The Republican Party's presidential candidates are having a televised debate this evening, and its two front-running candidates are right in the middle of religious controversy. Rick Santorum has essentially embraced a militant Christian mantle as his calling card for the presidency. Mitt Romney is the first significant Mormon candidate for high office. I wish I could ask each of them a question about two stories that appeared in today's news.
Exhibit A is the release of a secret report compiled by a clandestine unit of the New York Police Department. (The story appeared in The Star-Ledger of Newark and in Associated Press reports.) The focus of the report was Newark, New Jersey's Muslim community. Apparently, this police activity did not identify any criminal suspects, produce any arrest warrants, or bother to respect the civil liberties of an entire community. Those under surveillance were being watched on the basis of their religious beliefs. Much of the police activity occurred during the Bush-Cheney years, when the liberties for which our nation's Founding Fathers fought a revolution were aggressively violated.
Apparently, the NYPD was given the green light by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg to undertake this domestic spying. Newark and New Jersey state officials have publicly denied knowledge of the snooping, although one wonders if they are indulging in "plausible deniability."
Contrasting with the revelation about the Gotham police's creepy, profoundly illegal profiling of law-abiding Muslims is a Los Angeles Times story from Arizona. That state's House of Representatives recently passed legislation permitting Bible classes to be taught in public high schools and charter schools. Of course, this measure disrupts the wise separation of church and state. In effect, the Arizona House has made Christianity the de facto government approved religion. Taxpayer dollars can be dedicated to the instruction of Christian precepts in a currently secular environment. Presumably the New York City police department will not find these religious fanatics as "suspicious" as Newark's Muslim population.
I wonder how former US senator Santorum would approach the two episodes. How would his stance on religious freedom dovetail with the NYPD's investigatory zeal? How would his perspective on Christianity play for those non-believers whose children attend public schools? And I would be very curious how Mitt Romney would approach both incidents, especially as his "home" state of Michigan includes a significant Arab population.
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