Judge Roy Moore at WorldNetDaily:
Mo(o)re demagoguery from a guy who has already proven that he has no idea of the actual meaning of the Constitution and who has demonstrated that he is more interested in getting publicity for his opinions than actually upholding the Constitution.
And again we get the totally spurious claim that there is a conflict bewtween the Qur’an and the Constitution with absolutely no evidence that the Qur’an is more in conflict with the Constitution than is the Bible.
And, of course, Moore proves himself to be a liar, once more:
Yet, looking over the actual text of the Judiciary Act of 1789, one notes that the law makes no reference to the Bible and includes the exclusion of the phrase “so help me God” when the oarth is affirmed rather than sworn. Just one more lie from the forces of hypocritical ceremonialism.
This really, truly is the best you can do, isn’t it?
Tom, Tom, Tom, it looks like you’re the one lying here. Of course, you may simply be mistaken. Let’s look at your…uh…mistake piece by piece.
From the quote you cited:
Well, I see no “lie” there. It seems to be a simple recollection of history. Now if you have eveidence that his recollection of history does not comport with other facts, show them. In other words, show that shortly after Washington’s oath, Congress did not pass the Judiciary Act. Or that the Act does not say what he claims. That leads us to what the Judiciary Act actually states. Well, from your own cite to the Act, that is precisely what the act states. So, no lie there. Not even a mistake I’d say. But feel free to point the mistake out and then show what makes it a lie.
Moving on:
Do you have evidence that this did NOT happen. Again, feel free to offer eveidence showing the mistake. And then you can show the evidence you have indicating that Moore knew what he said to be incorrect and, therefore, was a lie.
Regarding what you claim the Judiciary Act says, let’s look at this mistake. Your claim is:
First, Moore made no claim that the law makes reference to the bible. So I’ll credit you with erecting a straw man and then torching it, and move on. Next, we need to determine what “the law” you’re referring to is. Well, since you took issue with Moore’s claim about “…required all judges of the federal court…” let’s look at the corresponding passage in the Judiciary Act:
That is it, in full. The words “So help me God” are there. But I don’t see where, as you say, it …"includes the exclusion of the phrase “‘so help me God’ when the oarth is affirmed rather than sworn.” Can you point it out? Oh wait. Maybe you made an honest mistake and looked at Sec. 7, which does include the exclusion you allude to. But Sec. 7 speaks to the requirements of clerks being appointed, not judges. Now if you think the phrase that is contained in Sec. 7 refers to the entire document, you certainly can make your case. (Although I don’t think you can.) But until you prove that, it doesn’t seem that Judge Moore was not the one either mistaken or lying. As for your own words, since I do not know what you actually knew or didn’t know when you made your accusation and other statements, I’m forced to conclude that you were simply mistaken. Of course, you are free to prove me wrong.
I simply said it was " not clear"—it was—and offered non-judgemental clarification. I do also think it was intentional, as well, as you were hoping to imply that the bible had not been used by Jews. Your response to my inocuous post seems to support that possibility.
Wow. Only a prop? I think some devout congressman who have chosen to place their hand on the bible and swear an oath might disagree with you here.
There’s that word again. You certainly like throwing around accusations of “lying”. Tell me, do you see any difference between lying and being mistaken? And are you aware that the word “always” in common parlance sometimes means that whcih is usually done, as in “as a rule”? Do you think that might be what he meant?
So you feel absolutely fine that the esteemed Judge just so happened to omit the very next sentence, which reads:
You don’t think that’s not just a teeny weeny lie of omission? Not just a smidgen misleading that he happened to omit that trivial sentence that just so happened to contradict his entire point?
Yeah, you’re probably right; who’d pay attention to that sort of sentence, eh? Mealy-mouthed rubbish, probably just put there by liberals. But how is Tom mistaken or lying, exactly? The Act makes no reference to the Bible, and specifically allows for the exclusion of the words “under God”. Y’know, like Tom said. It looks to me like Tom was exactly correct. But then, you’re somehow able to parse the words “no religious test” to mean “some religious test”, so who knows.
