One Nation. Whose G-d?

According to the Constitution on which this nation is based, specifically, the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." So, no laws respecting an establishment of religion, eh?

According to the Supreme Court, that law needs to be upheld. Public schools, which are entities of the government, are not allowed to have prayer. Back since 1962, in Engel v. Vitale, the Court decided (6 to 1) that any prayer, even nondenominational, even voluntary, is unconstitutional; it pressures kids into believing that the government or school supports religion. And that's simply not fair to families which do not want schools (which their children must attend by law) teaching their children that any religion, or even religion itself, is right, true, or valid. That's for the parents to decide.

And so, according to our laws and court rulings, no religion from government. Right?

A (Fur)Long Shot

We need to switch to the metric system.

The entire rest of the world sells gasoline by the liter, plywood by the meter, and fresh produce by the kilogram. It just doesn't make sense for the United States to stubbornly insist on gallons, feet, and pounds in the modern world of global communication and international business.

Besides, gallons sound too much like Harry Potter's Galleons, feet too much like a smelly part of the human body, and pounds too much like that currency that the British invented before Rowling brought about the Galleon. Just kidding, I mean before the euro. Oh wait, the UK hasn't really adopted the euro, now have they? Well, in that case, perhaps there is no real pressure for the US to standardize.

Abort, Retry, Fail?

It's a common political image among abortion-issue interest groups:

A woman gets up on stage, picks up a microphone, and, through tears, explains how she almost was never born. She explains that her mother was considering an abortion. There were medical complications with the baby, even complications with the mother. Both lives were in danger, and her mother has serious reasons to consider terminating the child's life. The woman reiterates that she was nearly never born.

Sounds like your typical pro-life speech. But here's the kicker: the mother had the abortion. That was the child before the woman speaking. Turns out, that woman is only alive because of abortion. She would not exist had her mother been forced to have the previous child, in part because, as it later turns out, her mother would not have survived.

I wonder if that's something pro-lifers ever consider; the people who exist because of abortion.

Welcome to the 21st Century

What follows is a description of one of the most ancient rituals in human culture, in which I was required, by sacred obligation, to take part.

(Begin Narrative)

Frantically, I searched through my home for the proper tools to conduct the ceremony before time ran out. Pulling a long, thin box off of a shelf, I smiled, having found what I was looking for.

I gently lifted a thin parchment from my table, still wet with the dark ink which comprised the ancient scripture. I carefully folded my sacred document into three sections of about-equal size and slipped it into a dusty sleeve from the box on my shelf. Whispering the incantations, I sealed the artifact with my very own saliva: a tribute to the adhesive spirits. Lifting my magical line-drawer once more, I etched mystic letters and numbers into the package, drawing on secret codes and obscure abbreviations to finish the deed.