Pew 54, Where Are You?

American Minute for November 1st:

On NOVEMBER 1, 1800, John Adams became the first U.S. President to move into the White House. The following day he wrote a letter to his wife, Abigail, in which he composed a beautiful prayer. A portion of John Adams' prayer was inscribed on the mantlepiece in the State Dining Room by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. It reads: "I pray Heaven to bestow the best of blessings on this house and all that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof." After the White House was finished being built, the next building constructed on Lafayette Square was St. John's Episcopal Church. Because every President since James Madison worshipped there at some time, Pew 54 has been designated for the First Family. Other historic Washington, D.C. area churches include: Christ Church in Alexandria, where President Washington attended; the National Presbyterian Church, where Truman attended; the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, where Presidents Lincoln and Eisenhower attended and where Senate Chaplain Peter Marshall pastored from 1937-1949; and Holy Trinity Catholic Church, where John F. Kennedy attended.

Endnotes:
Adams, John. Nov. 1800, letter to his wife, Abigail Adams. John Adam's Prayer (Washington, D.C.: White House Collection). John Bartlett, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1855, 1980), p. 382. Charles Fadiman, ed., The American Treasury (NY: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, 1955), p. 317.

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Inauguration Day: 3/4/1937

Until 1937, MARCH 4th was Inauguration Day.

Each President acknowledged faith upon assuming office, for example, President John Adams in 1797 gave: "Veneration for the religion of a people who profess and call themselves Christians...to consider a decent respect for Christianity among the best recommendations for the public service."

In 1809, President James Madison referred to the: "Guidance of that Almighty Being." President John Quincy Adams stated in 1825: "'Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh in vain.'" In 1841, President William Harrison said: "I deem the present occasion sufficiently important...in expressing to my fellow citizens a profound reverence for the Christian religion." President Franklin Pierce, in 1853, stated: "There is no national security but in the nation's humble, acknowledged dependence upon God." President James Buchanan, 1857, said: "Cultivate peace...with all nations...in a spirit of Christian benevolence." In 1861, Abraham Lincoln wrote: "Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him who has never yet forsaken this favored land, are still competent to adjust in the best way all our present difficulty." President Calvin Coolidge said in 1925: "America...cherishes no purpose save to merit the favor of Almighty God."

American Minute with Bill Federer

All this, of course, was before we had a Muslim President...

"...if Obama is so brilliant, why does he parrot the words and thoughts of a bunch of schmucks like Karl Marx, Saul Alinsky, Al Gore and Michael Moore?"

Why does he insist that the trouble with the Constitution and the civil-rights movement is that they didn't focus on the redistribution of wealth? Why would he hand over the federal budget to a couple of morons like Pelosi and Reid? And why on earth would he put Henry Waxman in charge of his energy program? A brilliant person wouldn't trust Waxman to bring baked beans to a picnic.

When someone decides to model a health-care plan after such dismal failures as England, Canada and Cuba, while exhuming the failed economic policies of FDR, why would anyone suggest he is anything but a left-wing ignoramus?

This is an American president, for heaven's sake, who has more in common with Noam Chomsky, Hugo Chavez and some Berkeley hippie than he has with Washington, Jefferson and Adams. Except that he is now 30 years older, Obama seems to think exactly the same way he was thinking back in college, when he was a pot-smoking idiot who sought out students who were self-professed revolutionaries and professors who were communists.

If we have come to a point where the ability to read scripted lines off a teleprompter is considered a sign of brilliance, no matter how fatuous the actual words may be, we are in even worse shape than I imagined.

Is Obama Really Brilliant?