The state has no role here. The parents did the very best they could. Unfortunately, it was piss poor. But there is no criminality, no malice aforethought, just ignorance. It's sad; it's not a crime.

Think of it this way; they have already paid the ultimate price; the life of their precious child. What else could the state take from them of more value for punishment?

Society is owed nothing here. Let the living grieve the dead, let's all count our blessings, say a prayer and move on.

Rest in peace, Madeline.

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Legal precedents need to be set so that parents must act in the "Best Interests of the Child", irrespective of religious practice.

Fundamental freedoms such as the right to religion and its expression/exercise should never allow for the fatal neglect of children. That is absurd and dangerous.

Other religious parents need to know that simply praying while your childs physical health deteriorates before your eyes...while you stubbornly avoid doctors because God will lend his transparent hand...jesus christ, that is criminal! Once your eighteen or old enough to have a mature opinion on the matter (whatever that is) You can rightfully die. But not children,

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Whatever the form of ignorance (religiosity, homeopathy, chiropractic, veganism, the list goes on and on)if it results in harm to a child it must be prosecuted. These parents were no different than ones who leave poison accessible for children. We prosecute parents for drug abuse, physical abuse, failure to properly nurture, and we must prosecute religious ignorance when it results in harm. This child was denied a life because her parents suffered from deadly viral ignorance: religiosity.
Enough is enough. When will this country join Europe in recognizing religiosity for the ignorant and deadly disease it is.

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This girl died for ignorance. And ignorance is no excuse. What's ironic in this is that these are the same people who would prosecute a woman who miscarries for child neglect or abuse but then sit by and let their daughter die. Pathetic.

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Isn't it true that americans cannot access medical care and attention unless they are willing to pay big bucks for it?

Therefore, there must also be plenty of americans who die, or whose children die, because of their lack of finances, and not because of their religious beliefs?

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However, when a child's medical condition worsens, it is incumbent on the parents to seek appropriate care for the child. Failure to do so is nothing short of child abuse, and in this particular case, the authorities should be investigating such an angle.

Hoorah! Now I fully expect the author to write a similar article about every instance in which a person takes their child into the hospital for care and the child dies.

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Considering that the child in discussion is 11, she was probably developing type I diabetes, where the immune system attacks the pancreas, which then stops producing insulin. My own brother developed type I diabetes when he was fifteen. But the symptoms presented like the stomach flu - fatigue, nasuea, lack of appetite, fever. When we took my brother into the doctor's after he'd been sick for over a week, THE DOCTORS told us it was the stomach flu too. Like what was described in the article, my brother suddenly took a turn for the worse that weekend. He became barely responsive when we talked to him, couldn't concentrate on a full sentence, kept falling asleep after only a few minutes of being awake, and extremely hard to wake up. But it was just a bad strain of the stomach flu, right? My parents were starting to doubt it, but it was a Sunday, and my parents wanted to wait till the next day to take him to the doctors. I knew something was wrong, and argued with my parents until they were convinced to take him to the emergency room. Once there, the doctors FINALLY realized what was wrong with him, and told us that we were right to bring him in - if we hadn't, he would have been comatose with probable brain damage in less than 12 hours, and likely dead within 18. 18 hours would have been 10 am - the time when my parents were planning to wake him to take him to the doctor's office.

Untreated, my brother's condition would have gone from presenting like the stomach flu to coma or death within 36 hours. Luckily, it was a weekend, and we were home with him and paying attention. But if a child declines in the middle of the night rather than the middle of the day, and seemed to have the stomach flu the day before, a parent might not think it so strange that her child is sleeping so much for a day, and the end of that 36 hours would fall in the middle of the night, and the unsuspecting parents may wake to find that their child who seemed to have the stomach flu is dead.

When even the doctors didn't correctly diagnose my brother and we, not a family to turn to prayer to cure us, almost didn't catch it in time, I can't hold these parents to blame. When they say they didn't know how sick their child was, I believe them, because I've been through it myself. My heart goes out to them in their grief and guilt.

