If scientists wanted to be immediately useful, they would in unison publicly withdraw their labor from Government work until specific humane and generous provisions for questioning detention are written into law.
As humane and generous are unscientific terms, I suggest they refer to the ethics of plain gospel Christianity for a standard.

When the Bill of Rights was adopted, it only applied to the federal government, and the federal government had very little involvement in citizens’ daily lives. Education, land use regulation, economic regulation, almost all criminal law, all domestic relations law, all these were either not governmental functions at all or were exclusively state or local government functions.

With the Fourteenth Amendment’s expansion to the states of Bill of Rights limitations, the growing role of government in daily life during the last century, and the expansive interpretation of the establishment clause in the last few decades, it seems to me there is a high risk that the two religion clauses of the First Amendment will sometimes be in conflict – that people who work for the government or participate in governmental programs or government-funded programs will find their free exercise of religion restricted by the anti-establishment clause. Are a couple of public school teachers who are monitoring a school cafeteria free to say grace out loud over their lunch? What about if students nearby can hear them? If they do it, they may be ‘establishing’ a religion and if they are prohibited from doing it, their free exercise of religion may be suppressed. Both are unconstitutional.

A large school district can absorb the cost of occasional litigation of establishment clause cases, but many school districts can’t, and are going to find their ability to meet the educational needs of their districts compromised if their superintendent, principals and teachers, none of whom are probably trained constitutional scholars, guess wrong on what a Court might ultimately hold to be an ‘establishment’ of religion. Considering that even constitutional scholars can differ on the issue, it isn’t always easy to know what is an establishment and what isn’t.

I don’t think that abolishing the right of attorney fee recovery is likely to bring about a ‘theocracy.’ The right has only existed for a relatively small part of our country’s history and we weren’t a theocracy before it was created.

By the way, attorney fee clauses are often applied unevenly. In some states (or maybe all), a government agency or individual suing to collect child support has an absolute right to recover attorney fees if successful, but the alleged debtor is not entitled to recover attorney fees even if it turns out nothing was owed?

A far more serious threat to religious freedom now is in media self-censorship, college speech codes and the like, and in tolerance of threats or violence in furtherance of an ‘insult-free’ climate for selected religions. Consider this quote from an article in the New York Daily News on October 1, 2006, entitled “Bobblehead Muhammed?” about a dashboard figuring depicting Islam’s prophet Mohammed in headgear that included a bomb with a lit fuse.

No depiction of the prophet, even if it is positive, should be made ever – and certainly not one as ridiculous as the bobblehead Muhammed,” said Zvi Ben-Dor Benite, an assistant professor at New York University. “I don’t think it’s about freedom of speech. This is the freedom to insult, which he shouldn’t be doing.

Just try to find a major American newspaper with a photo of that figurine, or of the Danish cartoons of last year. They will be few and far between, not out of respect for religion -they aren’t afraid to run cartoons, photos or stories insulting to Christians – but out of fear. It doesn’t always take government action to diminish religious freedom.

As an atheist, I’m frankly a lot more worried about being threatened with decapitation if I insult Islam than I am with obsessively rooting out every last vestige of Christianity in our public schools. I’d rather be the only atheist in a Catholic school in the 1960s (as I was in the ninth grade) than a college student today trying to have a reasonable classroom discussion about the role of religion in Middle Eastern conflicts.

At least you’d be able to answer the last question correctly.

Ooops… or not. I had you completely mistaken for someone else. X-P Sorry bout that!

You are most welcome in Australia as ‘Babe in the Universe’ says. However you may find the land of Oz uncomfortably familiar. Legislation and the enforcement of it has taken some weird turns over the past few years and much of your concerns are shared by many of the locals.

A great country to visit! Even greater to leave again in one piece, as Charles Darwin astutely concluded about 170 years ago…

$^$&@&B

Also, what would be your answer to that final question? I am on record multiple times as accepting Christ as my savior, but that’s just me.

The law itself seems straightforward enough, but I find the introduction a tad disturbing:

To amend the Revised Statutes of the United States to eliminate the chilling effect on the constitutionally protected expression of religion by State and local officials that results from the threat that potential litigants may seek damages and attorney’s fees.

Maybe someome with more (i.e., any) legal experience can tell me — what sort of “religious expression by State and local officials” is protected? Government officials obviously have the right to personal religious expression, just like everyone else, but it sounds like this law is intended to discourage lawsuits against things like mandatory prayers in public schools — stuff that’s constitutionally prohibited. Indeed, the law goes on to say,

The remedies with respect to a claim under this section where the deprivation consists of a violation of a prohibition in the Constitution against the establishment of religion shall be limited to injunctive relief.

What sort of “constitutionally protected expression of religion by State and local officials” violates the establishment clause, or appears to do so?

p.s. I’m glad that sort of immigrations discussion is still fictional — in the US, anyway. At least you’d be able to answer the last question correctly. :-/

p.p.s. Which brings up an interesting question for all you commenters: if an immigrations official asked you such a question, would you make a fuss even if you could truthfully give the right answer? I think I probably would, because I know there are a lot of people who would back me up… but without that support, I don’t know if I’d be brave enough.