{"id":521,"date":"2004-03-24T19:32:00","date_gmt":"2004-03-25T03:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/under-god\/"},"modified":"2004-03-24T19:32:00","modified_gmt":"2004-03-25T03:32:00","slug":"under-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/2004\/03\/24\/under-god\/","title":{"rendered":"Under God"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Supreme Court is hearing arguments about the <a href=\"http:\/\/story.news.yahoo.com\/news?tmpl=story&#038;c\">Pledge of Allegiance<\/a>.  I think that the &#8220;under God&#8221; bit is an unconstitutional travesty, but honestly I don&#8217;t care too much; there are more important battles to fight.  But this did amuse me: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p> Newdow, 50, held his own under a barrage of fast-paced questions. Chief Justice William Rehnquist threatened to clear the courtroom if spectators applauded Newdow a second time.<\/p>\n<p>Rehnquist had asked what the vote was when the U.S. Congress in 1954 added &#8220;under God&#8221; to the pledge. The law was an effort to distinguish America&#8217;s religious values and heritage from those of communism, which is atheistic.<\/p>\n<p>Newdow replied the vote was unanimous. Rehnquist said that did not sound divisive to him. &#8220;That&#8217;s only because no atheist can get elected to public office,&#8221; Newdow answered, triggering the applause, a rare event in the high court. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>  The applause must have been good to hear.  I&#8217;m glad that someone takes this seriously enough to devote some real effort to demonstrating the obvious.<\/p>\n<p><em>Update<\/em>:  Amanda Butler at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.crescatsententia.org\/archives\/week_2004_03_21.html#003431\">Crescat Sententia<\/a> was in the courtroom for the oral arguments, and gives a detailed account of the proceedings.<br \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Supreme Court is hearing arguments about the Pledge of Allegiance. I think that the &#8220;under God&#8221; bit is an unconstitutional travesty, but honestly I don&#8217;t care too much; there are more important battles to fight. But this did amuse me: Newdow, 50, held his own under a barrage of fast-paced questions. Chief Justice William [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellany"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=521"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}