After listening to Congressman whine about cost overruns they can no longer complain about the cost of the CVC when they pull stuff like this.

Maybe In God We Trust is the national motto, but it shouldn't be.

I really hope Feinstein doesn't run for Governor, not that there are any better candidates expressing interest at the moment.

Her vote for Mukasey was the clincher.

Fuck Feinstein with a rusty spanner.

http://freethought.mbdojo.com/foundingfathers.html

"Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chair of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, which oversees the new visitor center, agreed to make several of the changes DeMint has demanded, including a reference to "In God We Trust" as the national motto.

The changes to make the visitor center more religious will cost taxpayers $150,000. "

That says it all. Dems being wimps as usual. This does not bode well for Mr. Obamas' presidency.

Instead, the Wimpocrats should finally GROW SOME COJONES and put down their foot and insist that THEY ARE IN THE MAJORITY - Rethugs take heed!

Sure the Dems do not have the filibuster-proof Senate they wanted (they wouldn't have had it even with 60 seats, since Liebofraud is one of the 60...), but they should MAKE USE OF THE NUCLEAR OPTION!!!

WTF, man, I thought we had more than one national motto.

Stupid Feinstein.

The more I think about this, the angrier I get. Attempting to appease the Christian right not only mars the secular nature of this monument, it's politically stupid. You're not going to win over any of the Christian right, the Christian left doesn't care, you piss off the secularists, and you make yourself look weak.

"In God We Trust" became the national motto in the 1950s, amid the Cold War, and national hysteria about "Godless Communism", "Atheistic Communism", however you want to phrase it. "E Plurbis Unum" was the motto favored by our founding fathers and the motto on the great seal. It is the more appropriate motto to go in the visitors center.

Once gays are finally recognized as first class citizens with all their rights, the next group to be fighting for full recognition will be atheists. Feinstein's capitulation will just set atheists back that much further.

The Taliban should be taking notes - they could learn a lot about how to establish a theocracy without firing a shot.

And all this time I thought our national motto was "Kill them all and let god sort them out".

Can someone please tell Feinstein that we have the majority and who gives a crap if the visitors center isn't god-enough for DeMint. Pacifying these jackasses give them validation.

Sigh, it's annoying, but who the hell cares? $150k is literally piss in a bucket for a largish corporation much less the government of The Most Powerful Nation On Earth.

If it took $150k to shut up a whiney whackaloon then so be it...there are literally thousands of more important battles to fight.

I care! I'm an atheist, and as that is taxpayer money, it's my money!

I can't tell you how often I read, "This Christian country" or "what used to be a Christian County" or "our Founding Fathers created a Christian Country" as if the Establishment Clause never exisited.

Now, the visitor's center has to praise god rather than the government? WTF!

While I dont really like "In God We Trust" as a national motto, if it *is* the national motto, then we shouldnt have something up claiming that another phrase is the national motto.

DeMint's whining about the other stuff is silly, but I'm not going to lambaste him for correcting a factual error.

Of course the visitors' center is a hotbed of heathen anti-Americanism -- the architect is named...Ayers!!

Someone needs to tell DeMint that the country already has plenty of buildings with God at their center. They're called houses of worship. We don't vote at those, and we don't need to worship God in government buildings.

"there are literally thousands of more important battles to fight."

Early, unnecessary surrender is a pattern with Feinstein.

majun at 1:50 PM is correct.

The motto "In God We Trust" didn't become official until 1956. DeMint, like most conservo wackos, doesn't know what the hell he's talking about.

if you ever spoke with these historical revisionists and used " founding fathers" and "deist" in the same sentence, you'd either get that vacant fundamentalist smile (aka deer in the headlights) or their heads would simply explode.

I think if the likes of George Washington, Thomas Paine, Ben Franklin, or James Madison met these fools, they would be tempted to grab their Bible, light it on fire and shove it up their collective asses.

If it took $150k to shut up a whiney whackaloon then so be it...there are literally thousands of more important battles to fight. Posted by: neilt on December 3, 2008 at 1:51 PM

The problem is that there are also literally thousands of other whiney whackaloons on the right with thousands of other trivial complaints meant to make the rest of us bend to their will. Once you validating their whackaloon whines by spending tax money to shut one of them up, you send a message to the rest to be loud and obnoxious. For any one of then, the $150,000 doesn't seem like enough to worry about, and well worth it to buy a little peace from their incessant inanity. But in total thats $150 million, which starts to look more like real money. Better to never go down that road.

the center still misrepresents American history by downplaying the faith of the Founding Fathers

This could get interesting.

Many were Freemasons.

In 1956, Congress noted that THERE WASN'T a National Motto, so in God we trust was adopted and voted on. There is NO direct quote found anywhere else in history. One of the priciples of the founding of the country was freedon of religion - NOT JUST ONE RELIGION - NOT JUST ONE GOD - JUST THE GOD YOU Believe in and ARE NOT FORCED INTO worshipping.
E PLURIBUS UNUM would have been better in my humble opinion.

Simp kinda beat me to it: If Dimwith Dement wants to honor our founding fathers' religious beliefs, fine -- have an entire wing dedicated to explaining Deism.

Since, you know, most were Deist, not the hard-core Christians that the idiotic theocratic jackasses that run the current GOP think the founders were.

let's see. the economy is cratering. we're still in iraq. afghanistan increasingly is a disaster. pakistan is threatening to become a failed state. health care is becoming an bigger challenge every day. energy is still a problem that's festering. global warming is still with us. our roads and bridges are crumbling. the budget deficit is the size of the grand canyon and growing. labor rights, reproductive rights, civil rights have been attacked over the last 8 years.

and you want the dems to go to war over $150,000 and the capital visitor's center?

i don't care for demint and the religious right's glossified image of the founding fathers as all pious christians, and their view of the u.s. as god's new israel. it's revisionist history and theologically silly. but there are more important battles to fight than this.

what in the world is demint doing palling around with someone with the same last name as "unrepentant terrorist bill ayres"?
talk about guilt-by-association-by-association!

