Evidently, congress has finished their investigations into Katrina, the CIA, and has concluded how to best resolve Iraq, now they can move onto “important” issues:

Affirming the rich spiritual and religious history of our Nation’s founding and subsequent history and expressing support for designation of the first week in May as `American Religious History Week’ for the appreciation of and education on America’s history of religious faith.

Really, I probably wouldn’t have a problem with this except for two things…

1. The inordinate number of “whereas” statements (I’m not going to post them, here’s the Library of Congress link).

I’m annoyed by this because it’s a laundry list defending religious iconography in our public and government buildings. Does that really need to be defended? Apart from a depiction of the Ten Commandments being removed from a courthouse, is anyone really offended by religious iconography on a public building? Does it really bother a majority of Americans that the words “In God We Trust” is on every dollar bill? Is this really something congress needs to debate and/or worry about?

2. This seems to come from the same ilk as Mike Huckabee wanting to “amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards.”

(LINK, because embedding only seems to work when Jeff posts)

Amendment I: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;

I don’t think HR-888 nor Mike’s pandering to the religious right necessarily violates the First Amendment, but I do think they’re both standing on the line.