Good.

[Akaran_D]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,139436,00.html

WASHINGTON — For many conservatives, the words "9th Circuit" mean more than just a federal appeals court in California. The words embody everything they think is wrong with liberal activism, West Coast politics and the judges who tried to take God out of the Pledge of Allegiance.

Those same conservatives think their new clout following President Bush's re-election may help put some weight behind a movement to split up the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals (search), leaving the 9th in California, creating a new 12th Circuit for neighboring Idaho, Arizona, Montana and Nevada; and a new 13th Circuit for Washington, Alaska and Oregon.

"Almost everything is going to be affected by the election," said Kay Daly, who heads the Coalition for a Fair Judiciary (search), a conservative group working to get Bush's judicial nominations through the Senate. She said conservatives will be pushing hard to split up the 9th Circuit.

"The 9th Circuit seems to wield an awful lot of power, and it is the most reversed court in the nation," she said. "There's some serious judicial activism going on there."

By a vote of 205 to 194, the House on Oct. 5 passed an amendment by Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, to the Bankruptcy Judgeship Act (search) that would divide the 9th Circuit into three parts. The entire bankruptcy bill passed the House shortly afterward.

Republicans largely voted for the measure while Democrats opposed it. But two California Republicans, Reps. Christopher Cox and David Dreier, voted against the amendment.

Retired Judge Robert Bork, a former U.S. Solicitor General (search) and federal appeals court justice, said the 9th Circuit "has always been a maverick court," but splitting it up is more complicated than it sounds.

"I don't know if it's such a hot idea to have a court confined to California," he told FOXNews.com. "You would still get a court full of activist judges, and a court that doesn't represent the whole of the state."

But the lawmakers who sponsored the legislation in both the House and Senate say the 9th Circuit is not only ideologically different from its own Western values, the court is overworked. They point to the judges' caseload and sluggish docket.

"It's the most overloaded circuit out there," said Dan Whiting, spokesman for Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, who introduced the Senate companion bill with Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev. "We certainly have concerns over how the court works, but at the same time there are other concerns with the overload, with its workloads, that far outweighs any other concern."

"[Ensign] is as aware as many people are that the court is completely overloaded," said Jack Finn, spokesman for the senator.

But not everyone believes that workload is the overriding concern for GOP lawmakers, and a lot more senators will be needed to get a ringing endorsement. Senate sources say it has a glimmer of a chance of being brought up in the Senate, but not much more than that, at least for now.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who opposes the measure, has put a hold on the Craig-Ensign bill, basically bottling it up in limbo, and has warned against attempts to slip it into larger bills.

"It would be inappropriate to undertake such a momentous transformation of our nation's judicial system with little opportunity for debate and consideration," Feinstein said in a letter to the Appropriations Committee Chairman, Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, on Nov. 15.

The chief judge of the 9th Circuit, Hon. Mary M. Schroeder of Arizona, and several of the court's judges have been vocally opposed to the effort. Schroeder was out of the country and could not be reached for comment, but has stated publicly that the measure would break up common interests among neighboring states.

Conservatives have not been shy about their dismay over what they consider to be the court's ideological slant. That dismay surfaced explosively in 2002, when the 9th Circuit declared the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional because it makes reference to God in one verse. The U.S. Supreme Court later overruled the court on technical grounds.

To conservatives, this was the culmination of years of "liberal" decisions on everything from environmental issues, to crime, drugs and sex.

"These contemptuous judgments tear at the moral fabric of our nation, disregard the will of the people and force a corrupt ideology upon our society," said Rep. Rick Renzi, R-Ariz., after the House passed an amendment that included language he introduced in April to split the court.

He said rural Arizonans were tired of the 9th Circuit ruling against their interests, and pointed to judgments concerning cattle grazing and preventing forest fires. "Based in San Francisco, the current 9th Circuit is out of touch with western values," Renzi said.

But not all Arizonans necessarily agree. The Arizona House delegation split its vote along party lines.

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said the ideological drive behind the proposals in both the House and Senate have made lawmakers uncomfortable. "It's obvious what is going on, the other side is very clear that this is what they are doing," Schiff told FOXNews.com.

He said he heads a caucus with Rep. Judy Biggert, R-Ill., to work, in part, on solutions to the worsening relationship between the courts and Congress. "This just makes it worse."

But Finn said Ensign is confident that the enough bipartisan support exists in the Senate to split up the court.

"We're confident that it will go somewhere, the question is not if, but when," Finn said. "It's a commonsense bill and he intends to pursue it."

