I know many of you might be wondering, who is JSPAN and what do they do. My name is Brian Gralnick and along with Alex, I'm on the JSPAN Board. We have only been around for a few years. Below are some of our recent highlights:

2007…

• Our members participated in a special screening of Freedom Writers followed by a discussion on the ability of teachers to use The Diary of Anne Frank as a way of reaching at-risk youth.

• Congressman Barney Frank from Massachusetts addressed our annual meeting and laid out elements of a progressive legislative agenda.

• We organized "Redistricting: Limiting your right to vote," our first ever continuing legal education (CLE) program, which featured Prof. Bruce Cain of the University of California - Berkeley and Montgomery County Legislator Daylin Leach.

• Alan Lerner and Adelaide Ferguson received our Social Justice Award for their extraordinary advocacy on behalf of children and their efforts internationally to promote the rule of law and foster cross-cultural understanding.

• In December presented Prof. Stephen Solomon, author of the acclaimed new book Ellery's Protest – How One Young Man Defied Tradition and Sparked the Battle over School Prayer. At that event we reunited for the first time in 50 years Ellery Schempp and Ted Mann, the brilliant young lawyer (and JSPAN Board member) who drafted the original complaint that resulted in a Supreme Court ruling outlawing organized prayer and Bible reading in the public schools – a pivotal decision that is still a flash point in the current culture wars.

• Continuing our cutting edge work on Church-State issues, JSPAN filed amicus curiae briefs in two important cases:

· Combs v. Homer Center School District, which involves the extent to which government can regulate the activities of parents who seek to home school their children for religious reasons.

· Busch v. Marple-Newtown School District, a test case by the religious right in which a parent is trying to force a public school to let her read from the Bible to her son's kindergarten class

In 2006:

We had our first Amicus brief in the Kitzmiller v. Dover School District, the so-called "Intelligent Design" case. JSPAN took the lead for the Jewish community nationally on this issue, writing on behalf of 13 national Jewish organizations and more than 100 local groups.

Received national publicity for our successful efforts to force the Florida Republican Party to repudiate comments by U.S. Senate candidate Katherine Harris. She claimed that the separation of Church and State is a lie and equated the failure to elect Christians as "legislating sin."

...

Part of the reason that religious life in the US is so much more vibrant than in any European country where religion is a state matter is that the Constitution not only protects government from religion, it also protects religion from government. Much of the religious right forgets this (sorry, Al) inconvenient truth. Another irony is that, traditionally, baptist denomninations were, far and away, the most opposed to the concept of an established church; now, they're leading the charge for one.

-Z