Congress shall make no law...

It seems that in one particular senior center in Georgia, senior citizens are being told that because a large portion of the cost of their meals is being covered by federal money they are no longer allowed to pray out loud before their meal. Now this did not come about as the result of a complaint by any of the senior citizens that use the center, nor by any of the employees or volunteers that work there but by an executive of the food vendor that supplies the food, one Mr. Tim Rutherford. He claims that he his only obeying federal guidelines that he must observe as a federal contractor. The only problem is that the US Constitution expressly forbids such regulations in the clearest possible language. The founders considered it such an important principle to establish at a time when state sponsored religious persecution was quite common that it gave these words pride of place as the very first words of the Bill of Rights, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..." There are no exceptions to this law. None. But then, perhaps its the unambiguous clarity of this legal document that so confounds lawyers and befuddles jurists. For more on this story please click here.