The 1st Amendment

The Founding Fathers rightly sought to avoid the European practice of establishing an official, State religion, thus we have the 1st Amendment. The second part of the 1st Amendment is often (intentionally?) omitted by liberals and other secularists and states, "...or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."
It is the second phrase of the 1st Amendment that is key to the objections of conservatives and all persons of faith to the increasingly common practice of removing all reference, symbols, and discourse relating to religion from the public square. The Founding Fathers never intended that. This is a rather recent phenomenon and is gaining momentum. Thus we have "Winter Holiday" instead of Christmas, "Happy Holidays" instead of Merry Christmas, "Spring Break" instead of Easter Vacation, the prohibition of the displays of Christmas trees and Christmas pageants in schools, attempts to remove "In God We Trust" from our coins, the Gideon's can no longer distribute Bibles in schools, efforts to delete "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance, etc., etc. The United States survived and prospered long before the ACLU and other liberals 'discovered' the illegality of such public displays of faith. Yet, while it is forbidden to pray in the public schools, it is OK to murder unborn human beings. It's all part of the larger culture war... and we are slowly losing. Our nation was founded on Judeo-Christian principles and values and we are all (secularists included) the better for it.
Georgetown University should be ashamed for caving into the request to cover the religious symbols. Georgetown is a private, Catholic university and the government has no right to request that they deny who they are. Obama is coming to Notre Dame in a few weeks and already there is a huge debate over the appropriateness of that. What would Notre Dame do if Obama ask that a large drape cover "Touchdown Jesus"?