DanKohn.com

To recite the pledge of allegiance, said a federal circuit court today, “is to swear allegiance to the values for which the flag stands: unity, indivisibility, liberty, justice, and — since 1954 — monotheism.” Needless to say, I wholeheartedly support this position. The next step is to get “In God We Trust” off of money. The court’s opinion: “A profession that we are a nation ‘under God’ is identical, for Establishment Clause purposes, to a profession that we are a nation ‘under Jesus,’ a nation ‘under Vishnu,’ a nation ‘under Zeus,’ or a nation ‘under no god,’ because none of these professions can be neutral with respect to religion.”

Great NYT overview by Jennifer Lee on the state of the spam problem today: ISPs say that “50 percent of incoming e-mail traffic is spam.”

Anne Mitchell (an actual lawyer) explained that nolo contendere means “I didn’t do it, and I’ll never do it again”.

Even better is the scene in Minority Report where a techno-wonk, encountering a “pre-cog” who can see the future, drops to his knees and says, “I’m sorry for what I’m going to do, and I swear I didn’t do any of it.”