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When thinking about God in the Pledge of Allegiance, ever wonder how other countries, especially traditionally religious ones with a recent chance to redo their constitutions, deal with the question? Here’s a section from the preamble of Poland’s constitution:

We, the Polish Nation - all citizens of the Republic, Both those who believe in God as the source of truth, justice, good and beauty, As well as those not sharing such faith but respecting those universal values as arising from other sources….

Desiring to guarantee the rights of the citizens for all time, and to ensure diligence and efficiency in the work of public bodies, Recognizing our responsibility before God or our own consciences, Hereby establish this Constitution of the Republic of Poland…

Not bad. Note that the US Constitution mentions religion twice, once when prohibiting religious tests for any office (Article VI) and the first part of the First Amendment (”Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”), even before mentioning the freedoms of speech, press, and assembly. Of course, I have every expectation that the Supreme Court will overrule the 9th circuit, but that doesn’t mean it’s correct, just that it’s the law.

Christopher Caldwell has an NY Press column on how bad Bush’s profits from Harkin Energy makes the President look. It includes this gem, which is too odd to comment on:

An editorial on Harken in last week’s Wall Street Journal noted “interesting Saudi connections on the finance side.” One of Bush’s early investors in Arbusto was James Bath, agent of Salem bin Laden (Osama’s half-brother) in the United States.

WSJ reports:

Is Tehran’s lunatic theocracy on the verge of collapse? Columnist David Warren thinks so. “Iran has come to the boil,” he writes. “Against the background of huge public demonstrations, the reformist party that controls the largest block of seats in the elected but largely powerless Iranian Parliament [Wednesday] threatened to walk out, if the ayatollahs continued to stall measures for social and political change.”

Bush has even given an impressive (and completely unreported) speech on the subject:

The people of Iran want the same freedoms, human rights, and opportunities as people around the world. Their government should listen to their hopes.

In the last two Iranian presidential elections and in nearly a dozen parliamentary and local elections, the vast majority of the Iranian people voted for political and economic reform. Yet their voices are not being listened to by the unelected people who are the real rulers of Iran. Uncompromising, destructive policies have persisted, and far too little has changed in the daily lives of the Iranian people. . . .

There is a long history of friendship between the American people and the people of Iran. As Iran’s people move towards a future defined by greater freedom, greater tolerance, they will have no better friend than the United States of America.

I think you’ll see the democratization of Iran before that of Cuba, but I expect both to be soon.

Hendrik Hertzberg facetiously suggests in the New Yorker that the clearest way to have the Pledge of Allegiance reflect our national views on religious is that: After “under God,” insert “and we don’t mean Allah.”

If I were SEC Chairman Harvey Pitt, I would not be happy to wake up this morning hearing that John McCain had called for my resignation. Although I support this fully, I can’t see McCain’s argument that executives should only be allowed to sell stock 90 days after they quit their job. Basic financial prudence and portfolio theory would dictate that otherwise completely effective execs would quit rather than keep all of their eggs in one basket.

Also, I cannot understand the hullabaloo about expensing stock options. Like everyone else, I like Warren Buffett’s quote:

If options aren’t a form of compensation, what are they? If compensation isn’t an expense, what is it? And, if expenses shouldn’t go into the calculation of earnings, where in the world should they go?

The answer is that there is only one metric that ultimately matters to shareholders, and that’s earnings per share (EPS). The emphasis is on per share. Stock options increase the total number of shares outstanding and therefore reduce the fully diluted EPS. Now, I would certainly support regulations requiring that EPS always refer to fully diluted EPS, and that undiluted EPS be deprecated for the much less useful number that it is. Note that this is just what Bush suggested in an interview with the WSJ. However, I can’t see the argument that this approach “only accounts for the increase in shares outstanding, not the cost to the company of the stock options.” After all, the only cost to the company is the increase in shares outstanding. The trick is for investors to use the metric — fully diluted EPS — that takes this cost into account.

Great closing quote by McCain: “To love the free market is to loathe the scandalous behavior of those who have betrayed the values of openness that lie at the heart of a healthy and prosperous capitalist system.”

