make a great editorial in the UCLA psych. dept. newsletter:
“In his recent outbursts, this blogger is “baffled” why so few people are willing to post articles on his site, and yet, they ‘dare to criticize it’…(just before critic’s ability to post is terminated!).”
N.C.J. staff; Why was Mitch’s post that provided the world with a link to HIS blog taken down?
My guess is either a policy prohibiting the posting of URLs or a policy prohibiting the posting of false URLs (which is what I did, in a fairly feeble attempt at self-deprecating humor).
I have no problem with either policy, especially after my experience of attempting to keep a blog at least slightly on track. It’s astonishing how little it takes to poison the atmosphere in a cyberspace neighborhood.
@Brian
Sigh, yeah. Mitch has it almost right. It’s not so much a policy as it is a necessary reaction to the torrent of spam on our site. The fact is if you include a link in your comment it is at risk of being swept up with the other spam. It’s our problem. Change is on the horizon.
I understand…. thanks
Oh. And good luck.
You know there’s a very easy solution to your problems as Prog political promoters using your blogs to divide the community politically. Stop doing it. Stop the identity fraud that seems so attractive to Prog activists, and stop the Prog censorship of opposing political views. Let the community members speak their minds without these tiny selfish minded elitist Progs trying to control the political climate in Humboldt County.
Mitch got what he deserved when he refused to stop censoring my posts. Now he’s whining about his karma and fellow Proggies here at NCJ step in to mother the poor fellow and say it’s going to be alright. We’re going to fix it. Right. Fix it so the community members whose politics NCJ doesn’t like will probably be facing more censorship on this blog which so far hasn’t suffered from such like the NCJ letters do. Going on over well over a decade of censoring Steve Lewish letters to NCJ and that meant Humboldt County didn’t hear the homestead eco-damage news because Progs were blocking it, just like Mitch did a couple of days ago, when he censored my comments re the stupidity of another enviro protest and lawsuit shaping up in Willits.
I am amazed Journalism classes do not teach the importance of allowing free communications to happen between citizens of the communities serviced by community news venues. When community information is censored for political reasons you get a lop-sided community response to whatever problems that arise that evoke broad community response. For example we rarely see blue-collar working class people commenting on these prominent community blogs like this one. Why not? Where are they?
I can tell you because I’ve been approached and praised by timber workers who are afraid to voice their opinions because of not having the language skills of yuppie activists with their college educations, i.e., a real class war division happening at the community communications level. You guys can stop this but won’t because you are used to using community information venues like the NCJ for political manipulation of the community by selective news and politically based choices of letters and articles published. When the information flow is deliberately distorted for political reasons we get dysfunctional community response–and we can change this if those in charge of community discussion venues stop playing God or Talibans with other community member’s expressed opinions.
Here’s another example of the same community free speech rights being trashed by somebody in position to block community information, this time a Lake County Sheriff.
“The fight flared in October when Rivero told Lake County News editor Elizabeth Larson in an email that he would block her emails, not take her phone calls and that she and her husband must file formal public records requests to get information, according to the lawsuit.
first amndment cltnPeter Scheer, Executive Director of the First Amendment Coalition that advocates for open government and free speech, said the First Amendment and California’s public record laws are clearly designed to prohibit public officials from deciding the arbiters of good reporting.
“No public figure likes their press,” Scheer said. ”Too bad, grow up. If you’re going to be a public official, you have to be able to take some heat. And that heat is protected by the First Amendment.”
Mitch took over the Heraldo blog that positioned itself as a prominent Humboldt County current event news outlet with what seems to have been a mole in the Times-Standard office who provided news scoops to keep Heraldo’s blog newsworthy. But Heraldo was like the Lake County Sheriff and routinely stopped critics of Heraldo like yours truly and probably dozens of other Humboldt citizens who saw their comments disappear into thin air on Heraldo. The NCJ, another current events community venue also engages in the same Lake County Sheriff’s censorship of critics. And again these are prominent community news venues which are protected as private property but are they really that? Not when one knows how and why the NCJ was started as a place where community issues could be addressed by community members.
Mitch has a sharp mind, it’s just not deep, which is exactly what Wall Street headhunters look for.
I wish that Steve Lewis would put more links in his comments.
I guess I should’ve put a link to the Lake County Sheriff’s report that I got from the Humboldt Sentinel as copy and paste spread the typing all over this page. You mostly see my comments addressing community issues but actually my consuming interest is in the spiritual information I’ve been lucky enough to receive and pass along to the world. So here’s a link to the world’s oldest form of Christianity, Celestial Torah Christianity, that is at least 2000 years older than Judaism or traditional Christianity. Go to: hppt://biomystic.org/celestialtorah.htm. By being a modern Gnostic Christian theology, Celestial Torah Christianity is not Bible dependent and thus Celestial Torah Christianity will escape the inevitable End Times of all Abrahamic religions based on the Bible. Here’s the historical discovery information the permanently destroys the Hebrew Bible as any viable source of spiritual authority because the writers of the Bible are now proven liars creating lie after lie as their myths of origin. See The Bible Unearthed video showing the findings and conclusions of Israeli archeologist Israel Finkelstein and Neil Silberman at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t440bxhn1qA&feature=share&list=FLmu6OgSAiAyyTMaLjpE1O1A
One of the dozen posts Mitchaldo recently censored was one that claimed to dislike Steve lewis’ posts but is saddened that they were being censored by a “progressive”. They’re easy to skip, for anyone with minimal reading skills.
Reading Mitch blame others for “poisoning” his “atmosphere” says it all. Foul language remains uncensored because it’s on track!
