The Black Republican

The Supreme Court will hear the pledge of allegiance case sent up from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. It was painful enough to imagine SCOTUS taking on this case, knowing how it butchered the last two rulings it made in May. (The sodomy and UM admissions cases.) But it became a real migraine when I got to this:

Justice Antonin Scalia said he will not take part in the case. He did not explain why, but Newdow had challenged Scalia's impartiality based of remarks Scalia made at a 'Religious Freedom Day' observance this year. Scalia said the issue would be better decided by lawmakers than judges.

Scalia's absence sets up the possibility that the remaining eight justices could deadlock 4-4. That would affirm the 9th Circuit's ban on the religious reference, which would apply to 9.6 million schoolchildren in the nine states the court oversees: California, Oregon, Nevada, Montana, Washington, Idaho, Arizona, Hawaii and Alaska, plus Guam.

Considering the facts that the Court probably won't change course in mid-stream, and that they probably would have dispensed with it without hearing it if Scalia had been on the bench, expect them to issue another ruling that ignores the Constitution. I'm very afraid there'll be little of the document left before we're able to appoint new justices to replace the activists sitting there now.

An irony of the situation is, of course, that Scalia is apparently being guilted into excusing himself because he spoke up away from the bench, thereby proving that the Justices who interpret the Bill of Rights apparently have little chance to excercise those rights themselves - at least when you're forced to play by the rules imposed by liberal double-standards.