Dahlia Lithwick writes in Slate on the Supreme Court’s torturous justification of high-school urine tests in Board of Education of Pottawatomie County v. Earls

Thomas finally eviscerates the public safety requirement that once characterized all the “special needs” exceptions. Railroad workers and customs officers endangered the public with drug use. Students, Thomas says, endanger themselves. And that is enough for the court to approve the program. It’s enough to force every single American to also submit to suspicionless drug-testing, but Thomas neglects to mention this.

Having eviscerated the 4th ammendment, the Supreme Court will next get its shot at Habeas Corpus when the cases of Yaser Esam Hamdi and Jose Padilla eventually reach them (although it wouldn’t surprise me if they failed to grant cert).

Historian David McCollough has an NYT Op-Ed on the (dead white) men who authored the Declaration of Independence 226 years ago today.

The miracle was that imperfect mortals could so rise to the occasion, that such noble ideals and brilliant political leadership came to the fore as they did, that so few could, in the end, accomplish so much for all humankind….

We think we live in a dangerous, uncertain time, and we do. But theirs was worse, and they had no sure way of knowing how things would turn out, any more than we do. Their courage and determination, their commitment to what they called the Cause of America, were almost beyond our imagining. To sign your name to the Declaration of Independence was to declare yourself a traitor to the British Crown. If caught by enemy forces, you would almost certainly be hanged.

And consider that in that same first week of July 1776, the British fleet appeared in New York Harbor and began landing on Staten Island the largest force ever sent to crush a rebellion, fully 32,000 troops by the time they were all ashore. This was more than the entire population of Philadelphia, the largest city in America. When the signers of the Declaration pledged “our lives, our fortunes, our sacred honor,” that was no mere rhetorical flourish.

It is impossible to express the gratitude we owe to those few brave men.

Two more useful pieces on the pledge of allegiance: Why we’re not one nation “under God” in Slate and Eugene Volokh’s blog entry.

There’s a special resonance to Michael Kinsley’s arguments questioning the American with Disability Act, given that Kinsley has Parkinson’s, and that Si Newhouse probably rescinded the just-offered editorship of the New Yorker when he found out. This was almost certainly a violation of the ADA. The article, subtitled “Must we pay to hear bad pianists?”, also brings to mind the brilliant 1995 Economist article on heightism, which starts out with a multitude of facts about how much worse off short people are and then generalizes into a deep insight on bias and affirmative action:

Is there, then, no good news for short men? No: there is none. And if, having read this far, you do not believe that height discrimination is serious, you are no doubt a tall person in the late stages of denial. Or, perhaps, you cringe at the thought of yet another victim group lining up to demand redress. Surely the notion of SHRIMPs (Severely Height-Restricted Individuals of the Male Persuasion) as an oppressed social group is silly, and the idea of special protections or compensatory benefits for short men preposterous? Actually, no–unless all such group benefits are equally dubious.

In general, the kinds of discrimination worth worrying about should have two characteristics. First, bias must be pervasive and systematic. Random discrimination is mere diversity of preference, and comes out in the wash. But if a large majority of employers prefers whites, for instance, then non-whites’ options in life are sharply limited. And second, bias must be irrational: unrelated to the task at hand. If university mathematics faculties discriminate against the stupid, that may not seem fair (not everyone can master set theory); but it is sensible.

In politically correct terms, people who share an unusual characteristic that triggers pervasive and irrational aversion have a strong claim to be viewed as a vulnerable minority group. Is the discrimination against SHRIMPs, then, pervasive? Plainly so. Is it irrational? Except in a few rare cases in which height might affect job performance, obviously. Is it hurtful? Just ask any of the parents who clamor to put their little boys on growth hormones. Will it disappear of its own accord, as people become more enlightened? Be serious. Try to imagine that a century hence, when genetic engineering allows designer children, parents will queue up for shorter boys.

If affirmative action can’t be rationally applied across the continuum of attributes that might be discriminated against, the whole moral basis for using it to redress discrimination comes into question.

The National Archives presents a superb essay on Magna Carta and Its American Legacy:

Just as Magna Carta stood as a bulwark against tyranny in England, the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights today serve similar roles, protecting the individual freedoms of all Americans against arbitrary and capricious rule.

I wish John Ashcroft would read this. Also, FindLaw features an annotated Constitution, showing the major cases that defined each article and amendment. And, the National Archives has essays on the creation of the Constitution and the stylistic artistry of the Declaration of Independence.