Brats's bill needs a great deal of work

Submitted by James Luce (Spain), Aug 24, 2016 at 08:30

David Brat—the most junior Virginian US Congressman—has a good idea but his proposed bill 5824 needs (as Mr. Pipes notes) a great deal of work. In addition to not prohibiting the funding of religious structures:

1. The bill prohibits expenditures by "foreign nationals", but not foreign states. A foreign national is a person. A foreign state is not. Thus, this bill does not prevent the Saudi Government from funding mosques or anything else.
2. The bill does not prohibit either foreign nationals or foreign states from giving money to US residents who are then free to promote any religion they chose.
3. The bill probably will be found to violate the Establishment Clause in that the Supreme Court has made it clear that the US government can neither encourage nor discourage any particular religion or religion in general.
4. The bill is ambiguous in that it in fact all countries of the world "limit" in some way or another the free exercise of religion. This includes the USA which prohibits Mormons from practicing polygamy, prohibits various indigenous religious practices that involve ingesting hallucinogens, and prohibits Muslims from stoning adulterers to death.
5. It is unclear why the bill has the Secretary of State "acting through the assistant secretary for democracy" or anyone else. What if there is no assistant secretary of democracy in place from time to time? The bill sounds as though the decision to designate a country is ultimately the prerogative of the assistant secretary.

In summary, Mr. Brat needs to have someone vet the language of his bill unless he's doing this simply as a publicity stunt.

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