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God Ruled Unconstitutional Again
By Mike Bayham
June 27, 2002

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
-First Amendment to the Constitution

Sometimes I find it a challenge to write about something interesting. For example, my columns tend to be about one thousand words long (which can seem longer if you don't care for my opinion) and are written on a weekly basis, which equals 52 a year assuming I don't skip a week. And since I try finishing them up by Wednesday because they are run on several political websites, I also have to contend with a deadline.

There have been times when the muse has struck me early and it was not a problem throwing something together that was either entertaining or informative (or both) while at other times it can be quite a challenge and I might spend an entire month retooling an editorial. And then there are times when there is simply nothing there and I am forced to go to left field for a topic (hence the Disney World write up that a surprising number of people enjoyed reading).

This week was going to be one of those tricky times. I recently vacationed for a week in the Pacific Northwest leaving me out of the information loop for quite a bit. Sure there were stories out there, such as Bush's chastising of Arafat, but I did not feel that I had enough specifics to assemble a quality column.

I then turned to my vacation for ideas, which had a few noteworthy moments. First there was the ridiculously long security screening line that looped within the main terminal of the Seattle airport, which was caused by overly thorough searches of passengers, including an intensive wanding of a 13 year old girl.

There was also my visit to Seattle's locks where a National Park Service Ranger that told a group of tourists that there is only a few years of oil left in the world, that poor political leadership in the White House is destroying the earth, the evils of the timber industry, and, my favorite, that there will be no peace until we do more to help salmon (I am not joking). I never realized that the Department of Interior was throwing in few brainwashing sessions to kids along with their salmon ladder attraction.

Worst case scenario I could literally go to "left field" and write about my trip to Safeco Field, where even in the friendly confines of the sometimes covered, sometimes exposed home of the Seattle Mariners there was the presence of political correctness and irony.

The topic selection looked bleak and I thought this was going to be one of those vacation weeks until a lawyer dropped by my office to inform me of a court decision made in San Francisco, California (where else?) that ruled the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional because the dirty three letter word was in it. Apparently I was not the only being leaving the west coast on Tuesday giving new meaning to "via con dios."

To clarify (or add more confusion to) the situation, it is only unconstitutional for children in the nine states on the west coast that are covered under the Federal Court district that made the ruling. Still, in a land where the constitution protects abortionists, strippers, practitioner of witchcraft, and those who wish to burn the banner of our nation, God has once again failed to make the cut.

The ruling is simultaneously shocking and not surprising. Please allow me to explain this contradiction. It is shocking that even in the realm of eternal protection and legal omnipotence where our Federal judges rule like gods (if you are on the west coast you must not repeat this word), that any judge, let alone two of them, would have the temerity to assault the most ingrained morning tradition of the school day. Surely these people knew what line not to cross...which makes the ruling not so surprising.

Every diehard liberal on the Federal bench that wants to make his mark has to keep raising the bar in terms of ridiculousness in order to stand out amongst their radical peers. To simply rule that a community cannot place a manger scene on the front lawn of a city hall is too passe. Telling schools that pre-graduation invocations are illegal is also old news. Our Federal courts have been there and done that.

However, throwing out the Pledge of Allegiance would surely earn the jurist who made such a ruling the toast of the ACLU circuit and also the recipient of their own commemorative postage stamp in the "atheist paradise" of North Korea.

The basis of the 2-1 ruling was that the phrase "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, which the very recital of the pledge is already optional, is imposing the establishment of religion in a public school. Of course, the phrase "separation of church and state" has always been the battle cry of atheists and other assorted Trotskyites that have warred against anything connected to the supreme being.

However upon inspection of the Constitution, one will not see the phrase "separation of church and state" anywhere in the document. Furthermore, one will find the phrase "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" quite prominently in the cherished and abused First Amendment. Obviously the courts have violated the last part of the amendment vigorously since the Lord was expelled from the public school system, which led to then President Eisenhower's support of legislation including it in the pledge.

The order is not set to go into effect for a little while and you can bet the farm with John Ashcroft running the Justice Department, the case will be appealed and might go to the Supreme Court, which I believe will overturn the ruling of the inferior (and I mean inferior) court.

It will be interesting to see if the case will be considered or appealed and ruled on by the time school starts back up again in September. If the ruling is still standing by then it will be REALLY interesting to see what principals, teachers, superintendents, and school boards decide to play the "protester in front of the tank" and continue to do the full pledge in defiance of Judge Alfred Goodwin (Almighty), one of the two that ruled against the pledge.

If, or when, this scenario takes place, the courts will be up to their ears in lawsuits while I will enjoy a bounty of news stories and court rulings to commentate about, thus sparing a certain Park Ranger in Seattle a thorough dressing down in this column.