As Democrats go, Joe Lieberman is one of the few good ones. Here he tells a story about constitutional wisdom, from his grandmother.

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Lieberman: When I read the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, the one that allowed the school football coach to pray on the field after the game, I thought of my maternal grandmother, Minnie Manger. As I look back, it turns out that “Baba,” as we called her, played a large part in the formation of my understanding of the religion clauses of the First Amendment.

Baba emigrated from Central Europe to the United States at the beginning of the last century in pursuit of religious freedom and economic opportunity. She found both in abundance here, and that is why Baba was one of the most patriotic Americans I ever knew. Her five children worked their way up the American ladder of economic opportunity. None of them went to college, but each of 10 grandchildren did and then went on to live successful lives that were unlimited by their Jewish faith or observance. In 2000, one of her grandsons was even nominated by the Democratic Party for vice president of the United States.

Baba was proud of all that family achievement, but I think she was most emotionally grateful for the religious freedom America gave her. She once told me that I probably could not appreciate how much it meant to her that on Sabbath when she walked to synagogue services in Stamford, Connecticut, instead of being the target of verbal abuse or worse, as she had been in the “old country,” here her Christian neighbors would stop and say, “Good Sabbath, Mrs. Manger.”

Once during my youth, there was a local controversy in which a group of people protested the presence of a nativity scene in a public park near Baba’s house. She told me she did not understand the protest, explaining that the presence of that nativity depiction in the park clearly meant something spiritual to the people who put it up, and she respected that, but it did not in any way compromise the wonderful religious freedom she enjoyed in America. So why would she oppose it?

In that response, Baba captured what I believe is the meaning of the First Amendment’s religion clauses. If government action does not compromise freedom of religion, in any way, that government action is not prohibited. The Constitution promises freedom of religion, not freedom from religion. Therefore, it seems to me (and I think would to Baba if she were still alive) that because Coach Joseph Kennedy’s prayers after the game did not limit anyone’s freedom of religion or anyone’s freedom not to be religious, they were not an establishment of religion, as prohibited by the Constitution.