Supreme Cowardice

Gee, who didn't see that coming? The leftish wing of the Supreme Court found a way to preserve the Pledge of Religious Allegiance... without having to put their names on an opinon based on the kind of theocratic legal diarrhea that would be required to actually justify it. They - along with the conservative core of the Court's members - found a technicality (deciding that Michael Newdow doesn't have sufficient legal standing to file suit on behalf of his daughter) which allowed them to duck the question... and put everything back the way the Christian majority wanted it.

Whether or not Newdow has full custody of his daughter is completely irrelevant to the legal questions on which this case would turn. The legal arguments for and against would be the same, and the fundamental issue would be the same, regardless of their custody status. If the Supremes had any integrity... any genuine desire to ensure that the Constitution is upheld... they would have addressed that issue now, given the chance. They did not.

Maybe it's because they sensed that the American public wouldn't stand for it. That they're not ready. Probably not. But neither were they really ready for desegregation, or reproductive freedom, or the privacy of consensual sex. The Supreme Court has led society in the past. Perhaps someday it will again.

In the meantime, they've sent a clear message: Don't send us another case like this. Throwing this one out on a technicality isn't an invitation to try again with a better plaintiff. It's a demonstration of the court's unwillingness to address the issue. They'll find another technicality to duck it again if they have to. Or maybe they'll use Scalia's family connections to make some cement overshoes for the next would-be plaintiff.

Just in case anyone's game to try it anyway, three of the justices issued a concurring opinion saying that they would have decided the case against Newdow. And we all know that Scalia, who recused himself, would have been willing to make the religious pledge mandatory if given half a chance. So that's four justices who've already announced how they'll decide any future test cases. (Which is a violation of judicial ethics, of course, but it's not like we didn't know where they stood already.) So this question has been tabled, at least for another generation.

Another generation that will grow up reciting that judeochristian confession of faith known as the Pledge of Allegiance.

And another generation of Americans - those who remember the pledge when it was still free of this religious indoctination - dying off.

Which is a good strategy for establishing a state religion, I'd say.