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A recent study in Canada of adult strokes in those under the age of 39 found that about 50% were the result of chiropractic manipulation. Why does no reputable and accredited college have a chiropractic department? Because it is snake oil.

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Maribelle,

You use some legal terms but you seem to be ignorant of some very important ones.

To start with “malice aforethought” is not a standard for criminality. I assume you mean pre-meditation and it only applies to the most extreme cases like First Degree Murder.

Negligent Homicide does not require malice or pre-meditation. It simply requires that someone acts with negligence and that those actions result in another’s death.

Under this standard I would be very surprised if a Grand Jury doesn’t indict.

This bring me to my next point. You claim that this is somehow an “Impossible standard” because you fear “someone from PETA who works as a prosecutor starts going after people who give meat to their children”. Do you seriously think a grand jury would indict if a DA tried that? Do you seriously think that DA would get re-elected?

Far from being an impossible standard I believe that this an extremely reasonable standard and I think asking a jury of our peers to examine the facts in this case is certainly warranted.

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and tragic but to exploit this for the gain of bashing religion should be shameful. im not a religious person but i don't take joy in seeing religious people suffer to prove a point. im sure somewhere someone can dig up a story where the ideology prominent on alternet resulted in suffering, tragedy or death but why? then again maybe people should start doing that.

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A christian has given illustration of natural selection and evolution at work. christian ignorance has been selected out of the gene pool.

dboy

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'nuff said.

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.....there is every indication that religion is worse than a waste of time. The evidence is overwhelming. Those too ignorant or too wedded to their insane ideology deserve to have bad things happen. That's not to say I wish a child's death on them, but I do wish that every religious moron would reflect seriously on this story.

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So if anyone in your care becomes sick and dies, and you (for whatever reason) DID NOT seek out STANDARD MEDICAL TREATMENT, you may find yourself in front of a Grand Jury?

I think if people BELIEVE in standard medical treatment they should be allowed to seek it.

When you criminalize ANY OTHER MEDICAL OPTION you have eliminated any CHOICE.

Standard medical treatment OR Jail time, does not strike me as the only 2 options of a truly FREE people.

And last time I checked; STANDARD MEDICAL TREATMENT KILLS 100,000 PERSONS EVERY YEAR, from hospital obtained infections and improper dispensing of prescriptions ALONE.

I missed the equal OUTRAGE on this fact from those so willing to JUDGE this SAD incident and the equal outrage that we have no LEGAL alternative to a broken medical system.

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to a psychiatric hospital for a very long time. Religion is
caused by any one or more of about half a dozen mental
illnesses. The truth about religion can be found in these
books:

"The Neuropsychological bases of god beliefs" Dr. Michael A. Persinger MD,
psychiatrist 1987 "Religious people are just like my temporal lobe patients"

"The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bi-Cameral Mind" Julian
Jaynes Professor, Harvard University 1976 "Religious people are just like
schizophrenic patients"

"The Psychiatric Interview in Clinical Practice" Roger A. MacKinnon, M.D.,
Robert Michels, M.D. W. B. Saunders Co. 1971 "Religiosity is a common
symptom [of] schizophrenic patients"

"The God delusion" by Richard Dawkins. "Religion is caused by a kind of
computer virus that infects the living computer, the human brain."

"The Science of Good and Evil" by Michael Shermer, 2004 "Morality and Ethics
are now in the jurisdiction of Science and greatly improved thereby."

Many books in the new science called "Sociobiology": Morals and ethics are
instinctive and they evolved.

"God: The Failed Hypothesis" by Victor Stenger Scientific proof that god does
not exist.

"The God Part of the Brain" by Matthew Alper 1996. "The USA is anomolusly
religious because many early founder groups were religiously insane and fleeing
prosecution in Europe. Religion is a genetic disorder."

