{"id":4339,"date":"2005-06-01T10:28:03","date_gmt":"2005-06-01T14:28:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/4339.html"},"modified":"2005-06-01T10:28:03","modified_gmt":"2005-06-01T14:28:03","slug":"dont-do-the-crime-if-you-cant-do-the-time-in-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/dont-do-the-crime-if-you-cant-do-the-time-in-church\/","title":{"rendered":"Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time — in church"},"content":{"rendered":"

The principle of government neutrality towards religion isn’t complicated. But to see how badly some people understand the concept<\/a> is nevertheless stunning.<\/p>\n

A Kentucky judge has been offering some drug and alcohol offenders the option of attending worship services instead of going to jail or rehab — a practice some say violates the separation of church and state.<\/p>\n

District Judge Michael Caperton, 50, a devout Christian, said his goal is to “help people and their families.”<\/p>\n

“I don’t think there’s a church-state issue, because it’s not mandatory and I say worship services instead of church,” he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In all, since coming up with the idea, Caperton, who was elected in a non-partisan race, has offered the church-or-jail option about 50 times to repeat drug and alcohol offenders.<\/p>\n

The defense for this is closer to a bad joke than a legal argument. It’s not mandatory, but if defendants ignore Caperton’s suggested religious alternative, they’re probably going to jail. He doesn’t mandate “church,” but when a sitting judge uses his position to promote and encourage religious services, he’s violating everything church-state separation stands for.<\/p>\n

And as my friends at AU noted<\/a>, it’s not the first time Caperton has had some problems separating his personal beliefs with his professional responsibilities.<\/p>\n

…Caperton was reprimanded by the state’s Judicial Conduct Commission for presiding over a case involving a friend instead of disqualifying himself.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sounds like that same commission needs to take a look at Caperton’s latest scheme as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The principle of government neutrality towards religion isn’t complicated. But to see how badly some people understand the concept is nevertheless stunning. A Kentucky judge has been offering some drug and alcohol offenders the option of attending worship services instead of going to jail or rehab — a practice some say violates the separation of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4339\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}