Totally in agreement with all the comments above. Heartened that so many see this as the boot-licking cave-in that it truly is.

Just started reading "The Family: The secret fundamentalism at the heart of American power", by Jeff Sharlet -- an amazingly shocking, funny and insightful document -- in which DeMint appears center stage in this scary, pathetic neo-fundamentalist theocratic movement. That such a type should be given any concession is an insult the the Founding Fathers, the Constitution, and American history. Is there any way this idiocy can be blocked or revoked?

Iggy is right that prior to 1956 there was no Congressionally designated motto, but E Pluribus Unum had always been regarded as such. Congress adopted "In God We Trust" during a period of red scare hysteria in the 1950s. E Pluribus Unum is the motto on the obverse side of the Great Seal of the United States, and fortunately Congress did not meddle with that.

The motto has stood up in federal court cases, so what can we say? DeMint is right. It should be displayed. He's all wet as far as history goes, of course, and E Pluribus Unum doesn't proclaim faith in government, but simply reflects the fact that the U.S. came from the union of the colonies, and is now regarded as meaning a country drawn from various diverse peoples, all unified under one nation.

Personally, I find the motto offensive, an obvious First Amendment violation, and an in-your-face one at that. Whenever I see it, I think, "What do you mean 'we,' Kimosabe?" But what's done is done. We're stuck with it. And the politicians are obviously going to pander to the 90% who want it, not the 10% who don't think it's right.

This is freaking ridiculous (and I'm a Christian). As someone commented above, this pandering does not bode well.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chair of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, which oversees the new visitor center, agreed to make several of the changes DeMint has demanded, including a reference to "In God We Trust" as the national motto.

well, of course, feinstein had no problem with this. she's spent these past eight years betraying her oath of office to defend and protect the constitution..

same old same old...

mudwall jackson,

as Obama said when McCain wanted to cancel the debate, we have to be able to do more than one thing at a time.

looking at is as Dems "fighting over $150,000" is ill-conceived. what we are fighting for - and one of the core reasons the Bush era needed to end - is a fight for reality, a fight for science over dogma, a fight for truth over truthiness, a fight for a grounding in actual history versus in theocon revisionism.

much like my prior post about how $150k isn't much but $150 million is, any individual fight over a little wingnuttery sneaking in doesn't seem worth the bother, but next thing you know school kids are learning at the Grand Canyon vistors center that the Earth is only 5000 years old, and they are getting Intelligent Design in school, and NASA studies on climate are being politically amended beyond recognition and suddenly we're a country of ignorance and superstition.

these are not small matters, nor unimportant. in the aggregate, they are of extreme importance. why mess with a line drawing exercise as to which efforts to stop or not; just stop them all.

I'll take Ineffective Senate Leadership for $150k, Alex...

Who are Senators Reid and Feinstein?

That is correct, select again.

I TOLD you he was a tool.

He's also not real smart.

South Carolina was the birthplace of the abortive secession of 1861, which was launched with the goal of breaking up the United States and preserving human slavery. So what the hell makes some bozo from South Carolina like DeMint an expert on patriotism or Christianity?

It's deMint who is distorting history, as does everyone who bangs on about this being a christian nation. The founders themselves downplayed their religion.

Hopefully Feinstein will call in her meazley $150K investment at the appropriate time and it will have gained significant interest. This nation has some serious bizness to get done.

Actually, she must have a filecabinet full of chits by now.

Who are Senators Reid and Feinstein?

That is correct and we would of accepted Pelosi as well. select again.

> as that is taxpayer money, it's my money!

God, don't use right-wing rhetorical techniques, it makes you look bad.

So, it's $150K divided by 300 million Americans, which works out to 1/20 of one cent. Gimme your address and I'll send you a penny, and you can keep the change and save your high dudgeon for something actual worth worrying about.

I got a coupla choice quotes fer yer visitor's center, Senator DeMented:

"I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature." --Thomas Jefferson

"I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church." --Thomas Paine

"The Bible is not my book, and Christianity is not my religion. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma." --Abraham Lincoln

And the money quote, the one sure to send the good Senator reeling into apoplexy:

"It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." --Thomas Jefferson

WAR ON CHRISTMAS!!!

"E. Pluribus Unum" - no period after the "E"--it's not an abbreviation, just means "out of."

Why would I want to trust in something that I can know nothing of, can't say one way or the other exists and in temporal terms has been a source of great misery throughout history? From a religious perspective people will believe what they want and the right to do so has to be honored and preserved. But from a government perspective this argument is useless because it cannot be resolved. Isn't it bad enough that persons in our government misrepresent and lie about things we do know? I'd rather government officials be banned from even commenting on matters of faith. Every time they do so it presupposes a belief or idea that is impossible to substantiate. I've had it with government lying to the American people. Because this is framed in a political context it just becomes another lie that is actually abusive of individual beliefs.

While $150,000 will not break the bank, heck its chump change. No this is about principle. Church and state are separate in this country, period.

We need to stop expecting our representatives to fight these brainless issues on our behalf. The people need to speak up and simply say NO. End of soap opera. Have not our politicians done enough of nothing for us to realize we must stop the stupidity ourselves. When will we realize it takes more then a vote to create change?

Oh and how many other $150,000 useless expenditures are being accomplished today with the peoples tax money. Anybody know?