{"id":27,"date":"2008-08-26T18:56:34","date_gmt":"2008-08-26T18:56:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/lynnvsekulow\/2008\/08\/i-need-a-constitutional.html"},"modified":"2008-08-26T18:56:34","modified_gmt":"2008-08-26T18:56:34","slug":"i-need-a-constitutional","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/2008\/08\/i-need-a-constitutional.html","title":{"rendered":"I NEED A CONSTITUTIONAL"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>OK, this had to happen sometime in the first few weeks.&nbsp; I have to concede a point to you, Jay.Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito did defend the First Amendment free speech claims of a non-profit in the Wisconsin Right To Life case you cited.&nbsp; I didn&#8217;t like all the reasoning in it, but I don&#8217;t like over-regulation of political ideas in the name of &#8220;good government&#8221;. Campaign finance &#8220;reform&#8221; got us PACs and then 527s and hasn&#8217;t noticeably improved the caliber of government.<\/p>\n<p>Just a reminder: telling churches and charities with tax exemptions they can&#8217;t endorse candidates is fully appropriate regulation.<\/p>\n<p>On the broader issue, you know that we can&#8217;t only use the Constitution to protect things the framers talked about, at least insofar as we even have complete records of that.&nbsp; They didn&#8217;t discuss television, but surely the principle of free speech applies to televised images too.&nbsp; Also, they made it clear in the Ninth Amendment that just because a right isn&#8217;t articulated specifically in the first eight amendments doesn&#8217;t mean it doesn&#8217;t exist.&nbsp; Moreover, it might be held by &#8220;the people&#8221; or by &#8220;the states&#8221;&#8211;two different locales.&nbsp; What you do about a fetus in my view is a right &#8220;we the people&#8221; as individuals make. <\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;I would remind a few of my critical commentators that abortion is never discussed in the Bible.&nbsp; We do know that Jewish law didn&#8217;t even treat striking a woman and causing her to have a miscarriage as &#8220;murder&#8221;.&nbsp; We also know that the early Christian Church did not believe that life begins at conception.&nbsp; So this religious issue is one glommed onto by the Right today for its ideological purposes, not for theological ones.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>OK, this had to happen sometime in the first few weeks.&nbsp; I have to concede a point to you, Jay.Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito did defend the First Amendment free speech claims of a non-profit in the Wisconsin Right To Life case you cited.&nbsp; I didn&#8217;t like all the reasoning in it, but I&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":164,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,2,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-abortion","category-courts","category-election-08"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>I NEED A CONSTITUTIONAL - Lynn v. Sekulow<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/2008\/08\/i-need-a-constitutional.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"I NEED A CONSTITUTIONAL - Lynn v. Sekulow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"OK, this had to happen sometime in the first few weeks.&nbsp; I have to concede a point to you, Jay.Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito did defend the First Amendment free speech claims of a non-profit in the Wisconsin Right To Life case you cited.&nbsp; I didn&#8217;t like all the reasoning in it, but I&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/2008\/08\/i-need-a-constitutional.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Lynn v. Sekulow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-08-26T18:56:34+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Rev. Barry W. Lynn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"I NEED A CONSTITUTIONAL - Lynn v. Sekulow","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/2008\/08\/i-need-a-constitutional.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"I NEED A CONSTITUTIONAL - Lynn v. Sekulow","og_description":"OK, this had to happen sometime in the first few weeks.&nbsp; I have to concede a point to you, Jay.Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito did defend the First Amendment free speech claims of a non-profit in the Wisconsin Right To Life case you cited.&nbsp; I didn&#8217;t like all the reasoning in it, but I&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/2008\/08\/i-need-a-constitutional.html","og_site_name":"Lynn v. Sekulow","article_published_time":"2008-08-26T18:56:34+00:00","author":"Rev. Barry W. Lynn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/2008\/08\/i-need-a-constitutional.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/2008\/08\/i-need-a-constitutional.html","name":"I NEED A CONSTITUTIONAL - Lynn v. Sekulow","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/#website"},"datePublished":"2008-08-26T18:56:34+00:00","dateModified":"2008-08-26T18:56:34+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/#\/schema\/person\/98ebaf547801cce8ce6fff4c27f51fc8"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/2008\/08\/i-need-a-constitutional.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/2008\/08\/i-need-a-constitutional.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/2008\/08\/i-need-a-constitutional.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"I NEED A CONSTITUTIONAL"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/","name":"Lynn v. Sekulow","description":"A debate blog about church, state, faith and politics with Jay Sekulow and Barry W. Lynn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/#\/schema\/person\/98ebaf547801cce8ce6fff4c27f51fc8","name":"Rev. Barry W. Lynn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/32b\/32b0f12cad840c65bff61ad01e2664aax96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/32b\/32b0f12cad840c65bff61ad01e2664aax96.jpg","caption":"Rev. Barry W. Lynn"},"description":"Since 1992, the Rev. Barry W. Lynn has served as executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a Washington, D.C.-based organization dedicated to the preservation of the Constitution's religious liberty provisions (www.au.org). In addition to his work as a long-time activist and lawyer in the civil liberties field, Lynn is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ, offering him a unique perspective on church-state issues. An accomplished speaker and lecturer, Lynn has appeared frequently on television and radio broadcasts to offer analysis of First Amendment issues. News programs on which Lynn has appeared include PBS's \"NewsHour,\" NBC's \"Today Show,\" Fox News Channel's \"O'Reilly Factor,\" ABC's \"Nightline,\" CNN's \"Crossfire,\" CBS's \"60 Minutes,\" MSNBC's \"Countdown with Keith Olbermann,\" Fox News Channel's \"Hannity & Colmes,\" ABC's \"Good Morning America,\" CNN's \"Larry King Live\" and the national nightly news on NBC, ABC and CBS. On the radio, Lynn serves as host of \"Culture Shocks,\" a daily look at various issues affecting society and the culture. In the 1990s he served for two years as regular co-host of \"Pat Buchanan and Company\" and after that did a weekly syndicated radio program, \"Review of the News,\" with Col. Oliver North. Lynn is a regular guest on nationally broadcast radio programs, including National Public Radio's \"All Things Considered,\" \"Morning Edition\" and \"Talk of the Nation,\" as well as having appeared on national networks such as CBS Radio, CNN Radio, ABC Radio and AP Radio. Lynn began his professional career working at the national office of the United Church of Christ, including a two-year stint as legislative counsel for the Church's Office of Church in Society in Washington, D.C. From 1984 to 1991 he was legislative counsel for the Washington office of the American Civil Liberties Union. In 2006, Lynn authored Piety & Politics: The Right-Wing Assault On Religious Freedom (Harmony Books). In 2008 he coauthored (with C. Welton Gaddy) First Freedom First: A Citizen's Guide to Protecting Religious Liberty and the Separation of Church and State (Beacon Press). Lynn writes frequently on religious liberty issues, and has had essays published in outlets such as USA Today, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Nation. Lynn also has op-eds published frequently by the McClatchy and Scripps-Howard newspaper chains. A member of the Washington, D.C. and U.S. Supreme Court bar, Lynn earned his law degree from Georgetown University Law Center in 1978. In addition, he received his theology degree from Boston University School of Theology in 1973. Lynn, who was born in Harrisburg, Pa., and raised in Bethlehem, Pa., lives in Chevy Chase, Md., with his family.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/author\/blynn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/164"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}