[Burke]

judges who tried to take God out of the Pledge of Allegiance

Old arguement, but it should read: restore the Pledge to the original text. It wasn't there to begin with. God was added in the 50s so we didn't feel like Godless Communists during the cold war.

[Lohrno]

Old arguement, but it should read: restore the Pledge to the original text. It wasn't there to begin with. God was added in the 50s so we didn't feel like Godless Communists during the cold war.

Could I get a source for that? I keep hearing this line, but not any backup...

-=Lohrno

[Spang]

The Pledge of Allegiance
A Short History
by Dr. John W. Baer
Copyright 1992 by Dr. John W. Baer

See also http://www.PledgeQandA.com




Francis Bellamy (1855 - 1931), a Baptist minister, wrote the original Pledge in August 1892. He was a Christian Socialist. In his Pledge, he is expressing the ideas of his first cousin, Edward Bellamy, author of the American socialist utopian novels, Looking Backward (1888) and Equality (1897).

Francis Bellamy in his sermons and lectures and Edward Bellamy in his novels and articles described in detail how the middle class could create a planned economy with political, social and economic equality for all. The government would run a peace time economy similar to our present military industrial complex.

The Pledge was published in the September 8th issue of The Youth's Companion, the leading family magazine and the Reader's Digest of its day. Its owner and editor, Daniel Ford, had hired Francis in 1891 as his assistant when Francis was pressured into leaving his baptist church in Boston because of his socialist sermons. As a member of his congregation, Ford had enjoyed Francis's sermons. Ford later founded the liberal and often controversial Ford Hall Forum, located in downtown Boston.

In 1892 Francis Bellamy was also a chairman of a committee of state superintendents of education in the National Education Association. As its chairman, he prepared the program for the public schools' quadricentennial celebration for Columbus Day in 1892. He structured this public school program around a flag raising ceremony and a flag salute - his 'Pledge of Allegiance.'

His original Pledge read as follows: 'I pledge allegiance to my Flag and (to*) the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.' He considered placing the word, 'equality,' in his Pledge, but knew that the state superintendents of education on his committee were against equality for women and African Americans. [ * 'to' added in October, 1892. ]

Dr. Mortimer Adler, American philosopher and last living founder of the Great Books program at Saint John's College, has analyzed these ideas in his book, The Six Great Ideas. He argues that the three great ideas of the American political tradition are 'equality, liberty and justice for all.' 'Justice' mediates between the often conflicting goals of 'liberty' and 'equality.'

In 1923 and 1924 the National Flag Conference, under the 'leadership of the American Legion and the Daughters of the American Revolution, changed the Pledge's words, 'my Flag,' to 'the Flag of the United States of America.' Bellamy disliked this change, but his protest was ignored.

In 1954, Congress after a campaign by the Knights of Columbus, added the words, 'under God,' to the Pledge. The Pledge was now both a patriotic oath and a public prayer.

Bellamy's granddaughter said he also would have resented this second change. He had been pressured into leaving his church in 1891 because of his socialist sermons. In his retirement in Florida, he stopped attending church because he disliked the racial bigotry he found there.

What follows is Bellamy's own account of some of the thoughts that went through his mind in August, 1892, as he picked the words of his Pledge:

It began as an intensive communing with salient points of our national history, from the Declaration of Independence onwards; with the makings of the Constitution...with the meaning of the Civil War; with the aspiration of the people...

The true reason for allegiance to the Flag is the 'republic for which it stands.' ...And what does that vast thing, the Republic mean? It is the concise political word for the Nation - the One Nation which the Civil War was fought to prove. To make that One Nation idea clear, we must specify that it is indivisible, as Webster and Lincoln used to repeat in their great speeches. And its future?

Just here arose the temptation of the historic slogan of the French Revolution which meant so much to Jefferson and his friends, 'Liberty, equality, fraternity.' No, that would be too fanciful, too many thousands of years off in realization. But we as a nation do stand square on the doctrine of liberty and justice for all...

If the Pledge's historical pattern repeats, its words will be modified during this decade. Below are two possible changes.

Some prolife advocates recite the following slightly revised Pledge: 'I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all, born and unborn.'

A few liberals recite a slightly revised version of Bellamy's original Pledge: 'I pledge allegiance to my Flag, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with equality, liberty and justice for all.'

[Lohrno]

Fair enough. Sorry, you under god folks have no leg to stand on.

-=Lohrno