Because you choose to truncate my quote and pretend that I objected to the part you posted, here. (Had I quoted only the Bible statement, of course, I would have expected you to claim that I was cutting off Moore’s statement for some nefarious purpose. By quoting the entire text, it unfortunately allowed you to pretend that I objected to a statement that I very clearly did not challenge. Do you see any statement in my post in which I claimed that the phrase “so help me God” was not in the 1798 law? I note that I clearly made reference to the phrase–a point you quote–so why are you now claiming that I was accusing Moore of lying for referring to the phrase?) However, we already know from earlier posts in this thread that the Congress is sworn in assembly, not each of them placing their hands on the Bible, so his claim is false.
Since we have already been shown that Congress in sworn in in assembly, and not individually, each holding bibles, there is no reason to believe that his claim is true. Since Moore has a record of lying (a trait he continues to display later in his essay when he lies that Allah is some different God than the one followed by Christians and Jews), I see no reason to assume a simple mistake (although I am willing to modify my characterization to one of wanton and willful ignorance on a massive scale).
You are the one bringing straw to this discussion. You deliberately separated my statement into two pieces so that you could pretend that I was objecting to the reference to the “so help me God” phrase when, as noted, I made no claim that that phrase was not in the law. You have now used the same tactic twice in the same post to attack something I never said. It would seem that you are pretty desperate to find things to which to object when you have to build and burn the same strawman twice in one post.
No. My reference was quite clear that various Jews had used works other than the Bible. Your intent appears to be to make an issue that some Jews may have used the OT/NT Bible, as though there is any relevance to the discussion. Barring a statement from those persons that they had chosen to use the Christian-inclusive Bible for the purpose of providing some symbolic message, they are irrelevant to Prager’s claims that the Christian-inclusive Bible actually demonstrates the hive-mind that he proposes.
Sure. Lying is deliberately telling a falsehood whereas mistake implies ignorance or inadvertant error.
For example, when you deliberately separate a statement of mine, and pretend that I have called two pieces of it separate lies when my text reveals that I only identified one part of it as a lie, it might be inferred that you were lying or it might be inferred that you were simply so eager to call me out that you did not pay sufficient attention to the actual text and made a mistake.
You may want to read more carefully. The sentence you accuse him omitting is NOT in Section 8 of the Judiciary Act, which is the Section that was relavant and the one he cited. It is in Section 7, which talks about the requirements for clerks where you will find the exclusionary language. There is a separate Section—#8—that deals with Judges. So, no “lie of omission”. Just a simple mistake on your part.
So, based on the reasoning you provided as to why I was wrong, I assume you will now do the honorable thing and admit your innocent mistake and point out to **Tom **that he, in fact, was wrong.
Not just clerks. All cases.
All cases means, shockingly, all cases. Your semantic games just make you look like an idiot.
Magellan01, do you ever get tired of being a fucking liar?
No religious test can be required for fucking office, you motherfucker. How many fucking times do you have to having this fucking fact explained to you?
No one can be required to parrot the words “So help me God” to take office. NO ONE. It is a violation of the motherfucking constitution.
Can you really be this stupid?
You object to Tom’s description of the Bible as a “prop”, but insist that atheists such as myself should be obliged to put our hands on that work of fiction and swear an oath upon it, otherwise we should not be allowed to hold public office. Since I believe the Bible is a work of fiction, that means you’re fine with using the Bible as a meaningless prop.
Either come clean and admit that you believe that atheists such as myself shouldn’t be allowed to hold public office, or shut your festering hole.
Honest question, from a man who is on the opposite side as Prager, Moore, and magellan01 in this argument: Does that “all cases” apply to all cases covered in Sec. 7 et seq., or merely all cases in Sec. 7?
What is the usual interpretation of a discrepancy such as this?
And if there is valid reason to accept magellan01’s reading that the “all cases” does not exted to Sec. 8, what would be the most straightforward way of finding a historical precedent of a Supreme Court Justice having his seat challenged over his omission of the words?
