November/December 2000

NOS Liberty

When I first met Anthony Alexander, it was not at all obvious he had spent more than two years waiting to die.

When he gathered up his trouser leg to reveal a long, ugly scar, I knew it had to be so. But that scar was only a mistake, a slipup by guards determined to leave no outward marks from a continuing cycle of torture and abuse.

Politics 2000 and the Wavering Wall. . . .

Praise the Lord and Bust Some Heads

"In God We Trust"--these four simple words are known to every child in America who has ever purchased an ice-cream cone or a can of soda with U.S. currency. But for several years various segments of society have worked hard to banish "In God We Trust" from the currency of the realm.

The choice of Senator Joseph Lieberman, a practicing Orthodox Jew, as running mate with Democrat presidential candidate Al Gore has plunged Americans into a new stirring of the pot about the role of religion in a country whose constitution prohibits formal support of any particular faith. And what is enigmatic is how many Democrats and the media, after decades of castigating Evangelical Protestants for too-public exposure of personal religion, raptly listened while the just introduced vice presidential nominee inserted more than a dozen references to God into the first five minutes of his acceptance speech in Los Angeles. Suddenly civil religion has become acceptable.

" Inappropriate for my classroom," determined the first grade teacher. At issue was not soft-porn literature, violence, or an Internet threat--at issue was a 6-year-old boy's right to read aloud a story from the Bible. The result is an out-of-school tale that could define the boundaries for religion in public schools and end up in the Supreme Court before it blows over. And it all began over a simple story.