Speedkill

House Passes Court Limits on Pledge

WASHINGTON, Sept. 23 – The Republican-led House of Representatives approved a measure on Thursday that would bar federal courts from ruling on the text of the Pledge of Allegiance. Democratic critics called the bill unconstitutional and unnecessary.

By a vote of 247 to 173, the House adopted the measure, which its Republican authors said would prevent federal judges from striking the clause “under God” from the pledge as it is recited in classrooms, as well as at the opening of every Congressional day.

“The simple question is whether or not school kids are going to say the Pledge of Allegiance the way we have said it for the last 50 years,” Representative Todd Akin, Republican of Missouri and an author of the measure, said.

The mainly Democratic opponents of the measure said it was not so simple, condemning the proposal as the latest in a series of Republican efforts to circumvent the constitutional separation of powers. They said it was also an obvious effort to create a divisive issue before Nov. 2, because in June the Supreme Court, without ruling on the merits of the case, set aside a finding by an appeals court that the phrase violated the separation of church and state.

This is bizarre. How can you pass a bill saying that the courts can’t rule on something? You’re effectively trying to neutralize a branch of our government.

A cursory internet search shows that there is some sort of argument to this, but it doesn’t even come close to convincing. Marci Hamilton thinks it’s scary as well:

Congress’s actions are appalling. Of course, polls do not determine what laws should be laws. Far from it. Our elected representatives are supposed to be acting in the public good and according to constitutional principles, not led around by polling numbers.