Thanksgiving Eats...

Thanksgiving -- the Holiday upon which Americans celebrate the indigenous peoples of America (yeah, like that's ever gonna happen) for saving their Puritan asses from dying in the impossible New England winters, is upon us -- so let's start the liberal dinner by giving our thanks for this:

“The government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion.”: THOSE WORDS, PENNED IN ARTICLE 11 of the 1797 Treaty of Tripoli, are as succinct a statement as we have from the Founding Fathers on the role of religion in our government. Their authorship is ascribed variously to George Washington, under whom the treaty was negotiated, or to John Adams, under whom it took effect, or sometimes to Joel Barlow, U.S. consul to Algiers, friend of Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine, and himself no stranger to the religious ferment of the era, having served as a chaplain in the Revolutionary Army. But the validity of the document transcends its authorship for a simple reason: it was ratified. "