I still wonder how the whole Ashcroft discussion got diverted into talk of the behaviour in question being "wrong", or "illegal". I, for one, certainly never said it was either. I said it was rude and bad management practice, but neither of those things is illegal.
I'm afraid I may have contributed to the illegal part of that. I agreed with you on the rude and poor management practices. As a subset of poor management practices, I raised the point that Ashcroft was likely breaking some rules, although not necessarily laws with criminal penalties, which are the only ones CH seems to care about. He's most likely violating the rules on religions expression, on the personal use of government equipment and facilities (which are disseminated by his own department), and his department's union contracts. In one of your earlier posts on this subject, you made the assumption that employees were attending these sessions off the clock. The article does not say so and I think it more likely that they are doing this on the taxpayer's dime given the schedule of the sessions so there are some rules at stake there. I wouldn't say that the rule-breaking was the most salient element of this issue, but, especially for an AG, it's not irrelevant.
You might be interested to know that this topic was covered in PBS's Religion and Ethics Weekly. The topic got top billing in the TV guide, but unfortunately only a few minutes at the end of the program. The focus was entirely on the point about church and state raised by one interviewee in the Post article. The guest was a Baptist who didn't add anything useful on that topic. He did make one point, though, in passing that I found interesting. He talked about the importance to Christians of doing their thing in a group, that much of the religious experience comes from the sense of community. My inference was that Ashcroft might believe that he can't adequately express his religion by praying alone in his office but that having those around him participate with him are essential to his religious freedom. Egad!
Karen |
