re: #363 Killgore Trout

I’m pretty sure government officials cannot coerce an individual citizen to pray. Read the NYT article, that’s not what this decision is about.

Instead of the article, read the decision. In fact, read part V. Here:

This brings me to my final point. I am troubled by the message that some readers may take from the principal dissent’s rhetoric and its highly imaginative hypotheticals. For example, the principal dissent conjures up the image of a litigant awaiting trial who is asked [*24] by the presiding judge to rise for a Christian prayer, of an official at a polling place who conveys the expectation that citizens wishing to vote make the sign of the cross before casting their ballots, and of an immigrant seeking naturalization who is asked to bow her head and recite a Christian prayer. Although I do not suggest that the implication is intentional, I am concerned that at least some readers will take these hypotheticals as a warning that this is where today’s decision leads-to a country in which religious minorities are denied the equal benefits of citizenship.

Nothing could be further from the truth. All that the Court does today is to allow a town to follow a practice that we have previously held is permissible for Congress and state legislatures. In seeming to suggest otherwise, the principal dissent goes far astray.

Once more, Kennedy says “oh, it could be taken that way but it’s not the way we mean it.” Every time he does it turns out that some people do indeed take it that way. See just for the elephant in the room Citizens United where he said pretty much the same thing about hypotheticals.

Can’t ‘make them’? Please read Roberts Rules again - the rules on which almost all committee rules in the US are based. You don’t get to speak till the Chair recognizes you. And per the basic rules, the chair and the committee may establish rules for peculiar (specific) behaviors of address so as to maintain that decorum.

Normally that means they are required to begin with acknowledging all present. (M. Chairman, esteemed council, my fellow citizens, …) Some places have required what a amounts to a bit of propaganda (acknowledging the authority of the school board, declaiming the greatness of the State of Texas, etc.). Ritual ‘May be necessary to establish decorum unsettled by the subject at hand.’ (paraphrase).

Bottom line, KT, yes they can.