One state under God? I thought it was under Oklahoma.
I also thought allegiance was, itself, one of those indivisible things. Are they trying to encourage Texas children to withhold their allegiance from the United States of America and her symbols?
Why do the Texas State Legislature hate America?
I spent enough of my childhood in Texas that, with enough tequila in me, that airline-pilot drawl comes out.
Y’know why they say, “Don’t mess with Texas”? Because it’s already as messed up as possible. Any more would be gilding the lily.
Joe Bob Briggs said something like “Texas was founded by criminals, failures and outcasts who were willing to kill a bunch of Mexicans so they could illegally keep slaves on land that didn’t belong to them. Anybody can fit in here, because we already know we’re the scum of the earth!”
Any more would be using the lily for sanitary napkin disposal.
Well, then we can open the lines of dialogue once again. The chilis I’ve been er, exposed to all my life (different people, different venues) ALL have beans in them.
Glad to hear there’s some without. Do I have to wear a Stetson to eat it?
That’s a fucking ugly flag. Red on blue?!
I’m looking at a half-eaten bag of Fritos on my desk and I’m thinking about all the little hole-in-the-wall chili places that used to be in downtown Dallas: I’m gonna make me some Frito Pie.
Cartography is the last bastion of bigotry. North Americans and Europeans just want to keep everyone else underfoot.
I thought that the Supreme Court ruled that no student can be compelled to say the pledge of allegiance-so how can this work, even if it is a different pledge?
I thought it was the opposite.
The 8-0 ruling by the high court reversed a lower-court decision that teacher-led recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools is unconstitutional.
The case had been brought by an atheist who did not want his third-grade daughter to have to listen to the phrase “under God” in the oath.
I don’t mean having to hear it at all-I thought that students were permitted to sit it out, while the others said it.
That teachers can’t say, “Oh, you HAVE to say it.”
(When I was in high school, none of us really paid much attention to it)
I don’t recall ever saying (or for that matter, hearting it) it in school. But then, I was always something of a renegade.
Ya gotta read more than the first paragraph :rolleyes: .
They didn’t hear the case, they overturned the 9th circuits ruling because Newdow did not have standing, nothing more.
They did not rule on the PoA at all!
Guinastasia the case that your looking for is West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette
the Wikipedia article
the text of the decision on FindLaw
CMC fnord!
I lived in TX for six years, first in Houston, then in Dallas. The six longest years of my life. I finally moved to MA in May and can’t wait to sell my house in Plano, just so I can be totally out of that God-forsaken hell hole.
I don’t get it. The national pledge has “under god” in it, so how is it so strange that Texas legistlators would not balk at adding “under god” to the Texas pledge?
-FrL-
And Mac Davis, who wrote “Happiness is Lubbock in the Rear-View Mirror”. And, of course, Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys!
I miss the barbecue, the chili and Tex-Mex food in general. I knew a lot of good people in Texas, most of whom didn’t fit the stereotypes. But it’s definitely a whacky state. There’s an attitude that, I really think, is more one of “being different just to mess with people” than simple backwards ignorance. F’r instance, if the rest of the country didn’t act so upset about executing retarded people, Texas might stop doing it.
It’s tragicomical that the best defense you could come up with for Texas was that, while we do execute the retarded, it’s pretty much devoid of malice. 
This thread is the poster child of why the US of A is doomed. There is no United left in our hearts or minds.
We are the luckiest people in the world by the fact that we were lucky, just plain dumb luck, enough to be born here. And we are the most unhappy, ungrateful, dissatisfied group of people in the world with no understand or compassion in our souls anymore. We hate each other and actively try to harm each other for the least reasons imaginable.
Hell holes in this country??? Cross a border and open your eyes…
Make it better, don’t tear it farther apart.
This thread is all in fun??? Bawahaha, Yeah … right…
There is much to love in Texas, Gus, mostly people. A Texas liberal, like the late great Molly Ivins, is tempered in the fires. Kinky Friedman could not have been born anywhere else. When a Texan attains political enlightenment, he does so with the same enthusiasm and verve that his knuckle-walking cousin does (I know this from direct personal experience…)
If there is any one thing that the rest of the country doesn’t seem to recognize about Texas, it would have to be the wildly disproportionate effect Texas has on our national political realities. The moneyed interests of Texas have had years to burrow into the fabric and to afford themselves every conceivable political advantage, some of them more or less legitimate. But change is coming. “Molly Ivins can’t say that, can she?”. Well, there was a time she couldn’t. It will be slow, it will be agonizing, but change is coming. Lord willing, and the crick don’t rise.
But there are hell holes in this country. We may be more than half joking about the Texas bit, but I’m sure there ARE hell holes of poverty, disease and ignorance in Texas, and in every other state.
We are a very fortunate country, but we are far from perfect. Being “free” (as most of the civilized world is these days–there is nothing unique about our freedom except the way it came about), doesn’t mean being without flaws or problems. The real crime is that we have a sucky infant mortality rate and more prisoners than any other country. No, I’m not going to waste my afternoon chasing internet sites for cites–this info is widely known. We are no more lucky than any other person that has been born into relative affluence and a civil society.
To point out the USA’s(or Texas’) problems is also not to think that other countries(or states) are better or perfect, either. IMO, some countries do some things better than we do, we do some things better than others. I don’t see why we can’t learn from one another-be it states learning from one another (I think this does happen upon occasion) or other countries doing the learning.
Didn’t mean to get on a soapbox.
I’d like Texas more if there weren’t so much heat, humidity and Mexican food (I don’t like Mexican food-I dislike corn and peppers-sue me). The food is optional, but there is no avoiding the heat or the humidity. For this reason, I, a native Floridian, hate my birth state, as well as most of the south–and I’m none too fond of IL in August, either. No reason to not poke fun at any state, next week we could take on Rhode Island!
No need. Thanks to the massive tide of illegal immigration, in Texas, border crosses YOU!
(I imagine it’ll be passing NW Arkansas any year now, if not already…)