HUH? You cited a passage in which you claim Moore was lying. I pointed out that you were incorrect, as he was not even mistaken (never mind lying). I did NOT claim that you claimed that the words “So help me God” were not part of the law. You said—well, here it is:
I pointed out, as I do now, that the exclusionary language does NOT appear in the passage (“the law”) that Moore was citing. He was quoting Section 8, the part referring to Judges. The exclusionary language appears in Section 7, whcih refers to CLERKS. So you were (egad) mistaken. Now if you want to argue that Moore was referring to Section 7 and the oath for clerks, go right ahead. I could use a good laugh.
He was referring to that one specific congress, not all congresses. Now if you have any evidence to show what he actually said is in error—or worse, a LIE—present it. Showing him in error is good enough for me, but feel free to go the extra mile since you seem so infatuated with calling people liars.
How very kind of you. Perhaps you might consider differentiatiing “lie” and “difference of interpretation” in the tomndebb Doctrine of Fairness and Benevolence. And perhaps you would be so kind as to share with us his “record of lying”.
Untrue. Proven above. Now pay attention to this: I made no claim that YOU claimed that “So help me God” was not in the law. So you are…mistaken…again.
Another…mistake. On your part. The total is not two, nor one. It is zero.
Are you kidding me? The relevance is that it was part of the question from Captain Amazing that you chose to answer. You conveniently were explicit about the Tanakh, but did were mum on the bible itself. And now you claim “oh, I said ‘others have used (or not used) other books.’” You then get more coniving at the end of that post pointing out that officials have a long list of not using the bible. While that is factual, your post taken in total was misleading. Which is why I offered my one-line clarifcation, graciously characteriziing your post as simply “unclear”.
Whew. Maybe there is hope for you yet. You might want to have what you write reflect that understanding.
Actually, wrong on two counts. One, I already explained: I did not accuse you of claiming that “So help me God” was not in the law. The other—that I am “eager” to call you out—couldn’t be further from the truth. A fact that you might glean from me not responding to your posts, even those directe d to me, since Page 1. Just to clarify, this little exchange is precisely why I feel the less to do with you the better. Just look at all the circuitous, Rube Goldberg-like nonsense you constructed in your last post. All for what? To avoid admitting what is plain: you were mistaken. Were you lying, as well? I have no idea. I will leave that to you and your conscience.
But let’s bring more light to your eeliness here. Your response regarding what books were sworn on was an attempt to answer this question:
Correct? Well, here is your response—in full—lest I be accused of mischaracterizing your words:
Now, do you not think it odd that you would attempt to be so helpful, providing quite a bit of information, bue fail to address part of his specific question? Namely: “What did they swear on? A Christian bible, or a copy of the Tanakh?” (bolding mine) I think you did it intentionally, in an attempt to paint a picture that is not fully accurate. But I didn’t want to make a federal case over it so I very gently posted—and this is it in its entirety—this:
If you take issue with that, may I suggest that it is time for a vacation.
Go back and read what you posted:
Here, you broke apart a whole paragraph to challenge me after making a big deal about me “lying”, yet there is nothing here about which I lied (or was even incorrect), since I have made no comment on this passage. It is simply the opening section of Moore’s column that sets the stage for his subsequent lie.
This was the first part of the paragraph that includes Moore’s false claim that the Congress had sworn “on the Bible.” Note that at this point I have made no separate statement regarding Moore, so this whole section of your post is false. In the next section, I note that Congress does not swear on bibles. No one has presented evidence that they ever have, although we have evidence that they do not. By attacking this section of my post separately, you falsely assert something that I have not said. By claiming that I lied, you are doing exactly the thing of which you purport to accuse me.
Regardless, I have limited my involvement in this thread to pointing out the lies and errors of logic presented by Prager (and, now, Moore). If you want to have a pissing contest, open up a new thread to attack me. Getting yourself sidetracked with personal attacks on me will not help you defend the idiocy of Prager.
This is so contorted and confused I don’t even know what you’re saying anymoer. Neither, I think do you. But let’s rewind, here are the passages in question. I’ll simply list them in order as the whole post within a post thing gets confusing coding-wise (for me).
