In Freakazoid Stupidity We Trust

It's a good thing Kentucky depends on a bronze-age myth to protect us from harm, because otherwise the March tornadoes might have completely wiped out the Eastern Kentucky town of West Liberty ... Oh, wait.

Yet the Promoters of Prehistoric Mythology remain undaunted. For now they have the Kentucky Supreme Court on their side.

Peter Smith at the Courier:

The Kentucky Supreme Court has declined to hear a challenge to a state law mandating that the commonwealth give credit to Almighty God for its homeland security.

SNIP
At issue were two related laws passed in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The first was a 2002 “legislative finding” saying the “safety and security of the commonwealth cannot be achieved apart from reliance upon Almighty God.”

The second was a 2006 act creating the state’s Office of Homeland Security and requiring its executive director to publicize “dependence on Almighty God” in agency training and educational materials and through a plaque at the entrance to its emergency operations center. The office has done so in years since.

The plaintiffs sued in 2008, saying the laws violated constitutional bans on state-sponsored religion. Franklin Circuit Judge Thomas Wingate agreed, ruling that the state had “created an official government position on God.”

But in a 2-1 decision, the Court of Appeals reversed that decision and upheld the law, saying it “merely pays lip service to a commonly held belief in the puissance (power) of God” and does not advance religion.

Edwin Kagin, national legal director for American Atheists, said he was disappointed with the Supreme Court decision not to review the case. He said he would discuss options with his clients, which include letting the matter drop or bringing a challenge in the federal court system.

“What’s really frightening about this is it’s increasingly clear that these people (proponents of such legislation) want to establish the Christian religion, and they're getting more and more blatant about it all the time,” he said.

 When the case came before the Court of Appeals, virtually every state legislator, the attorney general and the governor had weighed in with briefs in favor of the law.

I don't know which is worse - that Kentucky's governor, attorney general and legislators are in thrall to an invisible sky wizard, or that some of them know better but are afraid to stand up and say so.