o I guess I'm obligated to comment on the unconstitutional Pledge of Allegiance, since it's been big news of late.  The first reports of it were met with much outrage by politicians, who know a voting hot issue when they see it, and of course have zero personal integrity for any unpopular issue. I find their uniform outrage to be suspicious, but typical.  Atheist politicians in US are in sort of the same place as gay baseball or football players.  You know like 10% of them are, but they can't admit it or it'll be career suicide.

This article on Yahoo now says what was suspected initially, that the 9th Circuit Court's decision will be overturned on appeal.

I find it interesting the fanatical nature of religious people, and how insanely they react to any threats to their particular voodoo beliefs.  This sort of thing is why we still have parts of the US where they are trying to teach creationism in the public schools, despite it being impossibly inaccurate as a scientific discipline.  To quote from any one of the dozens of articles on this subject:

Criticism is nothing new to the 9th Circuit, which tends to make liberal, activist opinions. It also often hears cases that tend to challenge the status quo on issues like environmental laws, property rights and civil rights.

The court took up the case after a federal judge dismissed the lawsuit brought by Newdow, a Sacramento physician with a law degree who represented himself.

"This is my parental right to say I don't want the government telling my child what to believe in," Newdow said.

Newdow said he's received a barrage of threatening phone calls because of the panel's ruling.

"I could be dead tomorrow," he said of the threats.

Christian parents protest all the time to get more religion in schools; do you suppose any of them get a "barrage" of threatening phone calls from atheists and non-religious people for doing it?  Yes, it's a rhetorical question.

The politicians have jumped all over it as well.  Here are a few quotes:

President Bush found the ruling "ridiculous." Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., called it "just nuts." Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., said it was "political correctness run amok."

"The Supreme Court itself begins each of its sessions with the phrase `God save the United States and this honorable court,'" said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer.  "The Declaration of Independence refers to God or to the Creator four different times. Congress begins each session of the Congress each day with a prayer, and of course our currency says, `In God We Trust."

You'll note that none of this addresses the actual issue at hand, which is the "nation under god" part of the pledge, which is quite clearly a violation of the separation of church and state.  I don't see how that can even be argued, and in fact it's not being argued.  I've yet to see anyone try to explain how it's constitutional; all protests about the court's decision are just from people who are religious, or at least feel they need to pretend to be to get votes, and want to say "god" at every chance they get, constitutional or not.

It's interesting that this one court goes by the actual laws, unpopular though they may be, and gets burned in effigy by conservatives, who are by their own definition real law and order type people.  Obviously they are that only as long as they approve of the laws?

So what was the court's reasoning?

The court noted that the U.S. Supreme Court has said students cannot hold religious invocations at graduations and cannot be compelled to recite the pledge.

But the appeals panel went a step further, ruling the Constitution protects students who don't believe in a monotheistic deity from even having to make an "unacceptable choice between participating and protesting."

The government had argued that the religious content of "one nation under God" is minimal, but the appellate court said the phrase can reasonably be seen by atheists or believers in certain non-Judeo-Christian religions as an attempt "to enforce a `religious orthodoxy' of monotheism."

Again, I've yet to see any argument about this, other than hyperbolic rhetoric about having to remove "in god we trust" from the US money, from the presidential oath of office, etc.  That seems a dangerous argument to me, since a court going by a strict interpretation of church / state separation would no doubt agree.  All of those things are what the court said, "the phrase can reasonably be seen by atheists or believers in certain non-Judeo-Christian religions as an attempt to enforce a 'religious orthodoxy' or monotheism."  Again, I don't see how anyone can really argue that point; the only counter-argument is that "god" has been in there for so long, and that most people like it like that.  Of course we had every form of segregation and legalized oppression of minorities and women for hundreds of years too, does that mean that should never have changed?  (I know, that one was a stretch.)

A very good page of info about the actual intentions of the Pledge's author (who was a funky socialist) can be seen here. Most everyone knows by now that the "under god" part was added in the 50's, during the height of McCarthism, anti-communist hysteria.  Would reasonable people really object to removing the Christian part of the supposedly-non-sectarian Pledge of Allegiance?

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United State of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

I typed that from memory, since I had the pledge ingrained in my head at some point in my childhood. I have, for years, just remained silent during the Christian part, knowing it was added in long after the original was written, and not being religious myself.  So would removing it again be a big deal, really? I mean it sort of contradicts the "liberty for all" part a few words later on.  One thing I didn't know previously was that the Pledge's author wanted to include "equality" at the end, along with "liberty" and "justice" but the racists at the time prevented him from doing so.  Quite a legacy the Christian politicians are standing up to defend, eh?

Tom Tomorrow has some good comments on it, and I stole a couple of my links from him here.  If you want more comments, the Fark thread on the first news of it has over 1000 posts.

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