In case you haven't seen already, our illustrious House of Representatives passed a bill yesterday that:

...would prohibit federal courts, including the Supreme Court, from hearing cases involving the pledge and its recitation and would prevent federal courts from striking the words "under God" from the pledge.

I hardly know where to start with this stupidity. I'd heard about this bill beforehand, and visited the Americans United for Separation of Church and State site to lodge a complaint and urge my reps not to vote for it. That didn't seem to help much.

There are a couple of silver linings, though. One is that the vote wasn't unanimous (it was 247-173, so all of our reps haven't lost their fucking minds yet). The other small consolation is that the bill was mostly for show...it will almost surely not even be brought up for a vote in the Senate because of time constraints.

Still, that doesn't keep it from being an appalling bit of partisan showmanship, a horrible precedent, and last but not least, a stupid waste of time.

Rep. Todd Akin, R-Mo, jagoff extraordinaire and author of the bill, said the high court is likely to rule differently if it considers the substance of the case.

Whoa! Holy crap! We wouldn't want the Supreme Court actually considering the substance of the case and ruling according to the law, would we? That way lies damnation!

He said this is likely to happen "if we allow activist judges to start creating law and say that it is wrong to somehow allow schoolchildren to say 'under God' in the pledge."

How many times much I preach my gospel? Nothing, I repeat nothing, prevents any child in any school in this country from saying the pledge, with or without the phrase "under god" in it. And the 9th Circuit Court's ruling wouldn't have prevented that either. It would have prevented teachers from leading children in the pledge with that phrase.

Morons.