Month: September 2015

Oh Suh-nap

by digby

This recitation of Fiorina’s failed tenure at HP is just …. devastating:

Here are the facts: In the five years that Fiorina was at Hewlett Packard, the company lost over half its value. It’s true that many tech companies had trouble during this period of the Internet bubble collapse, some falling in value as much as 27 percent; but HP under Fiorina fell 55 percent. During those years, stocks in companies like Apple and Dell rose. Google went public, and Facebook was launched. The S&P 500 yardstick on major U.S. firms showed only a 7 percent drop. Plenty good was happening in U.S. industry and in technology.

It was Fiorina’s failed leadership that brought her company down. After an unsuccessful attempt to catch up to IBM’s growth in IT services by buying PricewaterhouseCooper’s consulting business (PwC, ironically, ended up going to IBM instead), she abruptly abandoned the strategic goal of expanding IT services and consulting and moved into heavy metal. At a time that devices had become a low margin commodity business, Fiorina bought for $25 billion the dying Compaq computer company, which was composed of other failed businesses. Unsurprisingly, the Compaq deal never generated the profits Fiorina hoped for, and HP’s stock price fell by half. The only stock pop under Fiorina’s reign was the 7 percent jump the moment she was fired following a unanimous board vote. After the firing, HP shuttered or sold virtually all Fiorina had bought.

During the debate, Fiorina countered that she wasn’t a failure because she doubled revenues. That’s an empty measurement. What good is doubling revenue by acquiring a huge company if you’re not making any profit from it? The goals of business are to raise profits, increase employment and add value. During Fiorina’s tenure, thanks to the Compaq deal, profits fell, employees were laid off and value plummeted. Fiorina was paid over $100 million for this accomplishment.

At the time, most industry analysts, HP shareholders, HP employees and even some HP board members resisted the Compaq deal. (Fiorina prevailed in the proxy battle, with 51.4 percent, partly thanks to ethically questionable tactics, but that’s another story.) But rather than listen to the concerns of her opponents, she ridiculed them, equating dissent with disloyalty. As we saw during the debate when she attacked me, rather than listen to or learn from critics, Fiorina disparages them. She did so regularly to platoons of her own top lieutenants and even her board of directors—until they fired her.

These facts have been documented, both with quotes from her own board members and leadership team and with raw numbers in such revered publications as Forbes, Fortune, Business Week, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and leading tech industry journals. I also have extensive first-hand knowledge of this situation, having spoken at length with two of Fiorina’s successors, past and present HP board members, fellow CEOs and scores of HP employees—including many of her own top lieutenants who contacted me directly, such as her head of employee relations.

And I have to point out the obvious: If the board was wrong, the employees wrong, and the shareholders wrong—as Fiorina maintains—why in 10 years has she never been offered another public company to run?

Now that is a good question. Maybe someone should ask her.

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A skeptical Villager

by digby

Honestly, I can hardly believe this — and I’m not one to doubt the foolishness of Mark Halperin. Joan Walsh has the story:

The Summer of Trump officially closes with its silliest episode yet: the spectacle of Trump Truthers, an assortment of Trump-friendly media figures who insist that the man who said President Obama is a Muslim and “not an American,” and that Muslims must be gotten “rid of,” at a New Hampshire rally, was some kind of opposition plant, not an actual Trump supporter.

First out the gate was Ann Coulter early Friday morning. “I say he’s a liberal plant,” she tweeted. Brian Kilmeade of “Fox & Friends” echoed Coulter, insisting the anti-Muslim questioner “sounds like a plant, to be honest.” Fox’s Kimberly Guilfoyle and Eric Bolling continued peddling that theory all day. Laura Ingraham agreed, tweeting that the man “sure sounded like a put-up–cartoon presentation, bad acting.”

Media Matters ran down the list of right-wingers trying to bail out Trump, who was uncharacteristically media-shy after the controversy erupted, even canceling a scheduled public appearance on Friday (allegedly to close a business deal.)

But it wasn’t just official right-wingers: Bloomberg’s Mark Halperin peddled the notion on Saturday:

He doubled down on his questions – it’s only OK to use the cliché “doubling down” when talking about Halperin – in a long Twitter debate with journalists who challenged him, insisting the guy “sounded like the Travolta mumble in the dance scene in ‘Pulp Fiction.’”

