No Bible for Obama’s Mulligan Oath
I woke up this morning to the Drudge Report headline screaming at me, "No Bible Used at Obama Re-Swear," in huge red letters. Apparently, Matt Drudge is disturbed that more than 230 years after the founding of the world's first secular republic, the guy taking over as its head honcho recited the oath of office without his hand on a religious text (although he did use one the day before when they screwed up the oath).
Also, Obama does not appear to have said "so help me God" during the oath do-over. Oh, the horror!
It seems to me that Drudge and anyone else upset by the absence of mystic overtones in the transition of power in a secular state should be thanking whatever magical beings they believe in that we may finally be moving toward living out the ideal of a country that doesn't mix religion with government. Not only would that better adhere to the 1st Amendment and end the abhorrent practice (as Jefferson wrote about long ago) of using non-Christians' tax money to endorse Christianity (or non-believers' tax money to endorse supernatural belief in general), but it would protect those particular Christians' delicate sensibilities in the possible future instance of someone outside the non-dominant religion becoming President. After all, what would they think if a Muslim President was sworn in on a Quran or if a Satanist President (okay, that's an unlikely scenario) was sworn in on whatever book Satanists follow?
Update: someone has just informed me that they saw the video on CNN, and he did once again include the "so help me God" thing.
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