"The Accidental Mind" by David J. Linden, 2007 Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press. Religion is caused by the extreme klugeyness of the "designed"
by evolution brain. In particular, the narrative creation system cannot be turned
off. It generates false narratives that are believed by the generating person. This is
seen in experiments done in the laboratory. This book has the best explanation of
resistance to evolution: "There has also been an assumption that if one accepts the
idea that life developed without divine intervention, it necessarily follows that all
aspects of religious thought must be rejected. Those who take this line of
argument to extremes argue that when religious thought is rejected moral and
social codes will degenerate and "the law of the jungle" will be all that is left. It is
imagined by religious fundamentalists that those who do not share their particular
religious faith are incapable of leading moral lives." These suppositions are not
true many times over. Linden later mentions that the creationists [intelligent
design advocates] are exactly 180 degrees wrong rather than just a little wrong.
Being exactly wrong, they are unable to unlearn their error. See Sociobiology or
Sciobio.

"Scientists Confront Intelligent Design and Creationism" edited by Petto &
Godfrey, 2007. The ID and creationist crowd are trying to do away with science.
They see science as a "godless religion." Science is a process, not a religion.

"Manufacturing Belief" by Lewis Wolpert
http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2007/05/15/lewis_wolpert/

"The End of Faith" and "Letter to a Christian Nation" by Sam Harris

"Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon", by Daniel Dennett
Let's do scientific research on religion and find out what causes it.

"Origins of the Modern Mind" by Merlin Donald 1991 "So what did you expect
from a brain that is based on the Chimpanzee brain?

"Atheism, A Case Against God" by George Smith

"God is not Great; how religion poisons everything" by Christopher Hitchens, 2007

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The Neumann's PREACHER should be charged with MURDER IN THE FIRST
DEGREE. Their preacher is a psychopath who knows full well that what he
preaches is likely to lead to the death of his parishioners. He preaches anyway for
fun and mostly for $Profit$. Preachers get rich doing these things to their
parishioners. If 10 people tithe, the preacher's income is at least the average
income of the tithers. If 100 people tithe, the preacher's income is at least the 10
times the average income of the tithers. It is high time preachers start paying the
price for the harm they cause. Preachers should also pay income taxes.

Religion is a SCAM. ANY religion, there are 10,000 to choose from at any one
time. People keep inventing new religions [for the benefit of the "prophet," of
course] and forgetting other religions. ALL preachers, priests, imams, rabbis,
iatolas, etc. belong in jail for "grand theft, bunko type".

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As a sophomore undergraduate student in Physics, your homework in Probability
and Statistics class may include figuring out when the second coming would be
required, assuming that the bible was 100% true in the year zero. That is, when
would the bible be down to 50% true? The popular and professors' answer in
1965 was the year 500. The true answer: A friend of mine was born and raised in
Budapest, Hungary. As an adult, he came here and stayed. After 25 years, he
visited his home town of Budapest. He was unable to communicate with his high
school classmates because the Hungarian language had changed so much. The
correct answer is less than 25 years. The first gospel was not written down until
50 years after the alleged events and then in a different language. The people who
told the story were at about the same level of civilization as "wild Indians", I mean
Native Americans before Columbus got here. We have all played or seen played
the game called "Telephone" in which a story is passed down a line of re-tellers.
By the Sixth re-telling, the story has no resemblance to the original. The gospel
story had to have been re-told at least 6 times before it was mis-translated the first
time. [Note that whoever wrote it down the first time was free to write whatever
he wanted to. The storytellers were illiterate and unable to check his written text
by reading it. Besides that, he wrote in Greek rather than Aramaic.] Conclusion:
There is no truth anywhere in the bible, and there never was. There is no way to
know what "jesus" or "mohammed" or any other such character actually said or
did.

