I wrote earlier that the Supreme Court "chickened out" by not deciding on the essense of the "under God" pledge case, but Dahlia Lithwick has convinced me that the case the Supreme Court decided was actually very important:
Too many other things were at stake. You can call them "technicalities." I like to call them "children."
Ask a divorced or unmarried parent with primary custody of a child what was at stake in this case, and you'll get an answer that differs profoundly from the headlines: The lawyer's trick here came from Michael Newdow, who wanted to override the religious decisions made by his daughter's mother.
There is little doubt that this case will come back to the highest court one fine day. It is of course everyone's right to plead his or her case to the country's courts, but as an atheist I have to question the wisdom of constantly fighting over symbolics.
Yes, I argued earlier that by the words of the constitution, the pledge is in violation. But there should be more important questions for America's secular minority than the words of a pseudo-religious nationalistic ritual.
As an example, think about Norway. Roughly half the population, by some polls the majority, are secularists. Hardly one in twenty go to church regularly. Non-Christians are mostly opposed to the state church, but it would be an exaggaration to say it is a red hot subject. And, as you can see above right, our national flag is a cross, as is the flags of all the (very secular) Nordic countries. Yet I have never heard anyone, no matter how militantly anti-religious they are, seriously suggest that we get a new flag. It is not a topic for debate.
This is such an important statement that I can't let it pass by. Roger L. Simon quotes from New Republic editor Lawrence Kaplan (no direct link available for non-subscribers):
A recent study by Princeton's Alan Krueger and Czech scholar Jitka Maleckova analyzed data on terrorist attacks and measured it against the characteristics of the terrorists' countries of origin. The study found that "the only variable that was consistently associated with the number of terrorists was the Freedom House index of political rights and civil liberties. Countries with more freedom were less likely to be the birthplace of international terrorists."
Hardly a surprise for most of us, and a solid empirical refutation of the "blowback" argument of Chomskyites and others.
Norway's state attorney Tor-Axel Busch has decided to drop the terrorism case against Mullah Krekar, citing lack of evidence. Norwegian courts proved to be suspicious to testimonies from foreign militants, and there would be little chance to prevail.
The good thing is that this will make it easier to send Krekar out of the country. There is no doubt he violeted the terms for his visa in Norway, and the Ansar al-Islam leader also poses a security risk. The problem is that Norway can only expel someone to a safe place, and Iraq is hardly a place where Krekar can currently expect a fair trial today. Not to mention that Norway requires guarantees that the death penalty will not be applied.
How to solve the problem: I suggest Norway do with the Bouvet island what the Americans have done in Guantanamo Bay.
Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria warns that policies to tackle the most scary terrorism scenario, that groups like al-Qaeda obtains a nuclear bomb, have hardly changed since 9/11-01.
This is particularly surprising when you consider that the problem of nuclear terrorism is actually solvable. Making a nuclear bomb requires fissile materials—weapons-grade plutonium or uranium. To produce either, you need reprocessors, reactors and enrichment facilities. These are out of the reach of even a large, well-funded terrorist organization. Terrorists can get such materials only by buying them from states. So, if all fissile material around the world were locked up and monitored and no new material were made, it would eliminate the worldwide threat of nuclear terrorism.
Zakaria lists some ways this important task can be achieved.
Fictious documentarist Michael Moore has no problem getting even more free publicity for his new movie, contesting the MPAA's "R" rating of his movie. He is whining that the restrictive rating, which is due to the film's "violent and disturbing images and for language," will prevent many young people from seeing it. And of course young people are the most likely to be duped by him.
I bet Moore can somehow write the MPAA into his massive Bush-run conspiracy theory, and that this somehow ties in with a gas pipeline through Afghanistan.
US News thinks that Dick Gephardt is the chosen one.
Labor leaders believe union friend Rep. Dick Gephardt has the inside track to be Sen. John Kerry 's vice president. We hear that AFL-CIO execs say it's a done deal.
Also on the shortlist, says LA Times, is the rather unknown Iowa governor Thomas J. Vilsack, and they explain why he would be such a good choice.
The NYT, however, says Kerry's fellow senators are pressing him to chose John Edwards, who has the advantage of being a southerner and the disadvantage of making the first John look very boring by comparison.
Hey, none of us can wait for any official nomination.
Supreme Court chickens out — "under God" stays in Pledge
The US Supreme Court made the ending of this year's church-state legal battle a massive anticlimax by deciding that it could not rule on the case since atheist Michael Newdow doesn't have sufficient custody for his daughter, on whose behalf he fought the case.
The ruling means that the court has not decided the fundamentals of the case, but it overturns the controversial 9th circuit ruling that banned the phrase "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance.
This only lasts until somebody else challenges the pledge, and we have the whole circus going again.
Britain ran the EP election simultanously with local elections, a few days before the rest of Europe, and pundits across the board interpreted the serious trashing of Labour as the electorate's protest against the Iraq war. Maybe so, but that is certainly not the whole story. The Tories fared no better in the EU elections, losing badly to the UK Independence Party (UKIP), one of many euroskeptical parties across Europe that are now inside the EU with the aim of bringing it down.
In Germany, Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democrats received a pounding also, despite his popular opposition to the Iraq war, and again observers tried to pin it on the chancellor's most unpopular policies, which happen to be much needed welfare reform.
However, the biggest problem was not which parties were elected, it was who didn't even turn up at the polls. In new EU member state the Czech Republic, only 29 percent participated, and the turnout was even lower in many of the other new member states.
Europeans don't feel the EU parliament means anything for them, so if they at all bother to go to the polls, they cast a protest vote against the ruling establishment. The vote is not an indictment against any individual political leaders, it is a strong protest against the whole project of a United States of Europe. The voice of the people is: "This has been going too far! We may want a free trade area, the harmonisation of some rules and laws are all fine, but we do not want overpaid, corrupt eurocrats and a distant European Parliament to rule our lives."
I hope Blair wakes up and smells the roses. He has been leading Britain to a time of presperity far beyond that of continental Europe, and the British people wonder why in the world the UK should integrate with the policies that have failed in France and Germany. Chirac and Schroeder are probably beyond redemption as they are running ahead of their own people towards a superstate, or, failing that, a Franco-German union.
Those politicians who don't listen now, will be roadkill coming the next round of elections. Forget Iraq. This is about the furure of Europe. The people have spoken, the bastards, and you better listen.
Update: George Galloway's neo-Stalinist anti-war party Respect was crushed, or more correctly ignored, by British voters and the old traitor's ambitions to go to Brussels on a fat salary failed.
Norway's state attorney Tor-Axel Busch has decided to 
