Friday, May 10, 2013

Who's Sorry Now

Linda Greenhouse wrote Who's Sorry Now "So now it turns out that the retired justice, just past her 83rd birthday, does have second thoughts about Bush v. Gore and, more to the point, is willing to express them. She told the editorial board of The Chicago Tribune last week that she thinks the court made a mistake by intervening in the disputed Florida election in the first place. ‘Maybe the court should have said, ‘We’re not going to take it, goodbye,’ ’ she said, as quoted by The Tribune. While Florida’s election officials had ‘kind of messed it up,’ she said, ‘probably the Supreme Court added to the problem at the end of the day.’"

She gives a nice little history of other justices who've admitted changing their mind on a decision. I didn't know about Minersville School District v. Gobitis.

"The question was whether school children with religious objections to pledging allegiance to the flag could be required to do so, on pain of expulsion from school. Jehovah’s Witnesses, for whom saluting the flag is unacceptable, challenged the requirement as a violation of the First Amendment right to free exercise of religion."

In 1940, the Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that kids could be expelled for not pledging allegiance. "The reaction by a country caught up in wartime patriotic fervor appalled the justices. Taking the Supreme Court’s decision as proof that Jehovah’s Witnesses were not good citizens, mobs attacked and burned the Witnesses’ places of worship. Members of the faith were fired from their jobs and some 2,000 Jehovah’s Witness children were expelled from school. When another case reached the court after only three years, three justices who had been in the earlier majority changed their votes."

1 comment:

Danny Haszard said...

Jehovah's Witnesses and the flag salute.
I was born into the Jehovah's Witnesses in 1957.I was the good little JW boy who got beaten up in the school yard for not saluting the flag and remaining seated for the national anthem as demanded by my defiant Jehovah's Witnesses leaders.
This was the 'better dead than red' era of the 1960’s, and a kid not doing the act stood out big.

I suffered much,only to learn later in life that the Watchtower Jehovah's Witnesses religion is false and as an adult I turned to another faith.,
My JW leaders *forced* *compelled* me to be 'different',I wasn't given any option.If I wavered I would be severely punished by my parents and struck down by God at Armageddon.
Kids suffer because of made-up rules by Jehovah's Witnesses leaders,senile old holy men sequestered in their insulated ivory tower.

My point is:Jehovah's Witnesses claim 'neutrality' this is false as they DO try to force their convictions on others.

Get the picture? Watchtower JW lawyers make supreme court victories and its little kids that take the heat.
--Danny Haszard Bangor Maine