With little public attention or even notice, the House of Representatives has passed a bill that undermines enforcement of the First Amendment's separation of church and state. The Public Expression of Religion Act - H.R. 2679 - provides that attorneys who successfully challenge government actions as violating the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment shall not be entitled to recover attorneys fees. The bill has only one purpose: to prevent suits challenging unconstitutional government actions advancing religion.

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The bill, if enacted, would treat suits to enforce the Establishment Clause different from litigation to enforce all of the other provisions of the Constitution and federal civil rights statutes.

Fortunately, various conservative personas are quick to assure us that there are no threats to our constitutional rights. People are not being arrested for political demonstration (not counting the nearly 2000 in NYC in 2004), the habeus corpus rights of the accused are still intact, and the government is not trying to erode the separation of church and state.

This is going to come as a shock to many people who know me, but I am very heartened and supportive of this decision. I felt like the initial ruling by the district court was over-reaching in its definition of state-sponsorship of religion. The fact that it painted the bay area in an even more-kooky light than we're already viewed in didn't help, either. I felt like the father in question was looking for an excuse to make a highly-media-visible case.

More to the point, I agree with Rehnquist (and check your calendars, because this happens so rarely it could be a trivia question if I ever become famous). I feel that the phrase itself, "one nation under God", is largely (if not purely) ceremonial. It has no more specific endorsement of Christianity than having "In God We Trust" on our currency. (Granted, I know of elements who are just as adamant about removing that as well, though not so devoted as to take their protest to the point of shunning the currency itself.) I think that if you could demonstrate that any children really and truly associated the pledge with promotion of any church, that might be different. But I know that as a 10-year-old in 1978, I was way more aware of "Star Wars" than I was the words of the pledge. It was just something we all stood and mumbled our way through each morning in class.

I will accept that there are people who do stop and consider the words. But we already have precedent-setting rulings that allow a child to not say the pledge if they choose not to. But then I read that the father has custody only 10 days a month, and that the mother actually prefers that the girl be allowed to go on about day-to-day school without the pledge being an issue. And I read that he argued that each day the girl hears the pledge, "a teacher tells her, in effect, that her father is wrong." That's just too much like an ego issue for me to feel very sympathetic. The mother has it right– that the father is free to fight the pledge on his own, but that he shouldn't be dragging their daughter into it.

As a self-identifying agnostic, his brand of atheist just annoys the hell out of me.

Just another in the growing field of the arduously religious, convinced that their particular interpretation of a given book should bind us all, whether we particularly believe in that book or not.

(Put under 'religion' since Boone is so open about his faith, and many of his comments are related to that.)

VIRGINIA BEACH, Virginia (AP) – Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson urged his nationwide audience Monday to pray for God to remove three justices from the Supreme Court so they could be replaced by conservatives.

I'd laugh hysterically, if the underlying ambition of this were not so terribly frightening. Don't get me wrong here– I don't think his call for prayer will make one whit of difference. It's the audacity and affront that he shows that angers me so much. On the other hand, he'd best be careful in how he words the prayers: conservative William Rehnquist is considered the most likely to retire of the current nine.

On the plus side, it's worth visiting the link just to check out the picture of Robertson they have. I can't tell if he's praying or prairie-dogging.