ALL of the jurisdictions that were formerly in the jurisdiction of religion have
been taken over by Science. There is no longer a need to debate the issue.
Religion is an unfortunate side effect of having evolved from a chimpanzee-like
animal in a very brief 6 or 7 million years. "God" will not save us from the
consequences of global warming or an asteroid impact or a tornado because there
is no such critter as "god.".] Ethics and morality are instinctive, not derived from
religion. Female instinct has greater force in morality than male instinct because
the female is in command of the sexual encounter. Look up "Sociobiology". The
origin of the Universe is the subject of Cosmology which is part of astronomy
which is part of the science of physics.

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Those who might think God does not exist but Medical Doctors are saints and gods would do well to extend prosecution for manslaughter or murder to all physicians who lose a patient during their course of malpractice.

What kind of numbers are we talking? Iatrogenic (physician induced) death, according to the FDA's published figures on their web site, causes over 100,000 deaths from mis-prescribed drugs in US hospitals annually.

It is an affront to anything 'progressive' to see articles that advocate limits on parental rights, individual judgement and freedom to replace God with witch hunts for parent's judgement, accurate or not. How do you think parents of crib death babies feel? It is a sick and neo-conservative mind that would propose obligatory medicine; especially with the dismal overall record of allopathic medicine. Technocracy with a flawed technology needs no more advocates, in spite of marketing hype for drugs, radiation and insurance.

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although i deplore the situation, if one is ill and indigent, one can still go to an emergency room (yes, and wait for hours to be seen, but still it is medical care). assuming one is not a mennonite, one can use the internet to look up symptoms to ascertain the seriousness of the problem. i assume (knowing full well i could make an ass of u and me) that these would be the same people who would deny a woman the choice to abort a fetus... on the argument that it has a Right to Life. hah. the right to life was not anywhere in evidence here.

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Bone crackers caused strokes? Whiplash, gymnastics, physical therapists, contact sports, roller coasters and Disneyland have these kinds of stroke blame also documented?

Medical schools have required courses on iatrogenic medicine, and for good reason. Take a look at Samuel Epstein, MD (and an internist) on Wikipedia or his own websites to get a bit of official insight into the failings of the "Cancer Industry". Then watch the TV and magazine ads promoting drugs that are likely to be reported in the Tan Sheet of FDA recalls, the one that is published weekly with news of things like Fen Fen and Phenylpropalomine, etc, ad nauseum. The true believer of 'modern' medicine, caveat emptor, does not know the history that includes bloodletting, radiation and countless drugs that have been recalled. Iatrogenic should be a household word. Efficacy and safety are the two standards of FDA scrutiny. Herbs have a much better track record than allopathy, by these standards; they kill people very rarely. Silicone breasts anyone?

The point is, it takes an incredible leap of faith to put your personal health in the care of health care professionals who are constantly bombarded by drug companies, insurance companies and medial nuclear machines (see Sr. Rosalie Bertells). Faith in God is simply another faith, no less substantiated than the medical industry, and just as good as ones' own judgement. Live and let live.

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...at its best.

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The more I read the comments on this site, the more I realise I don't understand the American psyche, the more I notice the tone is same whether the writer is coming from right or left. Apparently these misguided people made a terrible and fatal mistake - does anyone really believe that anything the criminal "justice" system could do to them could be worse than the hell they must be in now? But, because their catastrophic lack of judgement stemmed from religious belief (although possible lack of knowledge or education may have been factors), many of you want to twist the knife, tighten the rack, and possibly put them in a pillory. No doubt, the religious fundamentalists feel equally righteous when they mouth their intolerances and hate.

I rarely read this site now as I see no reason to depress myself with reading comments that are so consistently based on naked hate and contempt for anyone who doesn't share the writer's mindset. It is one thing to be passionate for a cause; it is quite another to hate or denigrate someone simply for disagreeing with you, to luxuriate in a thirst for revenge against those who so sin, or to display a complete lack of humility. Does the American psyche believe that you can only show humanity if it is "earned". I have no religious belief, but I try (and sometimes fail) to show humanity because it is the human thing to do.