Right. Because no regular right wingers sound like that guy. He needs to get out more.

This is a perfect example of the Village bubble in action. They simply cannot accept that the far right wing is actually as cretinously dumb as it is because nobody they know in Washington says those things in front of them. Here’s one of the Village’s greatest hits from 2002, when Howard Kurtz was still at the Washington Post and CNN. And he wasn’t alone in this opinion:

Has Tom Daschle lost a couple of screws?

Did the normally mild-mannered senator accuse Rush Limbaugh of inciting violence?

He came pretty darn close. There were cameras there. You can watch the replay.

We can understand that Daschle is down, just having lost his majority leader’s job and absorbed plenty of blame for this month’s Democratic debacle.

What we can’t understand is how the South Dakotan can suggest that a mainstream conservative with a huge radio following is somehow whipping up wackos to threaten Daschle and his family.

Has the senator listened to Rush lately? Sure, he aggressively pokes fun at Democrats and lionizes Republicans, but mainly about policy. He’s so mainstream that those right-wingers Tom Brokaw and Tim Russert had him on their Election Night coverage.

It’s always possible that the Trump questioner was a plant. But if he was, it was some kind of coordinated plant with Trump since he chose the guy to ask it. And, by the way, the next questioner validated the idiotic Muslim training camps thing only saying the FBI is watching them  — and then went into a diatribe about the BLM using guns to seize personal property.  He was obviously a Cliven Bundy type.

What are the odds that both were plants and that Trump happened to call on them? Not good, I’d say.  In fact, it’s fairly obvious that Trump’s followers include far right fringe freaks. And there are a bunch of them.

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Will the cruel busybodies win this one?

by digby

These wingnut zealots are determined to ban abortion. But since they can’t get it banned altogether at the moment, they will settle for banning it after 20 weeks. Here’s a story about the consequences of doing that by Rebecca Cohen in the Washington Post:

If such a ban had been in place a year ago, I would have been condemned to carry and give birth to a baby who had no chance at life.

I have been happily married for more than a decade, and I have two beautiful children. When my husband and I found out last year that I was pregnant again, we were overjoyed.

At 20 weeks, my husband and I went for our favorite prenatal visit: the detailed ultrasound anatomy scan that shows your baby’s heart, kidneys, bladder, stomach, spine and brain and whether you’re having a girl or a boy. I could barely contain myself as I sat on the exam table, eager to meet our baby more intimately. My husband and I chit-chatted with the ultrasound technician, gabbing and laughing when we recognized familiar features on the ultrasound images.

But after five minutes, only my husband and I were talking. The technician had grown quiet. She just kept printing picture after picture and pressing the wand deeper into the gel on my stomach.

My husband and I reached for each other’s hands. We asked the technician if everything was all right, and she said we should wait for a doctor to talk to us. When the OB/GYN entered, I remember asking point-blank, “Is there a chance our child will be okay?” He responded kindly, softly and unequivocally: “No.”

Over the next week came referrals to high-risk pregnancy specialists and more, longer, in-depth ultrasounds. In our baby’s brain cavity, where gray matter should have been visible, there was only black. The diagnosis was the same from every doctor: Something — we would learn it was not genetic or chromosomal — had caused two leaks in our baby’s brain, one on each side, destroying it almost entirely.

We would have done anything to save the baby. We asked if there was any possibility for repair, if the brain tissue could regrow. There wasn’t. My baby would either die in the womb or shortly after birth.

Our child would never gain consciousness.

Our little one was gone.

I have never known horror quite like that. Adding to the pain, the brain stem was not affected, so the baby’s body was still moving involuntarily. But I knew there was no person in there anymore. I couldn’t sleep and could barely eat, and every time the baby jerked, I suffered and mourned.

I didn’t know what to tell my kids. They kept kissing my belly, feeling for kicks and singing to the baby. I didn’t know what words to choose, but it hardly mattered, because I couldn’t finish a sentence without sobbing.

I had a choice. I could try to live with the husk of a child inside of me for more than 100 days, swallowing tears at every cheery inquiry as I grew bigger. Or I could have an abortion. And the choice wasn’t just about me. I have young children who would have had to see their mother endure this torture and give birth to someone they would never meet. So we made the painful, but I believe merciful, decision to terminate.

