In keeping with the general theme, the First Amendment provides that Congress cannot establish a religion -- but nor can it stop the states from establishing religions. That's why it says: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." Dear Congress: You may be eligible for a free country. You do nothing.
The only thing that tempers my annoyance with the canard about states not being allowed to establish religions is imagining the kind of established religion we'd have in New York. We'd be doing daily devotionals to Saint Hillary.
Still, it is a fact that when the First Amendment was ratified, several states had established religions. Fortunately for the burgeoning minority religions in those states, the established religions were things like "Episcopalianism" and "Congregationalism" rather than "Liberalism."
It's hard to imagine now, but before the official government religion was liberalism -- devoted to class warfare, ethnic hatred and intolerance -- Americans were kind to one another. They managed to get along even without ACLU lawsuits. Thus, when there were enough practitioners of other faiths in a state to be bothered by the established religion, the majority just disestablished themselves.
Back to the New Country: Two malcontents at the Virginia Military Institute recently sued to ban VMI's tradition of saying a non-denominational prayer at mealtime. The cadets are not required to recite the prayer or even bow their heads. Merely having to stand while listening to an invocation of God is apparently very upsetting for them. (I'd hate to see these guys under fire.)
A typical rendition of the VMI dinner prayer goes like this: "Almighty God, we give our thanks for VMI, for its reputation, spirit and ideals. Let your favor continue toward our school and your grace be abundantly supplied to the Corps. Now, O God, we receive this food and share this meal together with thanksgiving."
It doesn't get any more sectarian than that. How about: "Designer of the Universe (if you're out there) ..."
Religious people keep cheerfully going back and trying to formulate some prayer that won't make liberals angry. But the problem won't go away. No prayer that assumes a belief in a Higher Being will ever be acceptable. God has no part in the religion of sex education, environmentalism, feminism, Marxism and loving Big Brother.
In a totally unsurprising development, liberals finally suspended their opposition to the death penalty in the case of Timothy McVeigh. He was the sworn enemy of the established religion of Big Brother. Too bad he never stumbled into one of those after-school Christian meetings.