Tag: news

Anne Daigle-McDonald, a middle
school teacher in Spring Hill, Florida, was suspended for five
days, without pay, for trying to physically force a fourth grade
Jehovah’s Witness to recite the pledge of allegiance on September
11. Jehovah’s Witnesses believe it is against their faith to pledge
allegiance to temporal powers, or the objects that represent them,
and the child had never recited the pledge of allegiance in class
before. Nevertheless, on 9/11 Daigle-McDonald apparently wanted to
teach him what America means. Via
the Tampa Bay Times:

As the students recited, teacher Anne Daigle-McDonald
took the boy’s wrist and placed his hand over his heart. He
protested, pulling his arm down, and reminded her he was a
Jehovah’s Witness.

“You are an American, and you are supposed to salute the flag,”
Daigle-McDonald said, according to a statement the boy gave to a
school administrator.

The next day, Daigle-McDonald again placed the boy’s hand over his
heart.

She then addressed the class.

“In my classroom, everyone will do the pledge; no religion says
that you can’t do the pledge,” several students told a school
administrator, according to a report. “If you can’t put your hand
on your heart, then you need to move out of the country.”

The fourth-grader, of course, likely knows a lot more about his own
religion than his teacher does.

A 2005 DOJ
memo on the constitutionality of the Postal Service’s oath of
office does explain the government’s belief that a requirement to
“affirm” (but not “swear”) an oath to the Constitution does not
violate religious belief, largely because it “requires only that a
person abide by the nation’s constitutional system of government
and its laws.”

Daigle-McDonald, who sounds like an ignoramus, was probably not
referring to this, and the Jehovah’s Witnesses, in fact, were among
the first Americans to object to “the contradiction inherent in a
compulsory oath lauding individual liberty,” as Greg Beato
wrote for Reason in 2010. The Jehovah’s Witnesses
efforts against the mandatory pledge culminated in a 1940 Supreme
Court decision, Minersville v. Gobitis, that ruled schools
could force Jehovah’s Witnesses to recite the pledge. The decision,
Beato notes, was followed by tar and featherings, public beatings,
and even the castration of one Jehovah’s Witness in Nebraska. The
plainly wrong decision was overturned by the Supreme Court just
three years later.

Today, young children are largely free to decline to pledge
allegiance to the flag, except when, for example, they’re being
bullied by their teachers. Now, the fight over the pledge of
allegiance is over the inclusion of the phrase “under God,” added
in the 1950s. Ronald Bailey wrote about the recent skirmishes in
that battle, and how it squares with a statute-mandated “voluntary”
pledge in the first place, which you can
read here, and read Greg Beato’s “Face the Flag” on the history
of the pledge of allegiance, penned by a Christian Socialist who
believed in forcible wealth redistribution, here.

Anne Daigle-McDonald, a middle
school teacher in Spring Hill, Florida, was suspended for five
days, without pay, for trying to physically force a fourth grade
Jehovah’s Witness to recite the pledge of allegiance on September
11. Jehovah’s Witnesses believe it is against their faith to pledge
allegiance to temporal powers, or the objects that represent them,
and the child had never recited the pledge of allegiance in class
before. Nevertheless, on 9/11 Daigle-McDonald apparently wanted to
teach him what America means. Via
the Tampa Bay Times:

As the students recited, teacher Anne Daigle-McDonald
took the boy’s wrist and placed his hand over his heart. He
protested, pulling his arm down, and reminded her he was a
Jehovah’s Witness.

“You are an American, and you are supposed to salute the flag,”
Daigle-McDonald said, according to a statement the boy gave to a
school administrator.

The next day, Daigle-McDonald again placed the boy’s hand over his
heart.

She then addressed the class.

“In my classroom, everyone will do the pledge; no religion says
that you can’t do the pledge,” several students told a school
administrator, according to a report. “If you can’t put your hand
on your heart, then you need to move out of the country.”

The fourth-grader, of course, likely knows a lot more about his own
religion than his teacher does.

A 2005 DOJ
memo on the constitutionality of the Postal Service’s oath of
office does explain the government’s belief that a requirement to
“affirm” (but not “swear”) an oath to the Constitution does not
violate religious belief, largely because it “requires only that a
person abide by the nation’s constitutional system of government
and its laws.”

Daigle-McDonald, who sounds like an ignoramus, was probably not
referring to this, and the Jehovah’s Witnesses, in fact, were among
the first Americans to object to “the contradiction inherent in a
compulsory oath lauding individual liberty,” as Greg Beato
wrote for Reason in 2010. The Jehovah’s Witnesses
efforts against the mandatory pledge culminated in a 1940 Supreme
Court decision, Minersville v. Gobitis, that ruled schools
could force Jehovah’s Witnesses to recite the pledge. The decision,
Beato notes, was followed by tar and featherings, public beatings,
and even the castration of one Jehovah’s Witness in Nebraska. The
plainly wrong decision was overturned by the Supreme Court just
three years later.

Today, young children are largely free to decline to pledge
allegiance to the flag, except when, for example, they’re being
bullied by their teachers. Now, the fight over the pledge of
allegiance is over the inclusion of the phrase “under God,” added
in the 1950s. Ronald Bailey wrote about the recent skirmishes in
that battle, and how it squares with a statute-mandated “voluntary”
pledge in the first place, which you can
read here, and read Greg Beato’s “Face the Flag” on the history
of the pledge of allegiance, penned by a Christian Socialist who
believed in forcible wealth redistribution, here.

• The mayor of Toronto, Rob Ford,
  has finally admitted to
  smoking crack, probably in a “drunken stupor” (his actual
  words). He says he is not an addict and is refusing calls to
  resign.
• In the wake of his
  plagiarism scandal, Sen. Rand Paul acknowledged that anecdotes
  in his material had not been properly “sourced and vetted” and will
  be implementing a new process.
• In other Paul-related news, he’s working with fellow Sen. Mitch
  McConnell to try to append
  national right-to-work legislation to the Employment
  Non-Discrimination Act.
• A
  New Jersey couple is suing over the state’s ban of therapy to
  try to turn gay kids straight, saying it denies their right to seek
  treatment for their teen son.
• Officials in Eastvale, Calif., are going door-to-door checking
  
  dog licenses to
  justify their expensive contract with the county in response
  to complaints about loose dogs.
• The latest
  limp White House defense of the Obamacare disaster and the
  president’s untruthful statements about citizens being able to keep
  their insurance policies is that Barack Obama lacks the ability to
  go back in time and not say those things.

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When
the October launch of Obamacare’s online insurance portals went
disastrously awry, the Obama administration had a handy
communications strategy ready: Distract people with false hope. On
October 21, as the online federal exchange system at the heart of
President Obama’s health law entered its third week of widespread
failures, the president gave a televised speech in which he
admitted that there were “kinks in the system,” but also insisted
that the exchange problems could be worked around, because the
online insurance portals weren’t the only way to enroll in
coverage. “While the website will ultimately be the easiest way to
buy insurance through the marketplace, it isn’t the only way,”
he said. “I want to emphasize this….you can still buy the same
quality affordable insurance plans available on the marketplace the
old-fashioned way, offline—either over the phone or in person.” The
application process, Obama said, would only take about 25 minutes
for an individual. As workarounds go, it was appealing enough. But,
writes Reason Senior Editor Peter Suderman, it was also basically
useless. 

View this article.