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57 Percent of Republicans Want to Undo the American Revolution
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America is a Christian nation. That's an idea former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee has harped on time and time again during his political career.

And while he didn't explicitly talk about it today during his presidential announcement, it's bound to pop up some time during his campaign.

That's because most Republicans agree that America is a Christian nation. In fact, according to one recent survey, 57 percent of them actually want to establish Christianity as the official state religion of our Republic.

That's right - 57 percent of Republicans want to turn our democracy into a theocracy! Thomas Jefferson must be rolling over in his grave.

The idea that America is some sort of "Christian nation" is so out of whack with the both the history of this country and the enlightenment values that inspired its founding that it just boggles the mind.

Despite what Mike Huckabee would have you believe, most of the most influential people who created this country -- Founding Fathers like Jefferson, Washington, and Franklin -- were not devout Christians, and many were actively hostile to religion having any role whatsoever in public life. But the Founders didn't just believe that America should be a secular nation, they actively worked to make it one.

Thomas Jefferson, for example, was the main force behind Virginia's famous 1786 "Statute for Religious Freedom," which ended the Church of England's role as Virginia's official state religion and guaranteed other faiths an equal footing under the law.

Jefferson was so proud of this law that he made it, along with the founding of the University of Virginia and writing the Declaration of Independence, one of the three accomplishments listed on his tombstone. He designed and wrote his own tombstone, and considered the Virginia Statute to be more important than that he was president for two terms - something he omitted from his tombstone.

Jefferson's friend James Madison, although a Christian, also worked to keep America secular. In 1811 he vetoed a bill that would have authorized government payments to a church in Washington, DC to help the poor, because as he put it, doing so "would be a precedent for giving to religious societies, as such, a legal agency in carrying into effect a public and civil duty."

The greatest Founding Father of them all, George Washington, was no friend to theocracy, either, and one of his landmark accomplishments as our nation's first president was, in part, a rebuttal to the idea that America was a Christian nation.
 
Read more here.
 
-Thom

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Screwed: Let's Get Tough With Problem Cops
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Best of the Rest: How To Add 62 Million Voters
- Connie Razza, Center for Popular Democracy  Twitter  Twitter
 
Green report: How Your Community Is Threatened By Trains
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Daily Take: Republicans Want To Undermine the American Revolution
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Tuesday's Daily Stack Daily Stack
Hour One: The interesting thing about relationships & politics...
Article: "Make the Rich Panic" by Chris Hedges.
Article: "Chuck Schumer's Cure for Democrats" by Russell Berman.
Case: "Buckley v. Valeo", 1976.
Song: "Love The One You're With" by Stephen Stills.
Article: "Sherman Antitrust Act", 1890.

Hour Two: 57% of Republicans want to undo the the American Revolution...here's why
Article: "Huckabee, the other man from Hope, opens 2016 bid" by Bill Barrow and Andrew DeMillo.
Article: "Establishment Clause" by Wikipedia.
Article: "Godwin's law" by Wikipedia.
Book: Hitler's Last Courier by Armin Dieter Lehmann.
Article: "The populist 1 percenter" by James Hohmann.
Article: "DNC will sanction 6 primary debates" by Elena Schneider.
Article: "Howard Dean Scream" by Brad.
 
Talk Radio News Segment:
- Victoria Jones Twitter
Article: "ISIS Claims Credit For TX Shooting" by William McDonald.
Article: "FBI knew of 'draw Muhammad' shooting suspect Elton Simpson" by Wills Robinson and Ted Thornhill and Lydia Warren.
Article: "DNC Approves 6 Debates For Dem Candidates" by Justin Duckham.
Article: "Mike Huckabee Launches 2016 Campaign" by Nicholas Salazar.
Article: "Cruz misses opening vote on budget" by Rebecca Shabad.
Article: "TRNS News Notes- 5/5" by Victoria Jones.
Article: "TRNS News Notes- 5/4" by Victoria Jones.

Hour Three: Reaganism - the world stats are in!
Article: "'It's worse than dysfunctional'" by Steve Benen (FEC).
Article: "Far Right" (horse).
Site: Bernie 2016 Bernie Sanders Facebook Bernie Sanders Twitter
Article: "Constitution of the United States" Article 6 section 3. "The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."
Quote: "Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the word "Jesus Christ," so that it should read, "a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;" the insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and Infidel of every denomination." - Thomas Jefferson".
Quote: "But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." - Thomas Jefferson", Notes on the State of Virginia (1781-1783).
Quote: "Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate" - Andrew Mellon.
 
Science and green news
Article: "Bizarre Cousin of T. Rex Was a Vegetarian" by Laura Geggel.
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Wednesday on The Thom Hartmann Program, 12-3pm ET 
 
I'll be discussing how corporate America invented Christian America with Historian / Professor of History-Princeton University Kevin Kruse, Author of One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America.
 
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