By Neece
Last night Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) filed a D.C. voucher amendment to the second jobs bill under consideration by the Senate. The D.C. voucher program uses taxpayer funds to pay for parents to send their children to private religious schools. The program is called the “D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program,” but a 2007 government report found that these vouchers do not give D.C. students seeking a private school education sufficient secular choices, forcing them to attend religious schools or remain in the failing public school system.
By design, voucher programs aid struggling Christian schools. A July 2009 report by Rutgers University on the D.C. voucher program concluded that the way the voucher program is structured “essentially push[es] students into Christian Association and Catholic schools, pricing out independent (non-religious) schools and Hebrew schools.”
By continuing this program, those of us who do not wish to subsidize someone else’s church will…
By Neece
Written by Katrina Vanden Heuvel for The Nation:
This Fourth of July, those who identify themselves as non-believers, or humanists, or atheists — or a whole host of other names which signify a nontheistic worldview — have much cause for celebration. After eight years in the Bush wilderness — and an even longer period of ostracism by the Washington political establishment — a rising demographic of like-minded Americans and a new president are guiding us back to our roots as a secular nation.
“We have generally been a pariah group in America,” says Woody Kaplan, Advisory Board Chair of the Secular Coalition for America. “Pretty much unrecognized by the political establishment. Yet there’s almost no religious group in America as large as us…. We were that third rail that politicians failed to touch.”
Indeed when the Obama Administration invited the Coalition to the White House for
…
By Neece
This wasteful and egregious threat to the First Amendment has popped up in several places recently. Over at Heaving Dead Cats, there is a good post explaining what Congressman Dan Lungren is proposing in a resolution, along with links for the full text of the bill and a history of the slogan in question, among others.
This also came to my attention through the West Virginia Atheists group, which copied a press release from American Atheists. Apparently, according to American Atheists, A House committee has already approved the religious slogans!
Govtrack has the status of the resolution, along with lots of information as well.
Back at Heaving Dead Cats, there is a link to Take Action Now that you can follow, which is from the Secular Coalition for America. There you can edit and send a letter to your Representatives telling them to vote…
By Neece
From Saturday, July 18 2009
To Tuesday, July 21 2009
Register NOW for four days of immersion in the excitement of Washington D.C.
* Hear what’s on Congress’s agenda right now
* Learn how lobbying works
* Meet and hear from Congressional staffers
* Learn about The Credibility Project, an analysis of the 650 global warming denier “experts”
* Visit the National Archives and other historical sites
* Go on a walking tour of Robert Green Ingersoll’s life in Washington
Lobby your own members of Congress (with a little help from your friends)
Schedule: (Tentative-Congress sets the agenda in Washington)
Saturday, July 18
* Arrivals and Welcome at the Center for Inquiry
Sunday, July 19
* What’s moving through the Congress? Briefing by Toni Van Pelt and Ruth Mitchell
* The Credibility Project, a presentation by Thomas O’Brien and Stu Jordan
*…
Last night Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) filed a D.C. voucher amendment to the second jobs bill under consideration by the Senate. The D.C. voucher program uses taxpayer funds to pay for parents to send their children to private religious schools. The program is called the “D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program,” but a 2007 government report found that these vouchers do not give D.C. students seeking a private school education sufficient secular choices, forcing them to attend religious schools or remain in the failing public school system. 
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