So Passage 1 accuses him of lying and the colon indicates that the lie will be in what follows: Passage 2, which is Moore’s quote. So, so far that’s all we know—that you claim that within his quote there is a lie (or lies). You claim now, if I understand you, that you say his lie is that the founders swore on a bible during the instance that Moore claims, namely what transpired after Washingto swore his oath. You offer no evidence for what transpired back then, except to say that because they don’t do it now, they therefore didn’t do it then. Now even if that is the case (which I do not grant) that does not equate to him lying. Normally you’d be circumspect of logical flaws like this. But in cover your ass at all cost mode things change it appears.
Secondly, you were mistaken in Passage 3, when you claimed that A) the law makes no reference to the bible. You are correct here. But this has nothing to do with Prager’s comment, as he never claimed that the law did include the mention of the bible. You attatch to that claim the claim that B) the law includes exclusionary language concerning “So help me God”. It does not. As I’ve pointed out several times the exclusionasry language appears in Section 7, whcih deals with the requirements for CLERKS. Moore was quoting Section 8, the part having to do with judges. You then C) call that “one more lie”. I pointed out that not only is that not a lie, but that the mistake is on your part as you were conflating two different Sections.
Now, most anyone else would acknowledge this mistake. But I guess that’s too much to ask of the almighty tomndebb.
Open up a thread about you? Fat chance. I’ve stated that my goal is to have less to do with you, not more. Kind of a shame really. You’re quite knowledgeable on an impressive range of subjects. But even those greast gifts do not excuse you from not debating honorably. If you make a mistake, which you have here and elsewhere, what the fuck is so difficult about admitting it? (Never mind apologizing.) Do you think this helps you? That no one can see your errors? Even in that other thread that got moved to the Pit, a few people (no fans of mine) were of the opinion that you were wrong. No one was of the mind that you were right. Still, no apology. No admission of error. Dude, seriously, you need therapy. And I don’t mean the hour-a-week stuff. I’m talking cancel-the-mail-pack-the-steamer-trunks-institute-in-Vienna type.
Given that I had already provided a citation in Post #457 that not even Washington had used the Bible to be sworn into office and that that story was one more “Parson Weems” type moralizing tale, and given that Moore has published essays and books on this topic, (meaning that he should have done enough homework to know that those tales were invented decades after the fact), and given that Moore has been caught making numerous false claims regarding the interaction of the Constitution and religion, I think that it is a logical conclusion to draw that he was lying. If you wish to assert that he was merely “mistaken,” you are welcome to that belief, but I see no reason to believe that a man who has published at length (if generally wrongly) on the separation of church and state is actually ignorant of the history about which he writes.
With the evidence before us regarding Congressional inaugurations, you can choose to believe the stuff that comforts you, but then you need to demonstrate why and when Congress changed their rules to eliminate the Bible from the ceremony in a country that has suffered repeated attempts to add more, not fewer, religious displays to its government.
As I noted, even if Moore was merely mistaken and not making false claims as usual, your accusing me of lying would be an example of you committing the crime of which you accuse me.
So, to recap:
- Prager falsely claims that people throughout U.S. history have sworn on the Bible as some sort of act of cultural solidarity;
- The evidence available demonstrates that those persons who have sworn on the bible have done so as a personal attestation of their personal beliefs;
We have numerous examples of persons choosing to not swear on the (Christian) Bible with only one rather mild and poorly attested example of anyone caring about that, at all;
We have evidence that the introduction of the bible to the president’s inauguration did not begin until the country had already passed its first century;
We know that Congress does not use a Bible in their inauguration ceremony;
We have no evidence that Congress has ever used Bibles in their inauguration ceremony (despite a clear trend in history to dump more religion, not less, into the government, (Parson Weems-like tales about Washington adding “so help me God” and kissing the Bible invented sixty years after his death; the imposing of “In God We Trust” on coins in the same period, the first sporadic use of the Bible at presidential inaugurations twenty years after that; the imposition of “under God” on the Pledge of Allegiance seventy years later and the imposition of “In God We Trust” on currency a bit later than that with no corresponding removal or deletion of religious displays in all that time), rendering claims that the early Congress ever used a Bible at their inauguration to be not merely suspect, but almost certainly false.
