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The Sun April 16, 2017 www.yoursun.com Our Town Page 7 VIEWPOINT hen not furrowing their collective brows about creches and displays of the Ten Commandments here and there, courts often are pondering tangential contacts between the government and religious schools. Courts have held that public money can constitutionally fund the transportation of parochial school pupils to classes but not on field trips. It can fund nurses at parochial schools but not guidance counselors. It can fund books but not maps. Daniel Patrick Moynihan wondered: What about atlases, which are books of maps? On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will consider the constitutional significance of this incontrovertible truth: scraped knee is a scraped knee whether it happens at a Montessori day care or a Lutheran day That assertion is in an agreeably brief amicus brief written by Michael McConnell, a Stanford law professor specializing in church-state relations.

He requires just 13 pages to make mincemeat of contention that a bit of 19th-century bigotry lodged in its constitution requires it to deny shredded tires to Trinity Lutheran Church in Columbia, which runs a preschool. Department of Natural Resources, which has a capacious conception of natural resources, runs the Scrap Tire Program. It enables playgrounds to replace gravel and dirt with a rubber protective surface that is kinder to the knees of the devout and heathens alike. The department refused the request for a $20,000 grant, citing this from the state constitution: money shall ever be taken from the public treasury, directly or indirectly, in aid of any church, sect or denomination of Trinity Lutheran says the state is abridging its First Amendment right to the of religion and denying the 14th Amendment guarantee of protection of the Both sides agree that the U.S. Constitution poses no impediment to Missouri giving a grant to Trinity Lutheran.

The question for the Supreme Court is whether Missouri can demand an even stricter separation of church and state. Can it exclude an otherwise eligible entity from a generally available public benefit a benefit serving a completely separate purpose (see above: knees) simply because the entity is religious? constitutional language is a Blaine Amendment, named for the Republican Speaker of the House and 1884 presidential nominee James G. Blaine. Protestants resented Catholic immigrants founding parochial schools that taught Catholicism as forthrightly as public schools taught Protestantism with prayers, hymn singing and readings from the King James version of the Bible. Each public school was, in Horace approving words, a of Protestant piety.

Hoping that anti-Catholicism would propel him into the presidency, in 1875 Blaine unsuccessfully proposed amending the U.S. Constitution to stipulate that no public money could go to schools the control of any religious But 37 states put versions of his amendment into their constitutions, and Congress required its inclusion in the constitutions of states entering the union. Even if, as Missouri implausibly insists, its language, which was enacted in wait for it 1875, was unrelated to anti-Catholic animus, the language is nevertheless incompatible with the Supreme Establishment Clause jurisprudence. Splitting and resplitting judicial hairs over the years, the Supreme Court has produced a three-part test: A statute pertaining to contact between government and religion does not constitute establishment of religion if the statute has secular legislative (again: knees), it neither advances nor inhibits religion, and it does not involve government entanglement with Practices during the era demonstrate, McConnell argues, that religious groups in neutral public benefit programs was not viewed as an And: tires have no religious, ideological, or even instructional content a rubberized playground is existentially incapable of advancing Missouri cites, in defense of its practice, an utterly inapposite case in which the Supreme Court upheld a refusal to fund students seeking degrees in devotional theology, even though it funded degrees in secular subjects. This involved entirely different issues than Missouri denying an organization access to a public safety benefit simply because the organization is religious.

Spreading shredded tires beneath a jungle gym hardly (in the Supreme language) or inadvertently inculcates particular religious And denial of this benefit is, McConnell writes, clearest possible example of an unconstitutional penalty on the exercise of a constitutional the free exercise of religion. religious status of the Trinity Lutheran day care bears not the slightest relevance to the purpose of the Which pertains to knees. George email address is washpost.com. A case for preventing scraped knees George Will ith the inauguration of Donald Trump this year, we have now had, for the first time in our history, three American presidents who were born in the same year. There have been three pairs of presidents born in the same year the very dissimilar John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson, in 1767; Richard Nixon and his surprise successor, Gerald Ford, in 1913; and Jimmy Carter and George H.W.

Bush, in 1924. Now had three presidents who were born in calendar year 1946: Bill Clinton (in August), George W. Bush (in July) and Donald Trump (in June). Note that all three were born just a little more than nine months after V-J Day. (For younger readers, that was the end of World War II.) The U.S.

Census Bureau considers 1946 to be the first year of the baby boom, a remarkable and unpredicted sudden surge in births in the United States and numerous other countries. It continued until 1964, which means Barack Obama, who was born in 1961, is also a part of the baby-boom generation. The leading edge of the baby-boom generation, the oldest members of an enormous age cohort, has made its mark on American life. Growing up in an era of postwar conformity, they insisted on doing their own thing. They listened to and played rock roll, the first adolescent music genre.

They participated in student riots. Their high-school class of 1964 had the highest test scores in history. Compared with their parents, they attended college more and served in the military less. All seven presidents born between 1908 and 1924 were, in some form, in the military during World War II. Two of the 1946 presidents never were in the military at all, and one served in the Texas Air National Guard.

Two were the sons of men highly successful in quite different fields. father was a mysterious figure who died before he was born. But all three graduated from prestigious universities Georgetown University and Yale Law School, Yale University and Harvard Business School, and The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Of course, each was different. Bill Clinton was a political prodigy, with the capacity to understand public policy and its political implications seemingly off the top of his head.