I no longer care who the US votes for as president as I don't think it will make any difference. I admired much about your country for a very long time and Bush couldn't shake my basic respect - this site could. Thanks for some great TV programmes but I'm joining much of the rest of the world in giving up on you.

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Well, many of the above comments are one extreme; give child rearing responsibilities to the state, parents have no rights except to be prosecuted for failing to provide 'straight' health care to the millions of uninsured children in our uniquely capitalistic anti-egalitarian USA. See my comments above. Many children die needlessly because they do get quack health care in the new-for-profit hospital system. Now we are encouraged by the author to place blame for the parents rather than pray for the family in its loss. Remember the Amish people who extended forgiveness to the school murderer. What is the profit in passing judgement on people in the Falwell, Dobson way?

So, one is intellectually off base to take a single anecdoteal story and refuse to look at the whole of the problem. Remember, the USA has the lowest life expectancy of all the industrial countries and the highest infant mortality. And the statistics are color loaded, you better bet. Why? The answer is profit, not the religion of people of color and the poor.

I agree with you that children have the rights; to refuse medical treatment; an inalienable right of children to avoid being guinea pigs for ersatz, profit motivated science? Are we really willing to say, "Viva Schering, Merck, General Electric, Aetna, AMA and Pfeizer"? Please take time to view the other side of the equation.

The best health care systems in the world are non-profit and have no agenda for pushing new and ever more expensive technologies.

Cancer deaths have not improved since 1970 in spite of all the hype. Hospitals are, at the moment, cesspools of anti-biotic resistant staph infection. The vast majority of children die in hospitals. Will the medical examiners consider pressing charges against hospital administrators, or shall we reserve malpractice charges for parents?

Cancer wars have gone the way of Drug wars and Iraq wars. All failures. Parents should not be prosecuted for being independent. Please read Eric Fromm's Escape from Freedom before you choose the side of the thought police.

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Vegans are religiously deluded?? (See one of the posts above)

Where do you come up with this crazy concept? None of the vegans I know are vegans because of a religious concept.
Unless you think that concern for the health of one's own body is religious. Or, concern for the welfare of animals is religious.

Vegans are vegans for a variety of reasons. Some because of their ethics about animals; some because they believe eating a vegan diet is healthier; and for all I know - maybe there are some who's religion promotes it. (Although I haven't heard of any that fit.)

I personally am not a vegan, but have great respect for those who choose to live that way. It's harder to keep a balanced nutritional intake while being vegan - but very possible. And there are parents who are raising their children on a vegan diet and doing a very good job of it.

It could also be true that some parents feeding their children on a vegan diet without animal products might be neglecting their child's nutritional needs. But the same could be said of parents who feed their children processed foods, empty calories, McDonald's fare, lots of sugar and fried foods. Many of those children are under-nourished as well.

But it's a slippery slope to prosecute parents for ignorance. Everyone would agree that extreme situations are criminal. But where do we draw the line? And who do we give the right to decide?

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There is only one source to manage life and that is the System to which we are born. All the objects in Nature and our relationship with them belong to the System. Jesus said: “If those who lead you say unto you: Behold, the Kingdom is in heaven, then the birds of the heaven will be before you. If they say unto you: It is in the sea, then the fish will be before you. But the Kingdom is within you, and it is outside of you. When you know yourselves, then shall you be known, and you shall know that you are the sons of the living Father. But if ye do not know yourselves, then you are in poverty, and you are poverty.” Johannes Eckhart (German Dominican theologian 1260- 1327), “Again must ye understand the soul as the Kingdom of God. For the soul is of like nature with divinity. All that was here spoken of God’s Kingdom, so far as God Himself is this Kingdom, may be truly said in like manner of the soul…. ‘God is Himself blessed in the soul!” The soul part of the mind belongs to the System. Socrates said: “All nature is akin, and the soul has learned everything.” This really shows the relationship that each and every person has with the System of Life. Siddhartha says: “This is a stone and within a certain length of time it will perhaps be soil and from the soil it will become plant, animal, or man. Previously I should have said: This stone is just a stone; it has no value, it belongs to the world of Maya, but within the cycle of change it can also become a man and spirit, it is also of importance. That is what I should have thought. But now I think: This stone is stone; it is also animal, God and Buddha. I do not respect and love it because it was one thing and will become something else, but because it has already long been everything and always is everything.” (Siddhartha - Herman Hesse)


