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Pastimes : THE SLIGHTLY MODERATED BOXING RING -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dayuhan who wrote (16267)	7/1/2002 9:21:23 AM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 21057

I think it would make sense to remove the words from the "official" version, which ought by rights to be as inclusive as possible. Then the religious could insert any statement of submission to the divine that they deemed appropriate into their personal versions, and none would have any right to interfere. I agree that this is the optimum way of handling it. The default version should be the broadest. However, the first rule of defaults is that the status quo is always the default. Here's something related. This editorial brings up an interesting and possibly perverse twist on how "opting out" might play out in practice. Drug Tests in School Monday, July 1, 2002; Page A16 SEVEN YEARS AGO, the Supreme Court upheld a school district's policy of randomly testing student athletes for drug use. Last week, the court went a step further, affirming that a school district may -- consistent with the Fourth Amendment's ban on unreasonable searches -- require drug tests of students who are involved in extracurricular activities other than sports. The issue split the court by a 5 to 4 vote, but in light of the court's prior ruling, any other holding would have made little sense. If schools may require drug testing of students, it shouldn't matter whether the students are football players or members of the band. The real question is whether the court is on solid ground in affirming any testing in the absence of individualized suspicion that a student may be using drugs. Our sense is that the court is correct to give localities leeway in addressing drug problems in schools. As Justice Clarence Thomas noted for the court, the testing program is not designed to punish students, and test results are not referred to law enforcement. Rather, the program is meant to be therapeutic. Students who flunk drug tests are encouraged to seek counseling. The only threat hanging over students' heads is that their participation in extracurricular activities may be suspended briefly after a second failed test or for the rest of the school year after a third. Whether such a program is a good idea is a subject of reasonable debate; you'd hope no district would adopt it without careful thought, a pressing need and a guarantee that it would not be applied in a discriminatory fashion. But those do seem questions best left to local officials, not the Supreme Court. The real peculiarity of the policy the court affirmed -- which was adopted by a school district in Tecumseh, Okla. -- is that it is limited to those students who participate in extracurricular activities. Justice Stephen Breyer, in a concurring opinion, implies that the policy is bolstered constitutionally because it "avoids subjecting the entire school to testing" and thus "preserves an option for a conscientious objector" -- that option being to decline the test and quit the extracurricular activity. But this out also creates a perverse incentive structure under which students who wish to avoid having their drug use detected merely drop out of band or the chess club and become harder to reach. Just as it makes no sense to distinguish between athletes and cheerleaders, the logic of the court's opinion -- that a minimal privacy invasion for the limited purpose of identifying children who need help -- raises the question of why a school should focus only on those engaged in extracurricular programs. © 2002 The Washington Post Company

To: Dayuhan who wrote (16267)	7/1/2002 10:57:00 AM
From: Poet	Respond to of 21057

Hi Steven, I said my piece about the recent Court of Appeals decision on the Pledge of Allegiance, but I think it bears repeating and rewording, in light of your statements: I think it would make sense to remove the words from the "official" version, which ought by rights to be as inclusive as possible. Then the religious could insert any statement of submission to the divine that they deemed appropriate into their personal versions, and none would have any right to interfere. A reasonable compromise, I would say, but I doubt that many of the religious sort would agree. There are many "religious" people who support the recent decision. While we believe in God and go to church, we've been uncomfortable with the "under God" in the Pledge and some of us (myself included) have gone as far as to omit it long ago from our recitation of the Pledge. Please don't make the mistake of confusing "religious" with " intellectually unsophisticated".