Even after we made that decision, it was difficult to find an available provider, even in an area with as many medical providers as the District. The hospitals had weeks-long waits. In the end, we were able to schedule an appointment at a surgical clinic for the following week.

My pregnancy was 21 weeks on the day of my abortion.

I mourn the loss of my baby every day. But I have no doubt that I made the right decision for myself and my family, and I am grateful that it was my choice to make. I am indebted to my medical providers for their compassion and care. They answered my questions, spent hours on the phone to give me as many options as possible and followed my lead.

According to the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, just more than 1 percent of abortions take place at week 21 or later, many because of devastating medical situations like ours. Each of these mothers must battle through her own hell to decide on and find the medical care she needs, gather her friends and family to lean on, and grieve.

Congress should not take this decision away from any woman — any family — who is in need. Banning abortions after 20 weeks would be arbitrary, and its consequences would place an unimaginable burden on women like me.

When an abortion was the best of only horrible options, I was beyond grateful that one was available in a safe, compassionate medical establishment. And that my family could begin to heal. I hope our senators will consider women and families like mine before casting their votes.

These anti-abortion zealots are cruel busybodies who are determined to control women and their families’ most intimate decisions. There is no greater intrusion of the government into the lives of individuals than this. Sorry, taxing your income or regulating the water supply doesn’t rate up there with making a woman carry a dying fetus with no brain inside of her in order to appease some fanatics who think she should be forced to do it for reasons that make no sense at all.

And yet these people (people like Rand Paul) who fetishize freedom and liberty in every other case, believe that this is the one exception to their rule.

People like to say that those who are anti-abortion are good people and I’m sure they have many good qualities. But this is a heartless and callous encroachment into the most elemental aspect of women’s lives and I’m hard pressed to see it as anything but malevolent.

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Clinton on the Keystone Pipeline: “I can’t wait too much longer, and I am putting the White House on notice”

by Gaius Publius

This short video turned up recently, and I can’t begin to figure out what it means, what the source of her impatience is. But it looks like the harbinger of an announcement on the Keystone Pipeline from the Clinton campaign:

Ms. Clinton (emphasis hers):

I can’t wait too much longer, and I am putting the White House on notice. I’m going to tell you what I think … soon … because I can’t wait. I thought they would have it decided … way, you know, by now. And they haven’t.

So yes, I think we have to move toward clean renewable energy, so of course I don’t want to … see us exploiting … unnecessarily … new fossil fuel deposits. But I will tell you about Keystone Pipeline one way or the other if they don’t decide it very soon. OK?

If you recall, after leaving the State Department and before announcing as a candidate, Clinton said this, speaking at upstate New York’s Hamilton College (my emphasis):

Late into the lecture portion of Clinton’s Oneida County appearance, she referenced a report that the U.S. in on track to surpass Russia in domestic oil-and-gas production. That’s good news, Clinton said.

Does she still think it’s important to maintain “oil and gas superiority”? Which way will she go on Keystone (which, if you remember, will carry the dirtiest of dirty oil from Canada to the U.S. for shipping overseas)? I can guess, based on the hedging statement above — if you listen, note the emphasis on “unnecessarily.” But if the campaign will be announcing soon, it might just be time to wait for it.

GP

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Well, you know We all want to change the world
by Tom Sullivan

Local organizers held Bernie Bash 2015 Sunday afternoon. Some music, some food, and some Bernie Sanders swag. Lots of enthusiasm. (Some of the Bernie swag was homemade.) Whether any of it will translate into convention votes is another matter.

Anis Shivani at Salon believes Sanders’ next moves must include:

a) dramatic emphasis on minority outreach; b) expansion of his economic message to one of social harmony; and c) delegitimization of the negative populism pervasive in the Republican primary.

All good. But feeling the Bern won’t get supporters like those I met into the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. That will take credentials. Getting credentials will take Sanders winning delegates in the Super Tuesday primaries and his supporters getting elected as Sanders delegates per their state party’s procedures. Sanders supporters new to or ideologically opposed to participating in what some may consider a tainted, insiders’ game will be playing catch-up. Or else they won’t. Hillary Clinton’s supporters will know the process inside out. Vox provides an update on where that stands:

Hillary Clinton picked up the endorsement of New Hampshire Gov. Maggie Hassan Friday, adding the state’s top Democrat to a list of backers that also includes Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, the state chapter of the National Education Association, and a small army of current and former government and party officials.

