Borrowed from Ektachrome Transparency Blog

This blog post can be found at: http://ektachrome.wordpress.com/2009/08/27/god-1-%e2%80%93-the-evil-aclu-0/

One week ago today, which was Friday, August 22, 2009, U.S. District Court Judge Casey Rodgers dismissed the civil charge of contempt against Santa Rosa School Board employee Michelle Winkler. Judge Rodgers said Winkler, a lower level employee for the school district, didn’t know enough about the court order to warrant a guilty finding.

Winkler, as you may recall, asked her husband Richard Winkler to pray at a Non-Instructional Employee of the Year banquet held on February 20, 2009. Judge Rodgers was shown a video recording of Michelle Winkler and her husband Richard arm-in-arm, walking to the platform to offer the banquet’s “Thought for the Day”. Michelle Winkler told the audience she wasn’t allowed to offer a prayer at the banquet because of the “Jane and John Does of the world”, so Ms. Winkler had her husband Richard recite the prayer before the audience. Then Michelle Winkler followed up with her “Thought for the Day”:

“My thought is to stand up for what you believe in,” she said at the podium.

Defiant on camera and before her superiors, Michelle Winkler’s defiance melted before the U.S. District Court, Judge Rodgers and the ACLU attorneys. She told the judge that she would never knowingly violate a court order even if she (Winkler) disagreed with it.
Apparently Judge Rodgers bought this attitude of compliance and contrition, but the judge did leave Winkler, and all those who may follow her, with an unsympathetic warning about school-related or school-mandated prayer:

“It has been settled law in this country for 50 years,” she said. “A lot of what me and my colleagues deal with as judges is gray area. … This is not.”

In the Pensacola News Journal, opinion columnist Mark O’Brien had this take on Michelle Winkler:

The School District tried to do the right thing. It informed employees of the policy and even gave the name and phone number of its attorney to call if they had questions. But Winkler, a system employee for two years, chose a single sentence that said prayer would be OK at events like Christmas gatherings, and she decided the dinner fell into that category.

In any event, Winkler was guilty of bad manners.

The dinner was held to honor the drivers who carry children to school, the cooks who prepare their food, the clerks who keep schools running.

But Winkler hijacked that dinner for herself and her own politics. Caught up in her own limited understanding of the case, she made a mini-spectacle and put the spotlight on herself, not on the employees the event was honoring.

Instead of the event being about them, it was all about Michelle Winkler.

Maybe she should change her name to “ME-chelle”?
But the normally caustic Mark O’Brien left out the true reason why Michelle Winkler was let off the hook…

…God talks to Michelle Winkler. And she writes down what He says.

Yes – that’s right – she writes down what God said.

You see, Michelle Winkler didn’t just have long suffering husband Richard pray any prayer – no; it was The Prayer Michelle "received from God" – this according to her own words to her supervisor, Jud Crane, on January 23, 2009.

There are Two Rules that govern communication with the Almighty:
1) Do not talk back.
2) Do not tell anyone else.
If Michelle Winkler is guilty of anything, it’s not civil contempt or even bad manners – she’s guilty of breaking rule number 2 of the Two Rules…

…oh, and being a complete and utter loon.