Four years of President Bush’s lies and deceptions make Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s candid opinion in the Pledge of Allegiance case refreshingly honest.

In Thomas’ opinion, the establishment clause prohibits only a national church while allowing states to establish state churches and “does not protect individual rights.” While he does say that the 14th Amendment applies to the free exercise clause and that protects individual rights, Thomas offers no legal or historic precedent that religious liberty can coexist with government-established religious institutions. Establishment and free exercise clauses are like the two sides of a coin – one without the other is nothing.

If President Bush can appoint a few new Supreme Court justices, such as fellow theocrats Charles Pinckney and William Pryor (recent recess appointments to the appellate courts), Thomas’ opinion might prevail.

Maine, someday, could vote to establish the Congregational Church as the official state religion. With establishment, laws compelling attendance at church functions by all residents; closure of all other churches, imprisonment of their ministers and other heretics; replacement of public schools by private Congregational schools; and the hiring of Congregational ministers by the state might follow.

Wouldn’t it be ironic if the three churches in Maine that recently hosted Republican voter registration meetings were to be closed, their members forced to leave the state or face imprisonment, because they helped elect as president a man who has little respect for religious liberty, the Constitution or simple honesty?

Jon Albrecht, Dixfield