Life can be managed only in relationship with the System/of Truth. The source of knowledge for that is in the System, with the help of sciences we are trying to know that knowledge.

When the religion that came to be known after Christ was established it was done so in violation of his teachings. For greater appeal and conquest the founders made it a miracle healing faith. There is no miracle in Nature other that the Nature, there is no conquest in spirituality as it can be regained only by regaining our relationship.

"The truth cures our diseases and redeems us from perdition;
the truth strengthens us in life and in death;
the truth alone can conquer the evils of error.
Truth knows neither birth nor death;
it has no beginning and no end.
Welcome the truth. The truth is the immortal part of mind.
The truth is a living power for good, indestructible and invincible!
Work the truth out in your mind, and spread it among mankind,
for truth alone is the savior from evil and misery.
The Buddha has found the truth and the truth has been proclaimed by the Buddha!
Blessed be the Buddha!"

All that is applicable to Buddha is applicable to Christ too, but the religions known after Christ did not pursue that knowledge as it gave importance to the faith that is in direct confrontation with knowledge.

for more Pure Reason

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As has been pointed out, maliciousness has nothing to do with it. A drunk driver doesn't maliciously kill anyone. And that analogy applies to this case as well. The mother was guilty of at least negligent homicide and being an airhead who doesn't accept reality is not a satisfactory excuse. If the girl was bad enough to spend time praying over, she needed to be under medical care.

And the same thing applies to any parent whose child dies from a preventable disease just because they got caught up in the clamor from the space cadet contingent claiming that vaccines will harm your child. I hope someday to be on the jury judging a parent such as the one that we are discussing here.

I read another column recently about how the US is falling further and further behind other countries in just about every measure of human well-being because the anti-intellectual contingent has so much influence on our social behavior. This dingbat thought process has resulted in us losing our economic competitiveness because no one wants to think in terms of reality, i.e, science and math. We have surrendered to a fantasy world and now we are paying the price.

H.L. Mencken said that eventually the American voter would get their hearts' desire and a total moron would be elected president. Well, we elected someone we would like to go drinking with and look what it got us. And it isn't just this one person. He had and still has the support of way too many other types in Congress just like him so the problem will just continue to worsen. I'm afraid that this little girl is just the beginning of an oncoming flood.

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... and maybe not, but the information this article leaves us,
inflames the imagination instead of informing it...

and news is about what again?
Come on MSM... [yeah Alternet is to me part of the MSM!]
You can't leave us hanging on an article like this!
feed my brain completely please!

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It is like free speech to counter a totalitarian state. If you begin to legislate medical care, there is no end to denying personal medical freedom to use natural products, decide which vaccines to use for children, when Terry Schiavo can have her plug pulled by her husband, throw medical marijuana out the window and forget assisted suicide and ever passing your estate to your children. Forget living wills, because you are guaranteeing the Medical Industry the right to decide and they will leave your life support humming long enough to exhaust your assets (but not a dime further). Medicine will continue to be run for the privileged class.

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In the final analysis of this prosecution, the lesson is that if someone has a death in the family, don't admit that you were praying. Don't pray at a hospital death bed or hospice? Maybe those are approved venues for prayer.

'Progressives' have no sense of propriety when civil rights are concerned. Where would we be without the ACLU?

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