Extremely Lame

Thank you Indiana for making us look almost (but not quite) as bad as Kansas and Pennsylvania. Instead of looking like a bunch of backwards hicks that don’t know the difference between science and not science, we look like hicks that don’t understand the legal document upon which our laws are founded.

A judge has thrown out a case by the Indiana ACLU regarding an “In God We Trust” license plate. While I’m sure the issue with the guy bringing this to the attention of the ACLU was with the license plate itself, the part that made it cross the line, according to the ACLU, was that the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles was offering it for free, whereas other specialty license plates incur additional fees to drivers.

In addition to it just being a flat out establishment of religion by the government (by taking $3.69 from the Indiana Highway fund for each license plate to pay for these license plates instead of making the individual pay for it), an overwhelming level of stupid goes to the judge not for his decision, but for his stated reason for throwing out the case. Check this out:

“‘Courts are not to second-guess the Indiana General Assembly when it comes to calculations of this sort,’ Miller wrote, contrasting the In God We Trust plates with other specialty plates that require the payment of administrative fees.”

“Courts are not to second-guess the Indiana General Assembly”? Read that again. “Courts are not to second-guess the Indiana General Assembly.” Is this guy joking? ACTING AS A CHECK TO THE LEGISLATURE AND EXECUTIVE IS THE ENTIRE POINT OF HAVING AN INDEPENDENT JUDICIARY! How can you be a judge when you don’t even know something about your job that every high school kid is taught in government class?

Oh, and just you wait till this news breaks. You’ll have the extreme right wing religious nutters dancing in the streets claiming this as some sort of victory over those evil devil-worshiping atheists.