[Oldeconomybuyer]

11:32 PDT (AP) -- The court, in the nation's first ruling of its kind, said that when President Eisenhower signed the 1954 legislation, he wrote that "millions of our school children will daily proclaim in every city and town, every village and rural schoolhouse, the dedication of our nation and our people to the Almighty."

The court noted that the U.S. Supreme Court has said students cannot hold religious invocations at graduations and cannot be compelled to recite the pledge. But the appeals panel said that classroom pledges, regardless of whether a student participates, are unconstitutional and an "unacceptable choice between participating and protesting."

"Although students cannot be forced to participate in recitation of the pledge, the school district is nonetheless conveying a message of state endorsement of a religious belief when it requires public school teachers to recite, and lead the recitation of, the current form of the pledge," the court said.

[truth_session]

"Although students cannot be forced to participate in recitation of the pledge..."

Yes but the students can be forced to go to school until age 16. The court is missing the point. It's the public schools themselves that are unconstituional, not free speech.

God help us.

[Frapster]

I guess Eisenhower was a constitutional idiot who had no clue what the founding fathers intended. Me thinks FDR is rolling over in his grave about now.