The idiotic stink raised by paranoid right-wingnuts over Congressman Keith Ellison using the Koran (he’s Muslim, you see) was, correctly, ignored. Ellison took the oath of office without any book, just like all the rest of the new Congress, during the official swearing-in; then, just like all the rest of the Congressmen, he got to do a picture of an “individual” swearing in with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

And the book he laid his hands on to swear in? Once owned by none other than Founding Father, former President Thomas Jefferson!

Jefferson once wrote:

…that our civil rights have no dependance on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry; that therefore the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right.

Now, there’s a guy who can really WRITE.

Is this a great country or what?

Now it’s got me wondering if there’s a Jefferson copy of the Lotus Sutra somewhere in the Library of Congress…