Remember the WWI memorial the vets built in honor of their fallen buddies from WWI that was erected out the the middle of nowhere in the Mojave Desert? Some rat bastard has stolen it. The cross that was actually a memorial has been embroiled in a Supreme Court Case in one form or another for a decade.
Antibvbl.net covered the story of the Desert Cross back in October, 2009. Since then the land on which the cross was erected has been donated as private lands. Huffington Post reports:
By Adelle M. Banks
Religion News ServiceWASHINGTON (RNS) The war memorial cross at the center of a recent Supreme Court ruling has been stolen, a spokeswoman for the Mojave National Preserve said Tuesday (May 11).
A wooden box had covered the controversial cross, which has been the subject of court cases for almost a decade. A preserve staffer noticed the box was missing on Saturday; by the time a maintenance crew showed up Monday to replace it, the cross also had disappeared, spokeswoman Linda Slater said.
On April 28, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the cross to stay up and directed a district court to further consider a congressionally approved transfer of the cross to private land.
“This is an outrage, akin to desecrating people’s graves,” said Kelly Shackelford, president and CEO of Liberty Institute, which represents the caretakers of the World War I memorial and several veterans groups.
“It’s a disgraceful attack on the selfless sacrifice of our veterans. We will not rest until this memorial is reinstalled.”
According to CNN:
The 6-foot-tall metal structure was removed Sunday night from Sunrise Rock in a lonely stretch of the Mojave National Preserve, said government officials and veterans groups that have been fighting for years to keep the cross on national park land.
The National Park Service said it is investigating the incident; no arrests had been made as of Tuesday morning.
The high court on April 28 ruled the cross did not violate the constitutional separation of church and state. The American Civil Liberties Union, which had brought the original lawsuit to have the cross removed, promised to continue the court fight.
I consider myself a fairly strong establishment clause person. I very much believe in seperation of church and state…probably as much as some of the 2nd amendment people believe in their cause. However, at what point do people just go rabidly nuts on a subject?
This cross was erected back in the 1930’s by veterans of WWI to honor their buddies who didn’t make it home. Call it a grassroots memorial, if you will. It was out in the middle of no where in the middle of the Mojave Desert. It was honoring the dead. It wasn’t pushing religion even.
Whoever took the cross is a thief– a common thief. The individual(s) is lower than a snake’s belly. This person or persons doesn’t represent a cause. The memorial ought to be left alone. There is one remain WWI vet left in America. Those brave men who fought that horrible war now belong to time and the ages. Can’t people put aside their causes just this once? The cross that represents the memorial needs to be returned immediately.
The VFW has offered a reward for information that leads to the return of the memorial.
Lower than a snakes’ belly indeed! I can’t believe people. Why do some people have to be so damn radical and mean? Even if you aren’t Christian, even if you hate religion in general, even if you are against the military, you could at least have some respect for the dead.
The ACLU pisses me off when they push so hard for freedom that they end up taking freedom away from others. They waste time and money and make a BFHD (that’s “big, fat, hairy deal, in Garfield’s world) over something that could easily be ignored in lieu of something more important.
How about defending kids like Lexie Glover? How about defending students ripped off in the corrupt student loan industry? How about tackling big business-government relationships that are ripping off the people?
Nah…let’s go for a cross in the middle of a freaking desert and make a big deal about it.
Yeah…THERE’S an idea whose time has come.
STUPID.
My goodness, I agree with Pinko on something.
Of course, it might well have been some drunk wanna-be’s deciding
to insert themselves in the news and not some Grand Plan, but
still lower than a snake’s belly.
Off this thread’s topic, but wanted to note the article in this morning’s
Wapo’s Metro section headlined “Turning a corner – Prince William bounces
back from economic doldrums as school enrollment and housing sales surge”.
Hey, when you are at the bottom, there is no place but up PR! I am glad to hear we are on the road to recovery.
I also agree with Pinko!
actually each time i see a six foot cross anywhere i assume it’s “pushing religion”. should i assume it’s pushing something else? pointing to aliens (undocumented or from space)? “memorial here”
if we believe in the separation of church and state then we need to take the bitter with the sweet.
I’m just wondering how we got through a world war without anyone other than christians being killed. America. amazing.
b
The WaPo article also states “Many immigrants left Prince William after thousands
of construction jobs disappeared and county supervisors cracked down on
illegal immigration in 2007. The number of students learning English as a
foreign language dipped last year but is up this year.”
That Climate of Fear thing didn’t last very long did it? And it may have been
caused as much by less drywall to hang than anything the BOCS did.
We will never know what caused the exodus.
Not that many ESOL students left to start with compared to the rest of the county. Furthermore, ESOL isn’t necessarily an indication of someone being ‘illegal.’
M-H, ESOL is an indication that someone is Hispanic and the ESOL numbers
have continued to grow in PWC and Manassas City school systems.
Hardly an example of a “Cimate of Fear for Brown People” created by
scores of “neo-Nazi racist” and certainly not worthy of the vile hate filled
Fernandez signs. Talk about lower than a snake’s belly.
PR, it is also an indication that a person is from a middle eastern country, Asian, or from an African country. And yes, those in ESOL could also be hispanic. It certainly is not synonymous with someone being illegal.
In 2007-2008, fewer than 1000 ESOL students left if memory serves me correctly. Actually I have dipsticked about 4 middle schools since 2007 to see if teachers saw dramatically fewer Hispanic kids. The answer each and every time in each school was NO.
There are several conclusions that can be drawn from this information. Perhaps most of the people who left were single folks without families. That would account for some difference.
I am not so sure Mr. F’s hateful messages were any more so than some of the crap I have read online. 2 wrongs don’t make a right, however.
Every piece of available data indicates that Hispanics make up over 96%
of ESOL students in most of our local schools. People of Hispanic origin.
legal or not, are here in large numbers and their numbers are growing.
They weren’t scared away by Big Bad Corey and Greg.
People don’t have to read a blog — Fernandez’s diatribes were smeared
on “billboards” fronting a public street. Not the same thing.
I have never been one who claimed that the resolution scared that many people away. I think young men who were following the work moved on as the jobs dried up. I have been careful not to assign a cause and effect relationship where none can be proved. Perhaps others have different data than I have.
PR, do you think if there had not been a resolution that targeted a subset of people within the Hispanic population, there would have been a ‘wall?’
I will assign a cause/effect relationship there. Now, I have been consistently vocal about how nasty I thought the sign was. However, I never said I didn’t understand it. And frankly, I see no difference in some of what I have read about ‘brown skinned people’ and the crap Fernandez was ‘publishing.’ Ugly words are ugly words, whether on a billboard or a blog.