Actions, words and their relative volumes

In more ever enthralling "American Values Agenda" news, the House of Representatives voted Wednesday by a disturbingly large margin of 260-167 in favor of a bill that would bar federal courts from ruling on cases challenging the constitutionality of the Pledge of Allegiance for its inclusion of "under God." The measure next travels to the Senate, which for the moment seems pleasantly saner and more inclined to let it languish.

I bring this up not because of any need to revisit what a load of crap the "we need to protect this sacred expression of our nation's founding Christian heritage from the evil activist judges" argument is (but if you want to revisit it, I'm happy to oblige, twice), but because of this novel and nonsensical argument to come out of the current "debate:"

Rep. Todd Akin, R-Mo., who sponsored the measure, said that denying a child the right to recite the pledge was a form of censorship. "We believe that there is a God who gives basic rights to all people and it is the job of the government to protect those rights."

Yes, because I'm sure scores of kids with patriotic Tourette's are just clamoring to spontaneously recite the Pledge during school hours and are being unjustly silenced by those godless liberal teachers, and Congress needs to immediately ride to their rescue. Next they'll be claiming reciting the Pledge improves test scores.

If this measure goes anywhere, in addition to some serious First Amendment issues, the precedent such issue-based cherry-picking would set would render any notion of an independent federal judiciary and a legally sound Congress a complete joke (and knowing this lot, lawmakers would probably bar courts from declaring their own illegal marginalization illegal as well) and leave citizens no recourse beyond state courts on pressing issues of the legislative day, which I suppose is precisely the point.

If current leadership cared half as much about actually upholding the substance of this government's founding principles as they do about offensively defending feel-good, flag-waving rhetoric by eroding the very checks and balances enshrined to uphold pluralistic, democratic freedoms, they just might accidentally do something productive.


And on that note, in honor of President Bush's very first, glimmeringly pro-life veto, which stuck it to scientists, Michael J. Fox and that pesky thing called public opinion in one fell swoop by striking down a bill expanding federal funding for stem cell research, enjoy this favorite Doonesbury strip that, despite being published in April, still sums up the situation quite nicely.