He started his political career early, running the 1972 George McGovern campaign in Texas and almost upsetting a Republican congressman in 1974. In 1976, he was elected Arkansas attorney general, and in 1979, at 32, he became the governor. Clinton had luck, and with his dazzling political skills, he took advantage of it. When his career seemed to be winding down he was renom- inated and re-elected by lackluster margins in 1990 he took a chance on running for president against an incumbent who had started the year with 91 percent approval. That guaranteed weak Democratic competition, and Ross surprise candidacy, which dislodged George H.W.

Bush, and surprise (and temporary) withdrawal boosted Clinton. As president, Clinton had his stumbles and unique disgrace. He was disorganized and undisciplined, but he was also constantly adapting and revising, rewriting State of the Union addresses on his ride to the Capitol. The public mostly approved. George W.

Bush was, in some ways, the opposite. After an unsuccessful House race in 1978, he mostly laid aside politics. After his father lost to Clinton, he seems to have believed that God put him in the way of running for president, and he strove to tutor himself to do the best job possible. His strength was steadfastness, his weakness (as always, a strength overdone) stubbornness. He was agonizingly slow on mid-course correction, notably on Iraq but also on Social Security reform.

political strategy, designed to keep Texas from being the next California, worked, but it gave him only small electoral vote majorities. When his job approval dropped, between 2006 and 2008, his party took the worst thumpings had in 25 years. Donald strategy followed not George W. but Ross He bet that his trademark stands on trade and immigration (different from every since Dwight Eisenhower) though costing him votes of college graduates in California, Arizona, Texas and Georgia would gain him enough votes from non-college-educated people to win. The bet paid off.

Trump did worse than George W. Bush had done in those states, but it cost him zero electoral votes. Swings by non-college-educated whites in Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa and Maine gave him 100 electoral votes twice won by Barack Obama. Was that shrewd insight or blind luck? Either way, it perhaps owed something to Perot (born in 1930), who helped make each of these boomers president. Michael Barone is a senior political analyst for the Washington Examiner, resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and longtime co-author of The Almanac of American Politics.

Our three baby boomer presidents born in 1946 Michael Barone he steady increase in Gov. Rick approval rating has reinforced the notion that if voters have a job and the economy seems to be humming along, other things matter much. The latest poll, released last week by Morning Consult, put approval number at 57 percent. Considering that he stood at 26 percent in 2012 according to Public Policy Polling, downright miraculous. That same PPP poll five years ago included a forecast that Scott would lose a then-theoretical matchup with Charlie Crist by 55-32 percent.

Scott was declared to be the most unpopular governor in the country. What changed? The economy. Duh! Scott still has the singular focus he brought to Tallahassee as an outsider in 2011. We all remember what the economy was like then as the nation tried to recover from the Great Recession. game plan of offering business incentives to attract jobs has been unrelenting.

He has targeted regulations that he says strangle job growth. While his disregard for environmental laws proved disastrous last summer when guacamole-like runoff from Lake Okeechobee became national news, voters appear inclined to overlook that as long as they have a steady paycheck. how Scott got out of controversies that included the messy dismissal in 2014 of Florida Department of Law Enforcement chief Gerald Bailey. That was handled so poorly that even Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam, a member of cabinet, claimed he was by the staff. Scott also had to spend more than $1 million in taxpayer money to settle seven public records lawsuits because of his penchant for operating in the shadows.

Even the ongoing battle with Republican House Speaker Richard Corcoran over two of major programs for business development and tourism promotion Enterprise Florida and VISIT FLORIDA hurt the governor. If anything, it seems to have enhanced his standing with voters. All of this would seem to bode well for his expected challenge for Bill U.S. Senate seat in 2018. approval number has inched above which is significant (maybe).

A lot can happen before that Senate race; remember the poll that said Crist would easily beat Scott for governor. Scott is closely aligned with President Donald Trump, and there is no way to tell how that will impact the race. And while the economy is doing well and Scott is reaping the benefit now, everyone would be advised to remember another campaign from the dusty past as an example of how quickly things can change. Republicans circulated a flier saying their candidate for president would ensure chicken in every pot and a car in every That was in 1928. The candidate was Herbert Hoover.

He won with 444 electoral votes. A year later, the stock market crashed, and the Great Depression changed everything. Just four years after his landslide, Hoover lost to Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose electoral college total was 472. Translation: Things look good now, but get cocky.

Joe Henderson has had a 45-year career in newspapers, including the last nearly 42 years at The Tampa Tribune, where he covered sports, politics and city government. The column moved on website FloridaPolitics.com. Rick approval: Economy trumps all Joe Henderson 3191 Harbor Blvd. Suite Port Charlotte, FL 33952 FAMILY DOCTOR Diabetes Memory Loss High Blood Pressure Hearing Loss Screening High Cholesterol Stress Test Thyroid Problems Arthritis Osteoporosis Cardiac Disease Heart Problems Weight Loss Skin Cancer Surgery 941-613-1919 Tanya Metyk, M.D. Board Certified Internal Medicine SAME DAY SICK APPOINTMENTS Now Accepting Most Insurances Wel coming Self Pay Patients STARTING AT 625-5056 1212 Enterprise Drive Port Charlotte, FL 33953 www.casapools.com Complete Pool Package including cage 2016 CONSTRUCTION HEATING SALT SYSTEMS POOL SERVICE REPAIRS POOL SUPPLY STORE Diabetic Care Foot Pain Foot Surgery Heel Pain New Patients Welcome 941-613-1919 3191 Harbor Blvd.

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