Word: ninth
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...Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco - ruling last week that schoolchildren should not recite the pledge because the phrase under God violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment - certainly chose a ridiculously inappropriate moment to mess with it. The decision - at a time when America's post-9/11 flags are still truculently out and its nerves frayed by a now-you-see-it-now-you-don't war against terrorists and by a doubtful economy - seemed stupid: fetishistic about the First Amendment and almost wanton in its cluelessness about the American mood...
...hysterical moment, Alfred Goodwin replaced Osama Bin Laden as the most reviled man in America. The federal judge?s crime was to attack two of the 31 words that constitute the Pledge of Allegiance. Writing for the majority of a three-judge panel on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which has jurisdiction over nine western states including California, Goodwin held last week that the words under God were unconstitutional because they violated the separation of church and state required by the First Amendment. He was responding to a case brought by Sacramento, Calif. emergency-room physician Michael Newdow...
...endorsing the unexpurgated pledge. The House condemned the decision by a 416-3 vote. Perhaps deciding that retreat is the better part of valor, Goodwin stayed his decision even before an appeal was filed. The case is virtually certain to be heard by an 11-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit and virtually certain to be overturned either then or later by the Supreme Court...
...professor at Yale Law School. "But the reasoning isn?t crazy. It?s technically correct." Vincent Blasi, a law professor at Columbia University and the University of Virginia, agreed. "If you?re being true to the idea that government must not take positions on religious questions, then the Ninth Circuit opinion is quite persuasive," he says. "There is a powerful desire by majorities to assert a religious identity for the country." That desire was strengthened by the terrorist attacks, as schools across the nation turned more openly to prayer for solace...
...California and sued the local school board with no prior warning. "It would have been nice if he?d come to talk to us first," says Superintendent Dave Gordon. Doing it all on his own, however, was Newdow?s speciality. He insisted on representing himself even when California?s Ninth circuit court tried to appoint an attorney for him. He would come home from the ER at 6pm and study case law on the Internet until 3am. "It started out as a hobby," says Newdow. "I was passionate about it. I knew I was right." But he was not entirely...