Wednesday, July 19, 2006

SW Missouri Congressmen vote for Pledge Protection Act

The GOP plan to get the Democrats on the "wrong" side of a number of hot-button social issues continued today when the House passed the Pledge Protection Act by a 260 to 167 margin.
The act would prevent judges from removing the words "Under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance, something which one federal court did recently, but the U. S. Supreme Court overturned the decision on a technicality saying that Michael Newdow, the California atheist who sued to have the phrase removed, had no standing to sue.
Both Southwest Missouri Congressmen, Roy Blunt, R-Strafford, and Ike Skelton, D-Lexington, voted for the act.
In a fit of hyperbole, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said, "We are making an all-out assault on the Constitution of the United States which, thank God, will fail,"
What world is Ms. Pelosi living in? I still am resentful that our elected officials are debating and voting on issues that are not pressing while we are paying nearly $3 a gallon for gasoline, struggling with the effects of illegal immigration, watching as jobs are shipped overseas, spending money at the fastest rate in history, and above all, bogged down in an unnecessary war in Iraq, but it seems to be an effective plan for Republicans.
Though many of them took a step backward with their vote against the broadening of stem cell research today, they regained ground with the Pledge Protection Act. The First Amendment does not guarantee that Michael Newdow or anyone else will not run into God in their public lives. The "under God" has been more of a tradition than a religious invocation for the past 52 years, something that each person who says the pledge interprets in his or her way.
And did you notice that it was God that Ms. Pelosi thanked when she talked about the certain failure of the "assault on the Constitution of the United States?"

2 comments:

Seth said...
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Seth said...

What do you think of the separation of powers? Can congress limit the application of the constitution to specific issues without a constitutional amendment? By the way the 1954 act that put "under god" in the pledge is a law, not the mere mention of god.