Court upholds attack on Pledge. (Insider Report).

In a March 1st decision, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco refused to rehear the ruling by two of its judges that public school recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance is unconstitutional. The case was brought by Sacramento atheist Michael Newdow, who claimed that his eight-year-old daughter was harmed by hearing the words "under God" in the pledge. The court's refusal to reconsider the case has set the stage for a battle in the U.S. Supreme Court.

Aside from the suit's obvious lack of merit and the 9th Circuit's notoriety as the most radical federal court in the land, available evidence indicates that Mr. Newdow's case was a blatant fraud from the start. The court granted him standing to bring the suit in the first place based on the claim that the pledge was harming his daughter psychologically. However, the girl's mother, Sandra Banning, asserts that her daughter is a Christian, attends church regularly, was not harmed by the pledge, and disagreed with her father's lawsuit. Mrs. Banning, who is divorced from Mr. Newdow, has sole custody of their daughter. Judge Alfred T. Goodwin, joined by Judge Stephen Reinhardt, wrote the original 2-1 decision favoring Mr. Newdow. Reinhardt, notorious for his revolutionary rulings on many issues, is the husband of Ramona Ripston, longtime militant head of the ACLU of southern California. Fortunately, Reinhardt's decisions are frequently overturned on appeal.