She’s also getting campaign-trail help from two top Democrats that come from rival Bernie Sanders’s neighboring home state of Vermont — Gov. Peter Shumlin and former Gov. Howard Dean.

Jonathan Allen argues why endorsements matter:

1. Members of Congress, governors, and certain other party officials are “superdelegates” to the Democratic National Convention next year, meaning they have a vote in the tally that decides the nomination and that they aren’t pledged to vote for a candidate chosen by the voters of their state or district.
2. Elected officials often — though not always — have pretty significant political organizations and fundraising networks. They can help a presidential candidate put together a ground game on their home turf and squeeze every last dollar out of of every last donor. This is particularly true of top statewide elected officials such as governors and US senators.
3. The policy differences between candidates in a party primary can be pretty small, and some voters may take cues from their favorite local pols to pick a candidate for the nomination. The endorsement of a popular official confers a certain credibility on a candidate.

That seems about right. Clinton’s people know the inside game in a way Bernie supporters of the righteously independent, self-organizing sort will not. Clinton has been courting superdelegates for some time, as a friend in the DNC told a room full of activists on Saturday. He got home later to find a letter from Clinton and a copy
David Brock’s newest effort. I presume he’ll let me know when he hears from Bernie Sanders. Or Joe Biden.

“It will take a revolution” to change the system, one supporter told me at the “Bash” Sunday afternoon. At least they have numbers that suggest they might eventually form one. That hope seems not to have been seasoned by disappointment with Obama’s tenure.

But earlier Sunday, I took a call from a man from south of here who was looking for information on how to find the “Bernie Bash.” He had changed his registration a couple of months ago, he said. He’d been a registered Republican (in a very Republican county) all his life. His thick accent attested to the “all his life” part, and the tenor of his voice supported his claim to being the same age as Bernie Sanders. He went on at length about how if the crooked banks were too big to fail, they were too big to exist. Sanders wants to break them up, and he was all for that. That is why he was behind Bernie. (He liked Elizabeth Warren too, for the same reason, only she isn’t running.) I don’t remember him even mentioning Hillary Clinton. Or Donald Trump.

Makes you wonder how many more there are out there like him.

Bing Bong, when we were strong

by digby

“Jail would be inappropriate” for someone who was held as a prisoner of war for over 1700 days? How weird.

Entering the final day of testimony at a military hearing to decide whether Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl will face a court-martial on desertion charges, a general ordered to investigate his capture discussed his findings for the first time and testified for the defense about why Bergdahl does not belong in jail.

Maj. Gen. Kenneth Dahl said Bergdahl was “unrealistically idealistic” when he left his remote post in Afghanistan six years ago for a nearby base, hoping to draw the attention of a commander to problems that he believed were putting his unit at risk.

Bergdahl, now 29, was a private when he vanished June 30, 2009, and was captured by the Taliban and held for nearly five years by members of the militant Haqqani network. On Friday, an expert who debriefed him described the conditions as the worst endured by any captive since the Vietnam War.

Bergdahl was freed last year after President Obama agreed to release five Taliban prisoners, a controversial swap he defended even after the military announced Bergdahl would be charged.

Dahl said Bergdahl, whom he interviewed for a day and a half as part of his investigation, admitted during the interview that he had been “young, naive and inexperienced” at the time of his capture, and was “truthful” and “remorseful” about endangering fellow soldiers forced to search for him.

But Dahl noted that no soldiers died searching for Bergdahl and said he did “not believe there is a jail sentence at the end of this process” for the sergeant, calling it “inappropriate.”

I’m sure we’ll hear from Generalissimo Trumpie on this. Recall his earlier comments:

“We get a traitor like Berghdal, a dirty rotten traitor, who by the way when he deserted, six young beautiful people were killed trying to find him. And you don’t even hear about him anymore. Somebody said the other day, well, he had some psychological problems.

You know, in the old days ……bing – bong. When we were strong, when we were strong.”

