A friend of mine sent me this story and asked for my thoughts. Thoughts are below. http://news.yahoo.com/arizona-house-non-prayer-sparks-christian-213521848.html
Recall that the concern about the intersection of church and state to the framers of the constitution was to keep the state out of the church and not to keep the church out of state. It always bears repeating—since American seems to keep forgetting—that the phrase, "separation of church and state," is NOT in the constitution, and even in the context in which it was first articulated was about keeping the state out of church matters. Certainly this issue has enough challenges, but I think there are still other complications when the concept is expanded from "church" (which I see—in its original construct as a specific denomination of Christianity) to "religion" (which is a far broader concept of whatever deity someone might claim adherence to), which of course, is an entire discussion in its own right.
Even casual observers know that Arizona lawmakers (and law enforcers) are not afraid to take unusual and provocative positions on various topics. I applaud this and think the conversations they spark (like this one) are valuable.
In this particular case, I will get rather technical with my answer. If the agenda states the time is for "prayer" then I think it should be used for a reverent invocation of the deity to which the rotating speaker reveres. Perhaps the real issue is that the time should be scheduled as an "invocation" (or some better word), thus allowing for either a prayer, or a secular charge/introduction to the working day. I think it is somewhat cynical for a self-described (I assume) atheist to use prayer time to make a personal homily. The article only cites one sentence of what he said, so I can only extrapolate from that that his comments were probably positivist humanist sentiments which were not offensive to anyone.
I must say also that the article itself is poorly written and takes a couple tangents without even focusing on the details of the event that sparked the incident being reported. It's got to be one of the worst-written articles I have read in a while.
