The U.S.  government archives says that the following are the words of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution:

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Any law that gives rights on the grounds of religion is “an establishment of religion”.  So the clauses in the ACA (Obamacare) that give religious organizations the right to ignore rules that everyone else must obey is “an establishment of religion”.  In order  for the government to know which establishments qualify for a religious exemption, they must set up criteria for “an establishment of religion”.  Could the U.S. Constitution be any clearer that this is unconstitutional?

To allow any corporation an exemption from a rule that requires the declaration of a religious reason for that exemption is “an establishment of religion”.  If people who do not declare religion as a reason cannot get the exemption, then this is “an establishment of religion”.

How many of our current Supreme Court Justices could pass a first grade reading comprehension test if they cannot comprehend the first 10 words of the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights?

I wonder if the Senate needs to ask all prospective judicial appointees what they think those 10 words mean before the Senate can give consent to a judicial appointment.

The Real News Network has the interview with Larry Wilkerson What’s Driving Putin & Obama’s Posturing on Ukraine?  

There is a very good statement on what we ought to do, but i have chosen to highlight the ending remarks for those people who don’t have the time to watch the video below.

WILKERSON: The United States’s role has been the same in Kiev, I think, that it is in Caracas and that it was before in Damascus, and that is essentially fomenting regime change, whether you’re doing it through the National Endowment for Democracy, its counterparts the IRI and the NDI, or with the CIA, who are all in tandem, which is what I think we’re doing. We have no one to blame but ourselves for what results when a great power sitting on the border of the country we’re trying to change the regime in suddenly objects. I mean, this is Hungary in 1956, when we egged, by propaganda and CIA covert actions, the Hungarians to rise up. And they rose up, and the Soviet tanks rolled in. Or it’s Prague in 1968. We’ve been through this before. It’s just Russia now and not the U.S.S.R., but some things simply don’t change. Great power and the influences and moves and the procedures that they go through in exercising that power simply don’t change over time. So it doesn’t matter whether it’s Putin or Catherine the Great or some future leader of Russia, or whether it’s Obama or Mitt Romney. Their hands should be tied in terms of taking this further and risking a really serious war.

With matters as serious as this, I wish that world leaders could dispense with the need to play political gamesmanship. What ever happened to the “no drama Obama” that I thought I voted for? Despite the constant calls for war from McCain and Graham, I had hoped Obama could resist forever. Unfortunately, having Clinton as Secretary of State didn’t bolster Obama’s resistance. John Kerry seemed more amenable to being reined in, but I start to wonder about him as well.

What do you suppose Obama and Putin talk about in their extended phone calls?  Could they possibly play these childish political games and do it with a straight face for an hour or so?