Ken Smith <forget@it.com> wrote:

:|krp wrote:
:|> "Ken Smith" <forget@it.com> wrote in message news:41F13F30.9070100@it.com...
:|>
:|>
:|>> Don't get us wrong, Panger -- a lot of judicial decisions are result
:|>>oriented. It's not right and it's not kosher, but it is the way it is.
:|>>But is it the way it should be? That's the question Newdow is raising,
:|>>even though he knows as well as we do that his lawsuits didn't have *a
:|>>prayer* of ever succeeding.
:|>
:|> Newdow's agenda is quite simple. Mike Newdow went through an extremely
:|> acrimonious divorce, his ex wife is a "CHRISTIAN" and Newdow is putting the
:|> entire nation into the melodrama of the fight with his ex wife. It's his way
:|> to "get back at the *****!" All the rest of this is window dressing on his
:|> personal animus at her and Christianity for all the wrong the REVEREND
:|> DOCTOR LAWYER Mike Newdow feels he has personally suffered.
:|
:| Huh? I thought they never married -- which was why Newdow didn't
:|have standing.

Newdow "didn't" have standing because that was the excuse the USSC invented
so they could avoid ruling on the actual issue

Don't forget, 3 USSC justices said he did have standing and two Courts of
appeals judges said he had standing two separate times. The entire 9th
Circuit felt the standing issue was ok when they refused to take the case
Plus we have this law professor who agrees and explains why she agrees.

(The USSC almost never gets involved in state issues of this type, it just
isn't done:

* The Supreme Court Decision on the Pledge of Allegiance Case: Why It
Raises Federalism Issues
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/hamilton/20040617.html

and

http://www.metnews.com/articles/2004/newd061504.htm
‘Novel’ Principle

Rehnquist accused the majority of “erect[ing] a novel prudential standing
principle in order to avoid reaching the merits of the constitutional
claim.” Stevens, he said, improperly relied on a case—Ankenbrandt v.
Richards, 504 U. S. 689 (1992)—in which the high court limited the
circumstances under which federal judges should abstain from interfering in
disputes involving domestic relations, an area traditionally reserved to
the states.

“The domestic relations exception is not a prudential limitation on our
federal jurisdiction,” Rehnquist wrote. “It is a limiting construction of
the statute defining federal diversity jurisdiction...which ‘divests the
federal courts of power to issue divorce, alimony, and child custody
decrees,’....This case does not involve diversity jurisdiction, and
respondent does not ask this Court to issue a divorce, alimony, or child
custody decree. Instead it involves a substantial federal question about
the constitutionality of the School District’s conducting the pledge
ceremony, which is the source of our jurisdiction. Therefore, the domestic
relations exception to diversity jurisdiction forms no basis for denying
standing to respondent.”

Rehnquist and O’Connor both also argued the high court should have deferred
to the Ninth Circuit’s determination that Newdow had standing, since it was
based at least in part on that court’s reading of California law. Stevens’
majority opinion conceded, Rehnquist pointed out, that the Supreme Court
has a “settled and firm policy of deferring to regional courts of appeals
in matters that involve the construction of state law.”

The court’s majority, Rehnquist, O’Connor and Thomas appeared to say, used
the issue of Newdow’s legal standing as a fig leaf to avoid the harder
constitutional issue. They made it clear that they would have upheld the
religious reference.

The phrase “one nation under God” is more about ceremony and history than
about religion, Rehnquist wrote. He likened the phrase to the motto “In God
We Trust” on U.S. currency, and to the call that opens each session of the
high court itself: “God save this honorable court.”

The phrase “one nation under God” is more about ceremony and history than
about religion, Rehnquist wrote. He likened the phrase to the motto “In God
We Trust” on U.S. currency

The phrase “one nation under God” is more about ceremony and history than
about religion, Rehnquist wrote. He likened the phrase to the motto “In God
We Trust” on U.S. currency, and to the call that opens each session of the
high court itself: “God save this honorable court.”