Liability
Locked Account.
Unrelated to this ruling. So not much anyone can do about it. Also, getting into what words are or are not allowed on letterhead is way too sticky.
I'm happy with not forcing the taxpayers to pay for thinly disguised campaign mailings from congress-critters.
No. It's not unrelated to this ruling. The ruling says that the franking privilege has to forbid the insertion of the "Merry Christmas" wish in franked mailings. The rationale for that idiotic determination is that it would constitute some imaginary violation of the First Amendment Freedom of Religion establishment clause.
In other words, TAX dollars cannot be used for fear of some Constitutional disruption in the Force.
But it is still the use of tax dollars to print the letterhead stock used by Congress-critters and to dutifully print out thousands of copies of each mailing. So, if the phrase is used anywhere in the letters, the same idiotic rationale would be expected to prohibit it.
The issue of whether tax dollars should be allowed to be used to disseminate re-election propaganda is a separate and distinct (thorny) issue.
But the issue of whether insertion of ANY religious or holiday sentiment somehow violates the First Amendment prohibition is an entirely different matter.
The claim that saying "Merry Christmas" in the sign-off of those letters somehow risks the establishment of a religion or somehow risks the prohibition of the free exercise of anybody's religion is farcical on its face.
It's unrelated because the franking office can't forbid things from being written on any letterhead. They can just refuse to mail them. Hence, outside the scope of this decision.
It IS related because it's still tax dollars supporting the Congress-critter's communications and those communications involve the use of that awful, horrible, evil phrase, "Merry Christmas."
Of course whether Congress-critters can be barred by the Franking Committee from using tax-funded letterhead in the first place is obviously not the point. Nobody has suggested that they have jurisdiction. But somewhere, some asshole is going to complain about the use of tax dollars for the letterhead on which Congress-critters write "Merry Christmas." And the BASIS for the bitching will be EXACTLY the same: "the use of tax dollars violates the mythical 'separation of church and state'," even though that's plainly NOT what the First Amendment says.