[...] What kid can stand up to that kind of pressure? Certainly, no member of Congress could.

Yep, that’s what we vote for these days. Spineless legislators beholden to polls and peer pressure instead of courage and conviction. Hmm, I wonder what Al Gore thinks about this?

Those of us who are more skeptical than religious are constantly being told how godless this country has become.

Or at least, people like Richard imagine that they are constantly being told how godless this country has become. It makes it much easier to make a bold stand when there really isn’t anybody standing against you.

Yet, the California decision was unanimously denounced (99-0 in the Senate) in the most vituperative terms.

Get ready for the vilest vituperative vitriol imaginable, including such horribly harsh words as “ridiculous,” “nuts,” and “stupid.”

George Bush called it "ridiculous," Tom Daschle, truly the majority leader (the minority be damned), called it "nuts" and Robert Byrd, usually a man of comical grandiloquence, turned uncharacteristically terse. He said the judges were "stupid."

Senator Robert Byrd was perhaps comically grandiloquent when Richard was 12 or 13, but in all my memory of him, which goes back about 25 years, he has been a doddering old time pol who believes he is best serving the country who serves himself.

America is a famously religious nation. That is a fact. Religion really needs no help from the government -- and that is a fact also.

Careful Richard, after all, facts are sacred.

Those who need the government's protection are kids, like the one in California, who choose to assert their Americanism in a secular but no less ardent way.

My experience as a parent has led me to conclude that 8 year-olds make a lot of assertions, but ardently expressing their Americanism in a secular way seems to be a bit of a stretch. [...]