December 16, 2004

55 Mile March Planned to Protect Right of Cities To Show Appreciation of Religion

As you may have heard, the ACLU is suing to have a small cross removed from the LA County Seal:

For the overwhelming majority of millions of citizens of Los Angeles County over the past 50 years, this seal has aroused no opposition. But a few months ago, someone with a magnifying glass at the American Civil Liberties Union discovered that the smallest item on the seal was a cross. And in its aim to expunge any trace of Christianity and God from American public life, the ACLU brought this fact to the attention of the five Los Angeles County supervisors. The three liberals on the board were equally horrified, and voted within days to erase the cross and redesign the seal, which now depicts a building with no Christian symbol in place of the cross.

The LA County Board of Supervisors immediately caved:

Supervisors Mike Antonovich and Don Knabe wanted to fight to keep the seal, but supervisors Gloria Molina, Yvonne Brathwaite Burke and Zev Yaroslavsky feared the financial ramifications of a protracted legal battle.

Many Americans are proud of our Judeo-Christian heritage, which teaches us to love others and to be grateful for what we have been given and what we have achieved. The ACLU is attempting to forbid many expressions of this pride. It is doing so by attempting to use the courts to create case-law enforcing their views. The ACLU’s legal argument for this is based on a reading of the constitution which is unrelated to what’s actually in that document. Per NBC:

The board agreed to change the 47-year-old seal after the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California threatened to sue unless a small cross on the seal was removed.

The ACLU argued the cross violated the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of the separation of church and state.

Per Ann Coulter:

We’re told the First Amendment requires a separation of church and state, which, just as an incidental matter, is completely false.

...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.”

The First Amendment says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” It doesn’t say the state shall not express pride in a religion. The Founding Fathers were deeply religious, and the notion that they wanted to forbid states to express an appreciation of religion is laughable. Any such thing would have been so shocking at the time the Constution was written, that it would have prevented the Constitution from ever having been adopted by the States.

Last night I attended a dinner given by the Hollywood Congress of Republicans. I had the opportunity to talk to Dave Hernandez. Dave is leading a grassroots campaign to oppose the ACLU on this, so as to preserve our rights to show our appreciation for our religion—some of which rights the ACLU is seeking to curtail and forbid.

Dave is seeking to do this via petition. Per the binding laws, if enough people sign the petition, the seal will stay the way it is:

Petition Goal

(LA County initiative Procedures, sec. VII, A, 1.)

If the petition is signed by voters not less in number than 20% of the entire vote cast within the county for all candidates for Governor at the last gubernatorial election (341,212) preceding the publication of the notice of intention, the Board of Supervisors shall …adopt the ordinance, without alterations, at the regular meeting in which it is presented or within 10 days after it is presented.

The story has gotten national attention from Dennis Prager, NBC, the Washington Times, and others.

Dave told me he’s receiving cards and letters on a daily basis from all over the country, sending him support, because people know that if the ACLU succeeds in Los Angeles, the ACLU will then go after every similar county in the country.

Dave’s organization is preparing a 55-mile walk in support of his petition. The walk will start at the San Gabriel Mission, and end 55 miles later, in front of the building where the LA County Board of Supervisors meets. Dave is currently planning the march for early or mid-January. It is not necessary for any individual to walk the whole 55 miles. At every church and synagogue along the way, new people will join the march, and signed petitions will be collected.

The web site of Dave’s organization is located here.

You heard it here first. Variety Confirms: Polar Express a Bomb—Not. Confirming what I posted here on November 29th, this week’s Variety says that, contrary to initial reports, The Polar Express is a hit. (Here’s the link; registration required.)

Calling ‘em wrong
How B.O. pundits, crix misread tea leaves on two of the season’s key releases

Even in this age of corporate congloms, the movie biz is hardly a science.

A little more than a month ago, Warner Bros.’ “The Polar Express” was widely pilloried, and if anyone was paying attention to Walt Disney’s “National Treasure,” it was critics readying their brickbats.

Fast forward five weeks and “National Treasure” has become only the third movie of the year to claim the No. 1 spot on the box office charts three weeks in a row, and “Polar Express” has shown remarkable resiliency, defying the doom-and-gloom pronouncements following its Nov. 10 opening.

...And when [Polar Express] opened to just a hair above $30 million over its first five days, the Los Angeles Times labeled it a financial disaster, quoting an unnamed agent who said, “Warners must have black crepe in all the windows.”

“It has stuck in people’s minds that this is a big disappointment,” says Martin Shafer, CEO of Castle Rock, which produced the pic along with Bing’s Shangri-La, Hanks’ Playtone and Zemeckis’ ImageMovers. “But the movie didn’t turn out the way that people who wrote negative things said it would.”

Conventional wisdom “is that films released today have a 2 or 2.5 multiple,” Shafer says, referring to the formula to determine final cume from a film’s opening gross.

The average multiple this year has been a little over 3. Going into its fifth week, “Polar’s” multiple is already well past 4.

Over the Thanksgiving weekend, the three-day number improved 24% from the previous weekend, a virtually unheard-of gain. By its fifth week, “Polar” had cumed $100 million, with two more weeks until Christmas.