In alt.atheism article <h5si60l0fu8bnmhn14b4c7lpa5deh83aen@4ax.com> wrote:
: Steven Litvintchouk <sdlitvin@earthlinkNOSPAM.net> wrote:
: >:|If you take the witness stand in a court of law, you are asked to swear
: >:|that you are about to tell "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but
: >:|the truth, so help you God."
Lately, in CA, this is all TV, not a real court. God is left out.
: Generally speaking in this day and age they say it for you, you don't say
: it. In some courts they don't even approach you, you stand their with your
: right arm up.
: You can say "I do" to the swearing thing which would be a acceptance of
: what they said including the "So help me God." On the other hand you can
: answer them by saying "I affirm," which states you will tell the truth but
: is not swearing nor is it agreeing to any religious aspect as swearing is.
In front of an administrative law judge, I did ask him to reword it
without god. He asked simply if I affirm to tell the truth. Indeed, I
did.
In any criminal proceeding where I was kept into voir dire, and the oath
was individual (I have seen it both ways, group and individual), the oath
never included 'so help you god.' In one civil matter, me and the
landlord, the oath did not involve those words either.
YMMV.
Not having been inaugurated president of the US, I can't report on facts,
but rest assured, I would not add to the Constitutional oath. It is fine
as written.
(c) 2004. Copyright, John M. Price, PhD. All Rights Reserved.
Contents may not be republished in any form or medium without prior
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--
John M. Price, PhD
Life: Chemistry, but with feeling! | PGP Key on request or FTP!
Email responses to my Usenet articles will be posted at my discretion.
Comoderator: sci.psychology.psychotherapy.moderated Atheist# 683
MAFIA, n:
[Acronym for Mechanized Applications in Forced Insurance
Accounting.] An extensive network with many on-line and offshore
subsystems running under OS, DOS, and IOS. MAFIA documentation is
rather scanty, and the MAFIA sales office exhibits that testy
reluctance to bona fide inquiries which is the hallmark of so many DP
operations. From the little that has seeped out, it would appear that
MAFIA operates under a non-standard protocol, OMERTA, a tight-lipped
variant of SNA, in which extended handshakes also perform complex
security functions. The known timesharing aspects of MAFIA point to a
more than usually autocratic operating system. Screen prompts carry an
imperative, nonrefusable weighting (most menus offer simple YES/YES
options, defaulting to YES) that precludes indifference or delay.
Uniquely, all editing under MAFIA is performed centrally, using a
powerful rubout feature capable of erasing files, filors, filees, and
entire nodal aggravations.
- Stan Kelly-Bootle, "The Devil's DP Dictionary"
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