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OpEd Tolerance needed for religious heritage “In God we trust!" There, I’ve said it! It is on our currency, in our Constitution, in our Pledge of Allegiance, and engraved on public buildings. It does not disturb me that it is not on every building or on every document that is issued by the governments of the world. I am not appalled that some people do not see eye to eye with me on all my religious beliefs. Am I in the minority? Rabbi Marc Gellman wrote: "All religions teach us to help people whenever we can. All religions teach us to play fair and not to hit or steal or cheat. All religions teach us we should be forgiving and cut people some slack when they mess up, because someday we will mess up too. All religions teach us to love our families, to respect our parents and to make new fami lies when we grow up. Religions all over the world teach the same right way to live.” In school we studied about western civilizations, the cru sades, wars, religions and the other major incidents of history . We had our minds open to dis cover the many interesting details of life in other nations. At least in my time, teachers believed all history was impor tant. In nations around the world there were many religions. Many of these had thousands of years of historical facts and had artifacts preserved to verify their existence for future generations. Some of these religions caused us to wonder whether we could make the sacrifices expected of their followers. Some w ere strict in their beliefs about marriage, family, what to eat. and when to attend worship services. We had a learning experience about Ethics & Religion _ Politics may doom needed initiative in welfare reform Last week the Senate began debating re-authoriza tion of welfare reform that includes a "Healthy Marriage Initiative" to increase the per centage of couples who marry and enjoy healthy mar riages. The House passed its version of the bill a year ago. Only 54 percent of adults are married today and half of new marriages end in divorce. When welfare reform was passed by Congress in 1996, it was denounced by Sen. Pat Moynihan as “the most brutal act of social policy since Reconstruction. Those involved will take this dis grace to their graves." Marion Wright Edelman of the Children’s Defense Fund, called the law “an outrage ... that will hurt and impoverish millions of American chil dren." However, welfare reform has been spectacularly suc cessful at two levels. First, welfare rolls have plunged by 60 percent, as welfare recipi ents were required to go to work and day care was provid ed for their children. Even during the recession, when experts predicted that welfare rolls would grow again they continued to fall. In the 25 years before wel fare reform, 40 percent of black and Hispanic children were poor. In 2002, the per cent fell to 31.5 among blacks and 28.6 of Hispanic kids. Similarly the percentage of single mothers in poverty fell from 50.3 to 39.8. People earn more working than on welfare. On the other hand, welfare reform had no impact on out of-wedlock births, which grew from 1.26 million to 1.35 mil lion children. A third of all births are now to unwed par ents. Therefore, President Bush proposed a “Healthy Marriage W fjl Julianne Bo! ’ ng them. While every nation of the world may now recognize Christianity as a religion, it has not always been so. However, most people believe in some thing or someone even if that someone is an unknown entity who controls their salary better known as “the powers that be". Every state in the United States acknowledges God in their state constitution. The national government has always recognized God's favor as need ed in political documents. Even the Supreme Court, the highest court in our land, begins each session with the words: “God save the United States and this court." How have we come to this point in history when we want to wipe away every indication that God has been an influence for right and wrong? What has brought about the fear that we may upset a few people by con tinuing to preserve the docu ments and heritage of hundreds of years with the wording that is recognized as meaningful to our ancestors? Even though all believers do not think alike this may be the time and place to say, “Enough is enough ". Perhaps we should recognize that there is an impor tant aspect to our heritage and preserve those artifacts of our country in their original state. Would that hurt anything? Cumming resident Julianne Boling's column appears each Sunday. Mike McManus Initiative" to reform Welfare Reform that would earmark SI4O million a year of federal grants to promote marriage education and another SIOO million a year if states put up SIOO million. “The President feels strongly ... about the need to increase the number of chil dren who are growing up in healthy, married households. They do far better than on every measure of child welfare compared to children growing up in unmarried households,” said HHS Assistant Secretary Wade Hom at a press confer ence Wednesday. Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback provided evi dence: “Children growing up without fathers are five times more likely to be in poverty, are two to three times more likely to suffer from emotional and behavior problems as teenagers and to drop out of school. They are more likely to commit crime, engage in early promiscuous behavior and commit suicide. “By contrast, marriage is a good way out of poverty. It would lift 70 percent of those in poverty out of it if two peo ple are working in a family rather than one.” How marriageable are the poor, and are they even con sidering marriage? “Fragile Families” research of 4,700 new and unwed par ents in inner cities found that at the birth of the child, half are living together, and anoth er quarter are romantically involved. Furthermore, the fathers are much more “marriageable” than has been thought. Some Flanking the Sept. 11 panel WASHINGTON, D.C. Doing the right thing for the wrong reason gets you points in this town, because so rarely is the right thing done at all. So everybody is now prais ing the Bush administration for allowing National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice to testify under oath and in public before the Sept. 11 Commission. For months, the White House has refused to allow this, citing a sacred and invio lable Constitutional principle: the separation of powers. Rice could not testify, the White House insisted, because unlike Cabinet members whom Congress approves, she is a White House staff member and has no responsibilities to the legislative branch. For that branch to demand her appearance in public and under oath (she had already testified in private and not under oath before the commis sion) would violate the separa tion of the executive and leg islative branches. So even though Rice blan keted the airwaves giving her version of events, which con flicted with the version pre sented by former counter-ter rorism chief Richard Clarke, she would not do so in front of the commission. But what happened last week? Why did the White House change its mind? Well, one unnamed White House source told a reporter that “Bush advisers concluded that Rice can effectively counter Clarke in a high-profile public forum. The official also said polls showing Bush leading Sen. John Kerry, the likely Democratic presidential nomi nee. made this an opportune time to yield to the commis sion’s demands." Constitutional principle? Oh, yeah. that. Well, we can forget about that. The Sept. 11 Commission was very happy with this, but it still had one more demand: that 82 percent are employed and earn $17,500 on average. Two thirds have at least a high school education. Only 2 per cent had hit or slapped the mother. And most important, four out of five of mothers and fathers are considering mar riage. But a year after the child’s birth only 15 percent are married. The Healthy Marriage Initiative would provide funds to help those couples improve their skills of communication and conflict resolution so they might actually marry and be equipped to build a healthy marriage. "The need is clear." observed Family Research Council President Tony Perkins. “For every SI,OOO we spend on public programs addressing the breakdown of the family, we only spend $1 trying to prevent that break down in the first place. The President’s initiative puts the emphasis in the right place prevention.” The funds can also be used to help those in the middle class build, enrich and restore marriages. This is away to prevent families from falling into poverty. However, passage of wel fare reform with the Healthy Marriage Initiative is very uncertain. Democrats who opposed the bill in 1996 are tacking on so many amendments that a compromise may be impossi ble. It appears that the Senate’s 49 Democrats do not want to give Bush “another victory" in an election year. They can block its passage. It would be tragic if parti sanship kills this bill that could lift millions out of poverty Mike McManus is a nation ally syndicated columnist. vjTf Roger Simon George Bush and Dick Cheney face questioning by the entire commission. (The White House had wanted only the chair and vice chair to do the questioning.) The session would be closed, the two men would not be under oath and no transcript would be made, which was a pretty sweet deal for the White House, when you think about it. The White House finally agreed to questioning by the entire commission, but only after extracting a very interest ing but little commented-upon concession: The White House insisted that Bush and Cheney be questioned together and not separately, like all other wit- ueu ra...wm, wre ow. ■ I I / j-WECctoW. I SJ Q. AV Why use these keys... ' iWi fill Online banking, convenient, easy to use and secure. www.citizbank.com MAIN OFFICE 651 Veterans Memorial Boulevard, Cumming MIDWAY BRANCH 5140 Highway 9, Alpharetta | PHONE 770 886-9500 FAX 770 886-6596 TELEPHONE BANKING 678 513-9249 or 1800-872-4924 Z”S|*T*l 11 a K■ ft CITIZENS ta BANK EBK OF FORSYTH COUNTY FORSYTH COUNTY NEWS - Sunday, April 4,2004 nesses. Commissioner Slade Gorton, a former Republican senator from Washington, said of that agreement on Wednesday, “It’s curious.” It’s very curious. Does Cheney have to be in the room with Bush to make sure Bush does not screw up again like when he told Bob Woodward in Woodward’s 2002 book "Bush at War” that Al Qaeda was not his focus before Sept. 11? “I was not on point,” Bush told The Washington Post reporter. “I didn’t feel a sense of urgency.” And if Bush starts going down that road with the com mission, is Cheney supposed to kick him under the table? At a press conference announcing the deal with the White House, Commission Chairman Tom Kean had the following exchange with a reporter: QUESTION: “Can you say PAGE 17A why you would agree to have the vice president and the pres ident testify at the same time? To someone else, it might be to allow, you know, Mr. Cheney to help Mr. Bush with the answers. And I’m just confused why you would allow them to go together. It seems like it compromises your investiga tion to have them answer ques tions at the same time." KEAN: “Well, we recog nize that Mr. Bush may help Mr. Cheney with some of the answers. (LAUGHTER) But it was the suggestion of the White House.” No kidding it was at the suggestion of the White House, The White House’s first rule is that you never want the presi dent facing questions alone. He could say anything. Like the truth. Roger Simon is a nationally syndicated columnist. His e rnail address is Writeßoger-. @ aol.com