Posted on 01/05/2005 5:24:08 AM PST by Ellesu
Dr. Michael Newdow, the California atheist who sued to get "under God" removed from the Pledge of Allegiance, says he has refiled a suit regarding the pledge and filed an additional suit to try to prevent members of the clergy from praying at President Bush's inauguration.
Newdow refiled the pledge suit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California on Monday (Jan. 3), he told Religion News Service. A court staffer said legal documents had been received but had not been officially recorded pending additional paperwork from Newdow. In the new case, Newdow has been joined in the suit by three families who include atheists and claim they are offended "to have their government and its agents advocating for a religious view they each specifically decry."
Defendants in the case include the Congress, California, the United States and several school districts.
The U.S. Supreme Court determined last June that Newdow did not have standing to bring the legal challenge.
Two weeks before refiling the pledge suit, Newdow filed suit in a Washington district court to try to halt designated clergy from uttering prayers at Bush's Jan. 20 inauguration.
Newdow said in the Dec. 21 filing that prayers such as those offered at the 2001 inauguration by the Rev. Franklin Graham and Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell made him feel like a "second-class citizen."
"He -- like all Americans -- has a right to view his government in action without being forced to confront governmental endorsement of religious dogma with which he disagrees," Newdow said in the complaint, referring to himself.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the case. A court staffer confirmed that a hearing has been scheduled for Jan. 14 at the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
Michael Newdow is nothing if not persistent. Religion seems to be a bee up his atheist bonnet.
Someone needs to give this cheesedick a beating....
for the love of God!
Maybe the President should invite him and leave him in the room alone with Mr. Graham, that could prove interesting.
Where is this guy getting the monies for all these suits that he's been carrying... its' expensive, all these lawsuits.
I understand he is a lawyer.. but who is funding this guy?
In his honor, but not "N***W's Law, please!
The courts have already determined he had no legal standing to file suit. A better question would be why he isn't being heavily fined for wasting the court's time with a frivolous lawsuit.
There is something truly sick about people who fear something inherently good (religion), so much that they would deny the other 99.999% of the population the freedom to express that goodness in public.
Hey if it bothers them so much, they can click off the TV. Besides they probably voted against Bush.
can't he go be a human shield somewhere?
The interesting thing about judgement day, is that athiests will face it right along with the rest of us.
Hey, he can drag his butt down to the shooting range I work p/t at and volunteer to be a bullet stop.
I have access to a bulldozer!
OR, why he (or his lawyers) are not sanctioned (towards a disbarment) for filing frivolous lawsuits.
When an atheist is elected president, he can do whatever he likes at his (anti)swearing-in...meanwhile, so can President Bush.
Though not a particularly religious man, I believe there are people, on God's green earth, that should never be heard from , or about.
Newdow is but one.
Here's a happy solution.
Why don't they just say that every soundless gap, every moment of contentless silence, where nobody says anything, is an atheist moment, preaching the atheist faith?
But that wouldn't work. Atheists have a god, and it's themselves. Nothing that doesn't put the atheist in his imagined place would satisfy him.
And even that wouldn't.
Dan
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