So, when do the moral police start policing the malls ready to cane people for flouting religious law like in certain Muslim countries? There was an article today about how Iran is enacting a law to execute pornographers. Who’s up for a good stoning? Bush & Co. apparently are determined to turn the US into a theocracy, one step at a time.

Justice Dept. Reshapes Its Civil Rights Mission

In recent years, the Bush administration has recast the federal government’s role in civil rights by aggressively pursuing religion-oriented cases while significantly diminishing its involvement in the traditional area of race.

Paralleling concerns of many conservative groups, the Justice Department has successfully argued in a number of cases that government agencies, employers or private organizations have improperly suppressed religious expression in situations that the Constitution’s drafters did not mean to restrict.

The changes are evident in a variety of actions:
– Supporting groups that want to send home religious literature with schoolchildren; in one case, the government helped win the right of a group in Massachusetts to distribute candy canes as part of a religious message that the red stripes represented the blood of Christ.