This bill has special relevance to challenges in the courts today. JewsOnFirst has been reporting on cases where Jewish or atheist school children are coerced and harassed in school because they are not Christian. On July 23 Talk To Action joined with Jews on First and CrossLeft to send a message of religious tolerance to the board of the Indian River School District in Delaware.

Hostettler authored two other court-stripping bills that passed the House. Do you remember that two-and-a-half ton monster monument of the Ten Commandments sitting right in the lobby of the Alabama Supreme Court? The lower courts ordered it removed. Those court decisions were challenged until the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals supported the lower courts and the monument had to be removed. Along comes Representative Hostettler with a bill saying you can't remove it with our money.

On July 23, 2003, the U.S. House of Representatives approved by a vote of 260-161 an amendment to an appropriations bill that bars the use of federal funds to enforce the decision that ordered the removal of a two-ton Ten Commandments monument from the Judicial Building in Montgomery, Alabama. The vote was primarily along party lines. (The monument was removed, but I don't know who paid the movers.)

One year later, almost to the day, July 23, 2004, Hostettler drafted the Marriage Protection Act. It was adopted in the U.S. House of Representatives 233 to 194, again primarily along party lines. The bill would strip the federal courts of jurisdiction over legal challenges to the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), a federal law passed in 1996 that purports to leave the recognition of same-sex marriage entirely to each state. In otherwords, one part of our population, gays and lesbians, would be denied access to the courts on the gay marriage issue.

Here comes the good news - for those of you who bother reading articles to the end. Mr. Stripper is in trouble. The polls show his opponent for his seat in November is leading him by double digits.