The Pledge of Allegiance - Unconstitutional?

I got this email today from the American Family Association:

A federal district court in San Francisco has ruled that reciting the Pledge of
Allegiance in public schools is unconstitutional.

U.S. District
Judge
Lawrence Karlton ruled that the pledge's reference to one nation
"under God"
violates school children's right to be "free from a coercive
requirement to
affirm God." Karlton said he was bound by 2002 precedent of
the Ninth U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals.

Your Senators could have
stopped this nonsense
last year but they failed to act. In 2004, the House
of Representatives passed a
bill that would have prohibited liberal judges
from ruling on issues involving
the pledge, but failed because the bill died
in U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee.

S. 1046 The Pledge Protection Act of
2005 has been introduced in the
U.S. Senate. Let's not let this happen
again! S.1046 - The Pledge Protection Act
of 2005 - reads as follows:
'No court created by Act of Congress shall have
any jurisdiction, and
the Supreme Court shall have no appellate jurisdiction, to
hear or decide
any question pertaining to the interpretation of, or the validity
under the
Constitution of, the Pledge of Allegiance, as defined in section 4 of
title
4, or its recitation.'

By exercising the authority of Congress to
regulate the jurisdiction of federal courts, the Pledge Protection Act will
do
more than express an affirmation by Congress that the Pledge is
constitutional.
It will rein in a renegade judiciary that has confused the
freedom for religion
with freedom from religion. Email Your Senators Now! If
your Senator is already
a co-sponsor, be sure to thank him or her for
supporting this vital legislation.

If not, urge your Senator to sign on
as a sponsor S.1046 - The Pledge
Protection Act of 2005.

Click Here To Email Your Senators Now!

Interesting article is it not? Having a great interest in this topic, I took a bit of time to look into this issue.

1. An acclaimed atheist Michael Newdow is coming before the Supreme Court to attempt to take "under God" out of the pledge of Allegiance.

Note: Mr. Newdow doesn't even have custody of this daughter, his wife does and his wife wants her daughter to recite the pledge.

2. Mr. Newdow is under the false impression that his daughter hearing the pledge forces "God" on her. Please view this FAQ from one of Oklahoma's representatives, Congressman Istook.

Question:

So I'm a school student, and a fellow student wants to say a
prayer over
the intercom and I don't want to hear it. Or, I'm a parent and I
don't
want my children to hear it.
Are my children protected? Where do they
go? Do they have to leave the room? Don't they have the same rights as
those
saying the prayer in that room?

Answer:
The parent is making two incorrect
assumptions in this scenario. The first is an underlying assumption that
hearing
a prayer, or expression from one religion, is inherently harmful,
much less
unconstitutional. The second error is that the amendment
would somehow DICTATE prayer. This amendment does not mandate prayer. It
expressly prohibits such a mandate. But the Constitution never guaranteed to
protect us from hearing
something with which we disagree. Students (and
others) who engage in religious
expression should no longer be singled out
for censorship. Our religious rights
should not be lost when we set foot on
public property.
Everyone remains under the Equal Protection clause of the
Constitution. This amendment does not removed that, nor the ban on establishing
an official religion. We will always support and keep those protections.(emphasis mine)

3. Someone's morality will be inforced. I feel this cannot be stressed enough. I heard just the other day that Planned Parenthood or some such organisation was attenpting through a court case to force a Christian hospitel to conduct abortions. This is a prime example, someones morality will be inforced. If you are driving down the road at 100 miles per hour and the policeman stops you, he is inforcing his beliefs(rules made by the government) on you. If you take "under God" out of the Pledge of Allegence you are suppressing religion. I have heard argument after argument saying just make education nuetral, don't put anything in there controlversel, just state the facts. Well, I want to see public school curreculem state the facts about our founders and the greatest men of our nation. I want public schools to return Washingtons Farewell Address to the textbooks.(Where it once stood quite well, I might add) I would like schoolchildren to read this quote from that great speech:

"Of all the dispositions and habits, which lead to political prosperity, Religion and Morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of Men and Citizens. The mere Politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connexions with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked, Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths, which are the instruments of investigation in Courts of Justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition, that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect, that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle."

I think if America's education was reformed we would laugh these crazy cases out of court. Even Justice Sandra Day O'Conner recconised this fact:'

''It is unsurprising that a nation founded by religious refugees and dedicated to religious freedom should find references to divinity in its symbols, songs, mottoes and oaths. Eradicating such references would sever ties to a history that sustains this Nation even today.''

Amen, Mrs. O'Conner. Amen.