Steve Lewis is correct about one thing, Average people with average writing skills are not welcome as guest journalists by local and national media, even the Eco-News.
Snappy, entertaining, human-interest pulp is what serves as “journalism” today.
Most believe that “Truth” is what you find in-between opposing views.
No need to look further.
Obviously Steve Lewis did not get my joke.
I DEMAND that the national media be more welcoming of average people with average writing skills.
And I DOUBLE-DEMAND that the local media be more welcoming of average people with average writing skills, and especially of below average people with below average writing skills. Such people only rarely are invited to write for Eco-News. It’s a travesty, I tell you, a persistipant tragedy!
Yet again Mitch proves himself a nine-year old mean little kid. I would like to see you, Mitch, make your trashie yuppie NY-college educated putdown of working class people and poor in their faces personally and see how they take your humor done at their expense. I don’t like to call names because they don’t convey truthful information usually but in this case, they do: What an ass you are, Mitch, consistently. We are so blessed to have the likes of you here to downgrade the intellectual commentary.
For anyone who might be interested in WTF this odd comment chain is about, Steve Lewis had been prevented from posting to a local blog whose owner left me the valet keys. I decided to let Steve have a shot at the front page, because I couldn’t think of any better way to make clear why his posts had been banished.
I was warned by another person holding valet keys that I’d be sorry. That person was correct.
What I hadn’t counted on was the three or four other nutcases who have since joined the anti-censorship crusade, and their extending it to other local blogs.
None of it’s any concern of mine or yours, but in case anyone was interested, now you have one side of things.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled prayers.
I think the “nutcase” nine-year old mean little kid is yelling is more appropriately applied to the falling star Mitch who seem unaware of how much damage has been done to both Heraldo and Mitch’s political careers. The endless personal smears of Heraldo against critics like me that Mitch still shouts out in inappropriate response to reality are not going to be received anymore as anything other than Mitch’s childish tantrums. When one loses the argument and Mitch and tag-team partner Eric most certainly did on their attempts to justify intellectual fascism, more commonly known as censorship of opposing points of view, the appropriate response would be apology but we won’t ever see that–not from our boy from NY come here to teach us Californies what’s what. What’s what seems to have backfired on the Heraldo but if it helps you cope, Mitch, do keep your running attack up on me. We are here to serve… up Proggies for breakfast everyday of the year.
Thanks for more “keepers” Mitch!
Another rant against your brothers and sisters!!??
“Average People” are the authors of the most popular section of every newspaper and magazine in letters to the editor, as well as, explaining the popularity of the blogs themselves!
This is just like your equally bigoted dismissal and condemnation of the 70% of disfranchised U.S. eligible voters who abstain, calling them: “those people”.
Who can fathom the self-indulgence required to complain about your petty-tyranny blog being “poisoned” and “regretting the effort” …on the NCJ blog!
Censoring posts because they “annoy” you is a sign of intolerance, not intelligence. A bloated ego that your popular predecessor lacked.
Anonymous,
If they’re eligible to vote but abstaining from voting, they’re not disenfranchised except by their own decisions, are they?
Explain it all to us.
“What I hadn’t counted on was the three or four other nutcases who have since joined the anti-censorship crusade, and their extending it to other local blogs.”
If true, the only logical conclusion is that Mitch is a nutcase for responding on other blogs.
Big egos dig deep holes.
“I decided to let Steve have a shot at the front page, because I couldn’t think of any better way to make clear why his posts had been banished.”
Mitch took one of my posts and made it a headline himself! Instead of ridicule, it received accolades!
Mitch became “annoyed” and posted the comment that “a child could write better”, just before I was summarily banished (censored) from all future comments!
It’s very sad to see Mitch unable to censor this string, it’s obviously painful.
This is a grieving period over the loss of a formerly popular blog that would have been ALL OVER the new hotel on Eureka’s death- strip 101, or having (yet another) player from the development community appointed to the county planning commission…all receiving scant attention elsewhere….the former gist of that formerly wonderful blog run by an individual who didn’t require every headline to focus glowingly on himself…or else…
The vast majority of eligible voters in the U.S. abstain from voting. They are not “disenfranchised” from the act of voting, they are disenfranchised from their own culture that not only ignores them (and degrades their “averageness”), it has rapidly divested from their basic needs in education, housing, health, and jobs for a generation with little alarm from a “free-press”! Disenfranchised people, obviously, do not vote, even their “public” universities, (that they can no longer afford), encourage apathy, doing nothing to tailor a little educational motivation for the 90% of our “educated” young adults in college who also choose not to vote.
All of “The People’s” U.S. Congress and representatives are millionaires, our cities, states and most media are controlled by the deepest pockets, there was no public vote on “free-trade”, or to train other nation’s children to takeover tens of millions of U.S. jobs, and to hide the profits of slavery in legalized offshore accounts….or to loot the U.S. Treasury in bailouts for banks while public schools close, bridges and sewers fail, and streets decay. Most people have no idea what caused the economic collapse that’s still raging…ancient media history!? No media ever mentions our imperial economy, but that’s what it is. Local media can’t even tell citizens why developers dominate rural politics here, what do they get in return? Who pays? How many foreclosures and bankruptcies were there in your neighborhood or community last year? “Inappropriate” front-page news?
“Inappropriate” for whom?
There have been a few 3rd party candidates, ignored by the press and barred from debates.
Please explain how blaming the uninformed for being….uninformed, serves a purpose other than supporting your superiority complex, Mitch?
Didn’t Steve Lewis and Rose Welsh host a radio program on KHSU at one time? Can you imagine what nutty topics were discussed on that train wreck?
If Mitch ran KHSU you can bet no one would have heard it, “train wreck”, or not.
Who decides?