beejay

No, I think it will be "one nation, under Allah, with special recognition of his prophet Mohammed, ..."

There's a reason Pat Robertson supports the separation of church and state...

(but only in Iraq!)

Fiach

There are some Druids in America, and many Celtic-Americans, the least they can do is add Dagda or Eriu (Earth Goddess) to the Pledge.

Maybe if we keeping adding each and every god to the Pledge it will just get too frigging long to recite in less than an hour.

Fiach

RufusAtticus

Write her back and ask her where the decision went wrong, with specific references to the parts of the decision. Having read the decision my self, well the first version of it, I found that it was based in nothing but supreme court precident and evicerated all arguments offered by the defendents. Lots of people, including politicians, have claimed that it is a wrong decision, out of step with america, yet amazingly they never say where and why.

gilly54

Since the last sentence in her reply was that I should feel free to contact her anytime, I shall certainly take her up on her offer and ask her to explain all the points you mention. I wonder if she knows what the Lemon test is.

Shake

No, it'll be more like this...

ruby-soho

I LOVE that cartoon, Shake. I have a copy of it posted here at my desk at work.

D

RufusAtticus

Actually the Coercion Test of Lee v. Weisman is more appropriate.

Fiach

I don't need to tell you. You know that the politicians have their political arses on the line. Any who supports the court decision can pack their luggage in DC to come home next year. Judges are in danger, I applaud their courage. They have destroyed their chances of ever making the Supreme Court, because of their integrity.

With Mullah George Wahid Bush as president, don't expect an deviation from his and the Religious Reich's path to Theocracy.

Fiach

gilly54

Thanks, Rufus.

Gilly

StrictSeperationist

Sorry to resurrect a somewhat dead thread, but I'd just like to note that while the coercion concerns that guided the Court in Lee and Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe, 530 U.S. 290 (2000) apply to the local school district's enforcement of the state law mandating patriotic exercises at the beginning of the day, relying on a coercion claim alone would leave unsettled the larger question of the constitutionality of the 1954 Act itself.
When analyzing this portion of the claim, it's appropriate to rely on the Lemon test, the first prong of which is that the law being reviewed must have a secular legislative purpose. The Pledge case has a close paralell in Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U.S. 38 (1985), in which the Court held that an Alabama moment-of-silence law violated the First Amendment because of a provision attached to the statute three years after it was first enacted. The original law simply provided for a one-minute period of silence in all public schools at the beginning of the day "for meditation". As amended, the law authorized the minute of silence "for meditation or voluntary prayer". Applying the Lemon test, the Court found that the amendment had no secular legislative purpose, and for that reason was unconstitutional. The similarity to the law adding "under God" to the Pledge should be obvious, and the Ninth Circuit panel relied on Wallace heavily in its original opinion.
It's difficult to see how the Supreme Court will manage to get around such an unequivocal prohibition on the type of laws that are at issue in the Pledge case, but I suspect it will rely on "ceremonial deism" rather than do the honest (if rather misguided) thing and overrule Wallace.
Once again, sorry for bumping this thread to the top for what may seem a trivial point to some, but this sort of thing is my passion.