I’ll bet he’d tell that General “you’re fired” so fast his head would spin.

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When George Washington filled Madison Square Garden

by digby

22,000 Nazi supporters attended an American Bund rally at New York’s Madison Square Garden in February 1939, under police guard. Demonstrators protested outside. An American Bund parade through New York’s Yorkville district on Manhattan’s Upper East Side drew both supporters and protesters and the press. Aside from its admiration for Adolf Hitler and the achievements of Nazi Germany, the German American Bund program included antisemitism, strong anti-Communist sentiments, and the demand that the United States remain neutral in the approaching European conflict.

Interesting that they didn’ round all these guys up and put them in internment camps when the war broke out, isn’t it? I wonder why.

They venerated George Washington as the American Hitler, leader of men and action hero.

Just saying.

QOTD: Fiorina

by digby

“When you’re talking about massive layoffs, which we did, perhaps the work needs to be done somewhere else.”

[A]fter Mrs. Fiorina emerged from a relatively smooth primary (with the exception of a bizarre ad that portrayed her opponent as a demonic sheep), the Boxer campaign unleashed attacks on her HP record. The barrage came against the backdrop of the state’s more than 12 percent unemployment rate.

In one ad, called “Outsourced,” footage showed Mrs. Fiorina defending sending jobs overseas. “When you’re talking about massive layoffs, which we did, perhaps the work needs to be done somewhere else,” she said.

In another, called “Workers,” former HP employees spoke solemnly into the camera. “I had to pack my bags, and I was out the door that night,” said Larry, who worked at HP for 10 years. Another victim of the layoffs, Teri, said, “We even had to train our replacements.” (Mrs. Fiorina has said she saved 80,000 positions.)

Jim Margolis, the ad maker for the Boxer campaign, is now a senior media adviser to Hillary Rodham Clinton.

“People don’t know her yet,” Ms. Boxer said in an interview before last week’s debate. “What they’ll understand pretty quickly is that she is the face of income inequality and Wall Street greed.”

Keep in mind Fiorina ran during the greatest national Democratic bloodbath in recent memory — 2010. And she lost by double digits.

Her senate campaign manager said that GOP voters didn’t care about her failed record only the general electorate. As if that is a selling point.

The problem for Fiorina is that unlike Romney or Trump, this failed business record of hers is literally the only accomplishment she’s got. She has never done a thing beyond that in her life. She climbed the corporate ladder in one company, damn near destroyed it, was fired and that’s it. It’s deeply ironic that she loves firing this nasty line about airplane miles not being an accomplishment at Clinton when she should be worried about using the word at all lest someone start asking what hers are.

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First the clown car, now here come the daring young wingnuts on the flying trapeze

by digby

…. featuring the amazing leadership jugglers.

Stan Collender says that there is now a 75% chance that the GOP is going to shut down the government.

Over Planned Parenthood.

And Boehner could very easily lose his job over the whole thing:

In the face of the House and Senate leadership’s effort to come up with a compromise, many primarily Republican anti-abortion groups intensified their demand for a shutdown aimed at defunding Planned Parenthood, even if it ultimately won’t be successful.

House GOP leaders offered to provide ways other than through a continuing resolution for members to demonstrate their opposition to Planned Parenthood, but the Freedom Caucus and its supporters rejected those options as meaningless gestures. The prospect of voting on these alternatives (one of the votes happened in the House last Friday) didn’t stop the shutdown talk and may have further infuriated those opposing funding for Planned Parenthood.

Meanwhile, the threat to John Boehner continuing as speaker became so real that senior members of the House Republican caucus began to campaign to move up in the leadership ranks if there’s an election. The three top members of the GOP House leadership after Boehner – Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) and House Republican Conference Chairman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) – reportedly were all openly jockeying for position.

The campaigning then pushed McCarthy and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) to announce that they supported Boehner even though having to make such an announcement demonstrated the true weakness of the speaker’s position.

Adding to the forces working against a CR, Texas Senator and GOP presidential contender Ted Cruz vocally and vociferously supported a shutdown over Planned Parenthood funding during last week’s Republican presidential debate while the three other Republican senators also running for president – Lindsay LNN -4.29% Graham (SC), Marco Rubio (FL) and Rand Paul (KY) – either said nothing or were far less strident about it. Cruz’s position put significant added pressure on the other three either to support a shutdown or cede ground in the GOP presidential nomination with a key group of Republican voters. If, as is likely because of Cruz, all four oppose a CR, McConnell’s position on the issue will become untenable.

