Constitution does NOT require "Separation of Church and State"

First Amendment reads "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;"  That is the first sentence of the first amendment, so we can believe that the issue was important to the founders.
   In the eighteenth century, when the Constitution was created, establishment of religions was a fairly common practice in the world.  In England the Church of England was established.  You had to be a member of the Church of England to receive important government jobs like judgeships, commissions in the army or navy.  The royal family was required to be Church of England members. In France you had to be catholic to hold just about any job, public or private.   In short the established church received benefits at law and favored treatment. 
   America had a lot of different churches in the eighteenth century, Congregational, Quaker, Episcopal, Catholic, and others that I don't remember.  All of which would have been proud to become established. 
   First amendment says that no church gets the bennies of establishment, all churches get treated the same in the eyes of the law.  Which surely ended a lot of jockeying for position and fear that some other church would gain the bennies of establishment.  In short it was a good political compromise.  Second clause about the free exercise thereof means that churches are free to put up church buildings, conduct services, pass a collection plate, marry people, operate schools, send out missionaries, bury parishioners in the church yard, and do all the other churchly things.  Including putting up a cross as a memorial to WWI dead.
   The Supremes just ruled that cross legitimate.  They mentioned a number of good reasons, such as it had stood for close to a century, but they did not come right out and say that putting up a cross is free exercise of religion, which they should have done. 
    The phrase "separation of church and state" I believe comes from Thomas Jefferson, not the Constitution.  Granted, Jefferson was a heavy duty founder, for whom we have a lot of respect, but he didn't get separation of church and state into the Constitution. 

Comprehensive Immigration Reform on Beat the Press

Lot of unhappy talk, lamenting the lack of comprehensive immigration reform by the talking heads this morning.  No description of just what comprehensive might be. But you got the impression that a whole bunch of stuff would be changed.  I don't think our current Congress can actually pass controversial laws  any more, and changing everything in immigration is surely controversial..  Congresscritters just sit around trash talking Trump.  That's amusing and all, but it doesn't get the public's business done. 
   I think instead of comprehensive, we might be able to pass some simple changes that everyone agrees are good.  For instance, a large majority is in favor of doing something for the dreamers, illegals brought into the country as children.  Might be some discussion as to how much we ought to do, but I think some compromise could be reached.  This looks doable with today's low speed Congress, whereas comprehensive probably ain't doable. 
   For another measure,  we should declare anyone who serves in the US armed forces and obtains an honorable discharge is eligible to become a US citizen.  That worked for the Romans, it will work for us.  Or anyone who assists US forces overseas doing things like interpreting should be granted citizenship. 
   We need immigrants.  Immigrants and the children of immigrants make up our most loyal citizens.  The US is a super power for many reasons, one of them being our large, loyal, and well educated population.  With the fertility of  the US falling below replacement level, we need immigrants to keep our population up.

A couple of Win 10 Speed Ups

Zap as many installed apps as you can.  Games, stuff you have never used, Avast anti virus.  Windows won't let you un install anything it thinks essential.

In the search box on the taskbar type "programs"  Select Apps and Features.  Run down the list of installed applications and uninstall as many as you can.  I zapped 20 of so.  Sped things up perceptibly. 

Kill off CTF Loader.   Do Control Panel-> Systems & Security->administrative Tools->Services.  Find the Touch Keyboard and Handwriting Service.  Stop it.  Make sure it stays stopped.  It may pop back to life a couple of times.  Then set startup type to disabled.  That did kill CTF loader out of task manager. 

 

Woodsville NH 4th of July Parade

Woodsville, a small town north of Franconia Notch, has been running a decent 4th of July parade for as long as I can remember.  My brother was in the National Guard, which marched in the parade every summer, and so we took all the kids and watched the parade every summer.  Brother's unit was artillery, towed cannon, no tanks.  I am sure if it had been an armor unit, we would have had tanks instead of cannon.
  So. I am amused to hear whining on the TV over a couple of tanks moved into Washington DC for the 4th.  Whingers are complaining that tanks are too militaristic, too expensive, and downright un American. 
   Up here in God's country, we enjoy seeing the Guard, seeing every firetruck for miles around, and all the cop cars, the floats, and politicians like me with yard signs duct taped to the doors of our cars. And maybe a flyover.  It's the 4th.  Helova good day for a parade. 

New TV

Did some net searching for RCA jacks on Samsung TV's.  The word from the net is that new TV's don't have audio output RCA jacks at all.  Someone said the music industry objected to them claiming that they were being used to pirate music.  Someone said for TV's with optical digital sound output, (my Samsung has such a port) you can buy a converter box for $26, and an optical cable ($?) and convert the optical digital signal back to plain old baseband analog audio signal  that my stereo can handle.  I do want the stereo sound.  The TV speakers rattle and break up when I push the TV sound all the way up, and the TV isn't really loud enough, and I miss the sound playing in my workshop off a pair of fairly decent bookcase speakers mounted in the shop driven by the stereo amp.  
   VCR now works.  Dunno why it didn't work last night.  Loaded a tape, plugged it in and got pix and sound.  Stereo separation is weak, but then my test tape is Disney's Fantasia which was made long before stereo was invented.
   Now all I have to do is figure out what the password for my router is and I can take video right off the internet.  My Netgear router has a button on it, that when pressed  connects up to my computers, no hassle.  I'll see if that works on TV's. 
   One last trick.  When I hit "source" on the TV remote I get a choice of HDMI 1, HDMI 2 and AV.  I would like to relabel the choices as Cable Box, DVD, and VCR.  There oughta be a way but I haven't found it yet.  Manual is mostly worthless and Samsung's website just offers a downloadable copy of the same manual. 

The Sony flatsceen died yesterday, Bought a new one

I thought I needed a 32 inch TV, at least that is what the dead Sony was.  Came back from Wally Mart with a Samsung UN32M4500 for only $149.  The Sony cost $400 ten years ago.  I could have fit a new 40 inch into the living room, the entire TV is smaller.  The old Sony had a sizable bezel around the 32 inch screen.  The new Samsung has no bezel at all, and I could have fit the next bigger size into the .living room.
  New Samsung has nice video, two HDMI ports, one for the DVD player and one for the cable box.  Apparently Samsung doesn't offer audio outputs jack anymore so I cannot feed the TV sound into my stereo speakers.  It does come with  an internet connection.  The setup program asked for my router password.  I gave it the password from my address book, and that didn't work.  I will have to have a long conversation with the router about that.   Video is good, nice and bright.  VCR  sorta works, but the video is terrible, black and white, heavy checker board, no sound.  Might be the tape, but it probably isn't.  I'll try a known good tape later tonight. 
   It would be nice if  they would mold the plastic casework in something besides gloss black.  The black makes it hard to read serial numbers, model numbers, and connector designations, and to see screws and make fastenings.  

Democrat Presidential Debate

Strange affair.  I missed Wednesday night's warmup show, the TV cable was broken.  Thursday night I managed to get a roof antenna connected to the TV, AND I fixed the cable.  Then I feel asleep before the show started at 9PM.  So I didn't see the shows.  All I have to go on is the after action reports on TV, internet and Wall St Journal.  Since the MSM are all democrats, I figure the chilly reception given the event means it had some real problems.
   None of the two dozen candidates said anything memorable.  All of them came out in favor of medicare for all, free college, student loan forgiveness,  tax-the-rich, let everyone into the country.  Somehow, I don't think any of those ideas is a real vote getter.  In fact, I think they are a voter turnoff.