The First Amendment of the United States Constitution reads: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion..." That means any religion, all religions. It does not matter which.

Please read not only the First Amendment but also the dozens of court cases that have applied it to prohibit religious prayer in public schools.

Adams also suggested a false choice between prayer in the schools and guns in schools.... Neither prayers nor guns belong in schools.

Too many Americans, like Mayor Adams, are prepared to ignore or defy the Constitution when it serves their political interests. He says: "Don't tell me about no separation of church and state." Others say: "Don't tell me about the 5th amendment, or the 4th amendment, or the First Amendment" – or the impeachment clause of the Constitution. "We want to get our way, and the Constitution be damned."

So instead of starting each school day with a prayer, why don't we start each school day with the recitation of the First Amendment? Then the teacher can explain why prayer is a private matter – for the home, the church or the mind. It is not the job of the teacher to inculcate his or her religious views — or those of Mayor Adams.

Manila apparently ran out of patience.

After a decade of suffering China's aggressive acts against Philippine vessels, fishermen and energy exploration efforts in waters within the archipelago country's Exclusive Economic Zone, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. recently welcomed an expanded US military presence.

Marcos now has responded to continued Chinese belligerence by granting US forces access to five additional military bases on Philippine territory.

In a direct rebuke to China, two of these new bases are on Palawan, one of the disputed Spratly Islands, which are also claimed, as is much else, by Communist China.

Philippine officials have failed to persuade China to abide by the May 2016 ruling of the Hague's Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA), which said that China had consistently violated the Philippines' rights, guaranteed under the 1982 United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea.... Upon completion of the proceedings, the PCA's 501 page decision sided entirely with the Philippines.

China, by bullying its neighbors, is bringing about what it fears the most: a united phalanx of Asian powers under an American umbrella that is ready to prevent China from expanding to what it claims as its historic land and maritime borders.