In light of that information, Prager’s claims of history are clearly invented, making his further assertions just silly.
And yet, here you are hijacking your own thread to violate your own rules about “asking for clarification” to indulge in a bit of name calling directed at me based on some odd desire to defend a guy who has frequently published false claims about the Constitution and who got himself stripped of his authority as a judge by his own peers based on his insistence on violating that Constitution.
And considering that he had to take an oath to uphold the Constitution when he became a judge, this is yet another instance of Moore lying.
Until I got to this point, I was going to say, “Dude, you fucking idiot moron, just shut the fuck up and stop wasting the bandwidth.” But I’ve changed my mind. Please, keep posting. Keep doing exactly what you’re doing. You’ve gone beyond irritating and have become hilariously entertaining. Your pathetically dogged attempts to argue the inarguable and defend the indefensible are simply astonishing, and the amusement value I’ve gotten from your efforts in this thread alone have justified my membership fee. It would have been brilliantly funny if you were just doing a spot-on parody of an ignorant right-wing bozo; the fact that you’re dead serious with this stuff makes your latest tactical turn almost indescribably hysterical. Please, please, keep it up.
But was his hand on a bible?
CMC fnord!
BTW, Anyone else reminded of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo?
CMC fnord!
I accused (accuse) you of being wrong. When I did use the term “lying” I thought it would be evident that my use of the term toward you was making light of the all-to-free way that you use it. Notice the elipses, and italics when using the word “mistaken”. They were there to draw attention to a distnction you were disregarding. I have rarely called anyone a liar on these boards. Why? Because I rarely am able to divine what information is in their heads. That is one of things that most surprises me on SDMB. The people here, many like yourself who are usually intent to base their conclusions on concrete evidence, find it very easy to hurl the word around without the support that would move them from being in error to lying.
Now, I made an error in my last post. I mistakingly attributed a passage to Prager that should have been attributed to Judge Moore. Sorry for any confusion that might cause, although I think it minor. One other tiny point: it’s not my thread.
And that brings us back to the beginning. The objection I raised with you had to do with your commentary on Judge Moore’s quote. Here it is:
The two underlined portions indicate two claims by you. As I’ve stated the first portion is not only correct, but not at issue as Judge Moore never claimed the contrary. So that can’t be the “lie” you are talking about. Which leaves the second claim by you. And as I’ve pointed out several times, and you’ve ignored every time, your claim is simply incorrect. The law he quoted has to do with JUDGES, that means Section 8. Section 8 has zero exclusionary language, So your factual claim was WRONG. Do you deny this?
Yes, I used poor judgement thinking that you would admit a mistake. It’s turned into a detour which is annoying and as much a waste of effort as getting you to admit error several times before. My fault, yes. I just find it simply unbelievable that someone as bright as you can be so obstinate in continuing such dishonorable debating behavior.
As far as Moore getting stripped of his authority, what of it? He knowingly defied the courts fully aware of what the consequences would be. It was a principled stance concerning how he thought the law should be interpreted. I find it odd that you fault him in that.
Lest you miss the important question in this post, let me ask it again here at the end where it won’t be missed. The part of the Judiciary Act that you cited was Section 7—which does mention the exclusionary language, but concerns the requirements for clerks. Moore quoted the requiremnets for JUDGES, which is Section 8 and does NOT include any exclusionary language. Therefore, your claim about Moore making an error in that passage is incorrect. Please review it and tell me if you agree with that assessment?
For reference I direct you to the latter half your post #482.
If you do not agree, please explain why not. And please explain what the lie/mistake was that you were referring to inyour last 3 (three) sentences of that post.
Thank you for yet another substantive contribution to this thread. You’ve shed much light on many of the key issues, facilitating a better understanding of both our history and the philosophy that shaped it. If you have more of the same to offer, imagining how valuable your time must be, may I suggest that you take a more efficient route next time and simply type: “You are a poopy head.”. Same Cervaise-level value, time saved. That’s a WIN-WIN for all concerned.
As far as the encouragement you so graciously offered, thanks. Will do.