We went to the MSNBC site and found the poll to be real. At the time of our investigation the results were a surprising 50% tie with over one million votes in the poll. This motto began appearing on coins after the civil war when Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase received many letters of appeal urging that the United States recognize the Deity on United States coins. After several acts of Congress the motto was adopted but it wasn't until 1957 that these words were found on American currency.
Usually, on a news site when find a poll, it is linked to a news story, in this case an old story from 2005. What the original sender of this email failed to tell the reader is that atheist Michael Newdow was seeking to remove “In God We Trust” from U.S. coins and dollar bills, claiming in a federal lawsuit filed in November 2005 that the motto is an unconstitutional endorsement of religion. His suit was rejected in June, 2006.
On August 19, 2008 we revisited the poll to find over 4 million people with 67% in favor of keeping the motto.
On August 22, 2008 we checked back to find over 6.5 million participated in the poll with a strong majority in favor for the motto
As of August 28, 2008 there were 7,786,548 responses to the poll with an 80% tally in favor for keeping the motto.
No comments:
Post a Comment