Santeria, Manny.
(I think Santaria is the practice of using voodoo invocations of old St. Nick, Rudolph, etc. I shudder to contemplate reading elf entrails…) 
I wondered what was in those damn cookies. He wears red, too, Hmmm… :smack:
You mean you honestly don’t see it?! Is being Irony Impaired protected by the ADA?
Well, let me spell it out for you as plainly as I can. You’re criticizing minty green for, as you put it, “name calling.” You then label minty green’s behavior “juvenile.” You’re engaging in name calling. See how simple that is?
In an earlier post, you accused minty green of lacking social skills, then immediately said that it’s one thing to make an argument, but quite another to disparage others. You are disparaging minty green. You’re not attacking his argument, but are simply disparaging him.
Which part of all this is beyond you?!
I believe that “name calling,” rather than making a reasonable argument, is juvenile. Do you have a better term for it?
Sure, but so what? As I stated above, that’s not the issue here. Yes, the federal courts can look to state laws for guidance and support when it comes to determining whether a litigant has standing to pursue a claim in federal court. But they are not in any way bound by that law, nor are they in any way determining what the guy’s rights are under California law. If the federal courts want to decide that parents have the authority to assert their federal constitutional rights through their children, that’s a determination based on federal law, and it will have no effect at all on the guy’s rights as a non-custodial parent under California law. Nor, it should be recognized, does standing in this case give the father any right to control his child’s religious upbringing–the custodial parent is free to raise her child however she wants; he seeks only a determination that the state cannot impose its religion on the child.
Note that I have no idea what a non-custodial parent’s rights are under California law, so you may or may not be right about the religious upbringing thing. This is, to say the least, an unusual circumstance, where a parent with limited rights in his child’s upbringing seeks to assert his rights vis a vis the child.
Not sure I follow you here. I do not believe that the child was forced to recite the Pledge, nor do I believe that any of the previous cases on the subject specifically discussed the “under God” aspect of the Pledge. Could you maybe rephrase, and I’ll try to respond?
I suppose, DSYoungEsq, that you made the connection by noticing the remarkable similarity (identicality, even) between the “Mister Thorne” email addy and LyricalReckoner’s, along with related profile info.
Just for the record, LyricalReckoner, are you the author of the linked essay?
I note, with interest, that you’ve failed even to attempt to defend accusing minty green of lacking social skills. I await, with bated breath, your explanation of how this is not an ad hominem attack.
Who cares, folks? I certainly don’t.
Well, I’ll leave him to you, minty. I was just picking up a certain snotty Collounsbury tone to his arguments, mixed with a dose of hypocrisy, and couldn’t resist pointing it out. If you don’t mind being accused of making juvenile arguments and of lacking social skills, more power to you!
I am.
On the issue of identifying oneself as the author of a work cited externally to the SDMB. There are reasons for this, some specific to GD and some in general for the boards. Firstly, because it is simple honesty and courtesy to do so. Secondly is because the rules here in GD are different for replies directed at external writers versus internal writers. It is verboten to directly insult fellow posters, but the author of a off-board citation is fair game. May seem barbaric or unfair, but them’s the rules. Thirdly the administrators typically frown on posting advertisements for third-party sites. A reference to a third-party site is something that happens all the time, but the relationship the poster has with the site and material being referenced matters. If a poster has a vested interest in increasing traffic to the site, that makes a difference. Finally there are all the matters of copyright and other intellectual property issues. The legal disclaimers are at the bottom of the page and how they interact with the rights of the site the essay was published on and your rights may be different if you are a participant in both sites.
Enjoy,
Steven
Yeah, that was kind of a mess of a couple sentences. I’ll retry:
This is something of a speculative thread, of course, so I’m inviting speculation.
If SCOTUS goes with the “secular purpose” argument, they’ll also almost certainly point to prior decisions allowing a student to opt out of saying the pledge – that the pledge, though State-led, is not compulsory in nature. Agreed? I’m asking what if those prior decisions (Barnette, etc.) never existed. The Jehovah’s Witnesses stood up, or the school district never pushed the issue when they didn’t, whatever. If the possibility (but not case law establishing for certain) of a compulsory pledge still existed, do you think Wild Bill and the Supremes might have done something different here from what you think they’ll do?
