The Latest from The House



The Federal House has just voted to take the Pledge of Allegiance outside the jurisdiction of SCOTUS and, as I write this, is also moving to declare the San Diego cross a federal war memorial -- thus protecting it from removal.

How far either measure will get in the Senate no-one knows but the San Diego cross should be a shoo-in.

Article 3 of the Constitution vests in Congress the right to confer judicial powers on the courts so excising the Pledge from the jurisdiction of SCOTUS would seem legally sound but whether it is wise is another matter. SCOTUS knocked some of the worst of FDR's socialist measures on the head so limiting its jurisdiction might be a bad precedent for the future. My guess is that the Senate will reject the measure.

Details here




"A Nice-Looking Little Girl"

Apparently you can no longer call a woman that -- or so Maryland comptroller William Donald Schaefer found out. He is 84 so probably sees most women as little girls but even that does not excuse him apparently. He called a female reporter that and feminists have been up in arms about it:

"Duchy Trachtenberg, co-president of the Maryland chapter of the National Organization of Women, said her group will send a letter later this week asking Schaefer to resign his post before the election."

Source

I'm guessing that few people would be tempted to call the Maryland NOW women "nice looking".

There are some amusing stories about Schaefer on Wikipedia. He seems to have a habit of mentioning the unmentionable.





The Bible is Hate Speech

And who says so? Muslims, Homosexuals? Atheists? Humanists? No. It was the recent General Convention of the Episcopal Church.

Their reaction to a resolution affirming Jesus Christ as "the only name by which any person may be saved" (a reference to John 14:6) was "This type of language was used in 1920s and 1930s to alienate the type of people who were executed. It was called the Holocaust."

So the claims of Jesus as recorded in the New Testament are akin to the antisemitic rants of Hitler.

If I were a Christian, I think I would see the Episcopalians as the Devil's mockery of Christianity.

An attempted justification for the actions of the convention can be found here. Apparently, they did not want to "offend" anyone. The fact that they offended all Bible-believing Christians doesn't count, of course.