There’s more. You really should read it. With trump in the center ring, we haven’t been following this sideshow but it’s a doozy.

My question is whether this would make the GOP base realize that this nuttiness is going to make it impossible for them to win the presidency and sober them up, opening the door for one of the less irrational candidates. (I’ll leave it to you to figure out who that might be.) Or will this just make them keep doubling down as they so far?

As Collender says, stay tuned.

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Some of his best friends are Muslim

by digby

Trump said some Muslims are fabulous but there is a problem with militancy and it’s going to have to solved. And Putin is in Syria because he’s trying to take back places in the world he had long ago and has no respect for the president. It’s all about leadership and getting along with people. Also too, respect. And the problem is that Obama refuses to talk to foreign leaders. But you don’t want to start WWIII over Syria.

Donald Trump said Sunday that “radical Muslims” are a problem in the United States — even if all of the religion’s members aren’t — and said some Americans believe President Barack Obama is a Muslim.

“You have radicals that are doing things. I mean, it wasn’t people from Sweden that blew up the World Trade Center, Jake,” Trump told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.”

His comments come after a controversy that erupted late last week when, at a Trump campaign event, a man said, “We have a problem in this country — it’s called Muslims.”

He defended his decision not to correct the man, saying, “It was a question that was asked in front of a totally packed house.”

Trump also said he has friends who are Muslims — but that the religion’s extreme elements are responsible for terrorist attacks.

“We do have a problem with radical Muslims, there’s no question about that,” Trump said Sunday.

Trump also wouldn’t say whether he believes — as the man at his campaign event falsely claimed — that President Barack Obama is a Muslim who wasn’t born in the United States. Obama is a Christian who was born in Hawaii.

Asked on NBC’s “Meet the Press” whether he’d be comfortable with a Muslim president, Trump said: “Would I be comfortable? I don’t know if we have to address it right now. But I think it is certainly something that could happen. Some people have said it already happened, frankly — but of course you won’t agree with that” — a reference to Obama.

“I don’t talk about people’s faith. Now, in all fairness, he said he was a Christian and he said he is a Christian. He attended the church of Rev. Wright. And so, you know, I’m willing to take him at his word for that. I have no problem with that,” Trump said.

He deflected questions about Obama’s place of birth and religion on ABC’s “This Week,” too.

“Well, you know, I don’t get into it, George. I think about jobs. I’m talking about the military. I don’t get into it,” he said, when asked by host George Stephanopoulos whether he now believes Obama was born in the United States. “Frankly, it’s of no longer (of) interest to me. We’re beyond that. And it’s just something I don’t talk about.”

Asked about whether Obama isn’t a Muslim, Trump said, “George, you have raised the question. I haven’t raised the question. I don’t talk about it and I don’t like talking about somebody else’s faith. He talks about his faith and he can do that. But I don’t talk about other people’s faith. It’s not appropriate for me to talk about somebody else’s faith.”

Four years ago, Trump had pressed Obama to release his birth certificate — which Obama did.

But, as usual Ben Carson was even more extreme, he just said it quietly:

CHUCK TODD: Let me wrap this up by finally dealing with what’s been going on, Donald Trump, and a deal with a questioner that claimed that the president was Muslim. Let me ask you the question this way. Should a President’s faith matter? Should your faith matter to voters?

BEN CARSON: Well, I guess it depends on what that faith is. If it’s inconsistent with the values and principles of America, then of course it should matter. But if it fits within the realm of America and consistent with the constitution, no problem.

TODD: So do you believe that Islam is consistent with the constitution?

CARSON: No, I don’t, I do not.

TODD: So you–

CARSON: I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation. I absolutely would not agree with that.

That’s why they love him. If GOP voters hear about this he may bump back up in the polls.

As Judd Legum at Think Progress pithily explained:

In suggesting a religious test for potential presidents — where some religions would be “inconsistent” with the constitution — Carson appears somewhat unfamiliar with the text of the constitution. Article VI, paragraph 3 of the United States constitution states “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”

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