"WE NOW GO LIVE FOR A REACTION FROM RICHARD STANS..."

The Pledge will, for now, keep "under god". So says the Supreme Court, but they did so through a technicality:

The Supreme Court allowed millions of schoolchildren to keep affirming loyalty to one nation "under God" but dodged the underlying question of whether the Pledge of Allegiance is an unconstitutional blending of church and state.

The ruling overturned a lower court decision that the religious reference made the pledge unconstitutional in public schools. But the decision did so on technical grounds, ruling the man who brought the case on behalf of his 10-year-old daughter could not legally represent her.

It was an anticlimactic end to an emotional high court showdown over God in the public schools and in public life. It also neutralizes what might have been a potent election-year political issue in which the Bush administration argued strongly that the reference to God should remain part of the pledge.

The outcome on Monday does not prevent a future court challenge over the same issue, however, and both defenders and opponents of the current wording predicted that fight will come quickly.

For now, five justices said the court could not rule on the case because California atheist Michael Newdow does not have full custody of his daughter.

In other words, "buck buck buck buck bawwwwwwk".

And, in even other-er words, "We, the Justices of the United States Supreme Court, hereby launch our program of bending as faaaar over backwards as possible to recuse ourselves, in effect, from this year's Presidential election, given all that fun stuff that happened way back."

Frankly, as a to-the-death supporter of the separation of church and state, I think there are bigger fish to fry than the Pledge, including but not limited to vouchers, creationism and/or intelligent design being taught in public schools, and all those cute little words on our currency. Monday's ruling was a wash, and I can live with that.

Any news story relating to the Pledge case is reason enough to link to Slate's hilarious PowerPoint version of the Pledge from a while back.

Lastly, if the Court can somehow take up a future case that combines the Pledge, intelligent design theory, and same-sex marriage, maybe that would have the pleasant side-effect of getting Paul to start blogging again.

Anyway, I'll do more here tomorrow. A long weekend of post-finals partying/moving has just completed. A sentence with severe passive voiced was just typed. Bye!