I Love Mass

[TheSpecialist]

Originally Posted by scottw

kinda like our own little San Francisco sometimes...

Mass. School Requires Permission Slips to Recite Pledge of Allegiance
Posted on December 22, 2010

A public school in Brookline, Massachusetts is bringing back the Pledge of Allegiance. Except now, in a move that suggests the recitation and its words are controversial, the school is requiring parents to sign a permission slip so their kids can participate.

“It’s uncomfortable. The pledge is a promise, and I’ve always taught my kids to think very carefully before making any promise. It’s not a decision I want to make for them,” parent Judi Puritz Cook, who has two sons at Devotion School, told the Brookline Tab.

According to a letter sent to parents last week by Principal Gerardo Martinez, the school is implementing the Pledge in order to comply with state law.

“In order to meet the state legal mandate for public schools and to support our learning expectations, I will, once a week, as part of my morning announcements, recite the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag,” he wrote in the letter. “Under our Constitution, neither teachers nor students can be mandated to participate in this exercise.”

“I urge you to have a conversation as a family to help your children understand why I will be reciting the Pledge of Allegiance and to support them in feeling comfortable and confident in the decision on whether or not to participate,” Martinez added.

Brookline public school issues permission slips for students to say Pledge of Allegiance - Brookline, Massachusetts - Brookline TAB

Let's see a promise to always support the country that made it a right for you to go to school and get an education, one that supports the unemployed, aged, and sick. Move to another country then see how you like it.

[likwid]

"If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein."

— Justice Robert Jackson in West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette (1943)

[scottw]

Originally Posted by likwid

"If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein."

— Justice Robert Jackson in West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette (1943)

you forgot some....


"The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the Courts. One's right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections."

Justice Jackson's most lasting influence is his delineation of the scope of presidential power....wonder what he would think of OBAMACARE?