Delegate Carrico's Drunken War on the First Amendment

Del. Charles W. Carrico Sr., R-Grayson, and Sen. John S. Edwards, D-Roanoke, will debate amending the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom to add guarantees for school prayer and religious displays on public property tomorrow night at the University of Richmond School of Law.

  The program, the annual Mattox Debate, will be held in the law school's Moot Courtroom at 6 p.m. It is free and open to the public.

In last year's General Assembly, Carrico proposed amending the statute, which Jefferson wrote in 1786 and which is now part of the state Constitution. Carrico's House resolution failed after heated debate.

Carrico? This names sounds familiar. Whatever for? Carrico's main issue appears to undermine the First Amendent. School prayer is just the beginning. Last year, if you recall, Carrico sponsored an amendment to Thomas Jefferson's Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom (which had been incorporated into the Sate Constitution) allowing for religious displays and prayer in schools.  HB 537 failed to grasp the true meaning behind Jefferson's words: goverment and schools were to be seperate from religion. Somehow, I felt that allowing for schol prayer defeated the purpose.

Religion is a personal issue. If we all wouldn't shove our religions down everyone else's throat, the world would be a much, much happier place. Look at the Crusades. Look at the Middle East today. Religious extremism, Muslim and Christian, peppers today's world, causing much strife. Osama bin Laden. Pat Robertson. Following the path of many a dangerous bill, after passing the House, the Senate C & J Committee killed it 10-5.

Not only does Delegate Carrico not care much for the religion portion of the First Amendment, Delegate Carrico has a beef with the freedom of assembly portion also. Recall me going into a cursing fit about Carrico's anti-cursing legislation. It didn't dawn on me until later that the real dangerous bill was at the bottom, given barely a paragraph in my post.

HB 372 is a horrifyingly worded bill that would ban protest at "solemn ceremonies." No definition of "solemn ceremony" was given. THe entirety reads as follows:

Any person or persons who picket or assemble in protest at or near any solemn ceremony in a loud or unruly manner intended to disrupt the ceremony and the peace or order, such that the protest actually tends to inspire persons of ordinary courage with a well-grounded fear of serious and immediate breaches of public safety, peace, or order, is a participant in an unlawful assembly. Every person who participates in such an unlawful assembly is guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor.

What is a "solemn ceremony"? Without a definition, police are free to break up protests to practically anything. Is Carrico ignorant of the possibility of this or is it that he simply does not care? How about, say, an inaguration? It's a "ceremony", it could be "solemn", and they could crush your protests on the spot.

Never mind the First Amendment. Carrico is trying to legislate a bigger threat onto our horizon: drunken conductors with concealed handguns.

Carrico has introduced a scary pair of bills, one dealing with DUI and another dealing with concealed handgun permits. HB 401 would take away from localities the option to mandate fingerprinting for concealed handgun permits. Why? Good question. Localities are better in tune with the crime situation within their borders: top-down decrees to set their policies are probably not the best way to stop gun crimes.

Perhaps the scariest one of all, though, is HB 364. HB 364 would eliminate references to "trains" in the DUI and drugs statute, presumably making it easier for train conductors to be stoned drunkards. Be afraid. Be very, very afraid. I wonder who was lobbying for this.

Delegate Charles Carrico: anti-First Amendment, pro-stoned drunkard conductors.

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