Hard to say. My recollection is that the previous Pledge cases were more about the First Amendment’s free speech and free exercise clauses, rather than the establishment clause. I’m unaware of any establishment cases that say it’s okay for the state to endorse religion so long as the people aren’t compelled to go along with the religion. Compulsion has a lot more to do with an individual’s rights to free speech and free exercise, whereas the establishment clause is a restriction on the government.
my feeling is that they’re going to go the way they did in a case against nebraska legislature, when someone tried to challenge the paid chaplains and congressional prayer ceremony.
i (though i’m not a lawyer) am also unaware of any pledge cases that deal with the establishment clause, so i feel like they’ll be citing cases that provide protection from the establishment clause.
ceremonial deism, tradition, and all that…
in the case i mentioned above, they cited the fact that the first congressional congress was opened with a prayer led by paid chaplains, and i get the feeling that they’ll include the mention of god in the declaration of independence and such as proof that the word “god” wasn’t meant by the framers to be removed from government by the establishment clause. boy do i hate that “argument”.
The relevant cases are Minersville School District v. Gobitis (310 U.S. 586), which was reversed by West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (319 U.S. 624).
Although the Gobitis case was reversed, it may be useful to quote the following, written by attorney Leo Pfeffer to summarize a classic (and pedantically sesquipedalian) Felix Frankfurter opinion:
In Barnette, Justice Robert Jackson hung his hat on the Free Speech Clause rather than the Free Exercise of Religion Clause, stating that the flag salute was a form of speech. The government cannot force citizens to express beliefs, including allegiance to flag and country, without violating freedom of speech. So, whether or not one’s objection is religiously based, one’s freedom to refuse to express a given pledge must be respected.
Mr. Jackson’s concluding remark is intensely relvant to the argument at hand:
Congress doesn’t need to pass a law to take those words out. First of all, there’s no law that puts them ‘in’ in the first place. You’re not federally required to say the pledge of allegiance in school. And even if you were, Congress still wouldn’t need to pass a law removing the words. If the Court says it’s unconstitutional, they’re out, end of story. What would remain, if there were legislation mandating the pledge (which there may be on the local levels, I’m not sure) is that they’d have to be re-written in a way that didn’t violate the Constitution, probably just by removing those two words.
I am going to say this one more time:
The Ninth Circuit Court, and AFAIK any other court, has never said that the Pledge of Allegiance is unconstitutional.
In fact, the Newdow decision by the Ninth Circuit specifcially stated that the court delined to rule on the constitutionality of the Pledge.
What that court found to be a violation of the Establishment Clause was the regulation written by a local school board requiring daily recital of the Pledge. And if you refer to two posts up, you’d see that that has been contrary to the settled case law of the United States for 62 years now.
JFTR, it irks the Hell out of me that ostensible Christians want to compel non-believers in the one God to violate the Third Commandment. At least most of the people publicly taking issue with the “no Pledge in schools” ruling seem to be founding it on a “they’re trying to kick God out of the classroom” stance, and so are presumably Christians. It’s always semed to me that God is quite capable of making His Presence known to people without their being force-fed Him under cover of “ceremonial deism.”
Thanks for pointing that out. I don’t know if there is a rule against that sort of thing, but I see no difference in linking to one’s own essays and linking to an on-line diary.
I will have other comments later about this thread, but I wanted to thank the OP for the link to these essays and commentaries. They are original, fresh and apparently well-researched. I read several and bookmarked the page before returning to the thread to read that they were written by the OP. Good stuff! (And no, I don’t know LyricalReckoner, but his name is well-chosen!
as far as i could tell, the students weren’t being compelled to pledge allegiance, so the jehovah’s witnesses case isn’t entirely applicable. rather, they were being led, so it seems that (and reading the opinions shows the 9th agrees with me) the school prayer cases are more likely to be an issue.
i think that most americans are just shocked and appalled that someone would want to change the pledge to remove god from it. i don’t think the view is particularly religion-based. or rather, i don’t think that the vast majority of the country who disagreed with the 9th base their disagreement on their desire to eliminate church/state barriers. but i also don’t see any atheists disagreeing with the decision. it seems like mostly atheists that believe the government should be as secular as possible, while respecting the religious beliefs of its members.
as an aside…i just know they’re going to rule that the word “god” has a traditional and non-religious (huh?) value in US history, and so leaving those two words in the pledge would not disallow its recital in public schools. but i will be truly miffed if they bring up tradition when ruling on a change in the wording that is younger than my parents.
Thanks for the kind words. Much appreciated.
I can appreciate any concern with people trying to use this discussion board for commercial purposes. Not the place for selling generic Viagra, stuff to enlarge your penis, or ways to get rick quiche.
I offered just a link to an essay. Why? For the feedback.
And why not post the essay here? Convenience. It’s much easier for me to put the essay in one place rather than reformat it for this particular message board.
That’s all. If there is some rule against linking to an essay from this board, would a moderator please inform me of such and I won’t do it again. Thanks.