Refusing to Pledge: an Incredibly Brief, Largely Copy-and-Pasted Legal History

In 2006, in the Florida case Frazier v. Alexandre, 434 F.Supp.2d 1350 (S.D. Fla. May 31, 2006), a federal district court in Florida ruled that a 1942 state law requiring students to stand and recite the Pledge of Allegiance violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution. As a result of that decision, a Florida school district was ordered to pay $32,500 to a student who chose not to say the pledge and was ridiculed and called "unpatriotic" by a teacher.

West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943), is a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States that held that the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution protected students from being forced to salute the American flag and say the Pledge of Allegiance in school.

In West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 1943, 319 U.S. 624, 63 S.Ct. 1178, 87 L.Ed. 1628, the Supreme Court, overruling Minersville School District v. Gobitis, 1940, 310 U.S. 586, 60 S.Ct. 1010, 84 L.Ed. 1375, held that a West Virginia State Board of Education resolution which required children, as a prerequisite to their continued attendance at public school, to salute the flag and recite the pledge, wasunconstitutional as applied to children of Jehovah's Witnesses since it denied them freedom of speech and freedom of worship. In rejecting the resolution the court held that the state could not "prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion," nor can the state "force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein." The majority (it was a 6-3 vote) found that the freedom asserted to refuse to participate in the flag salute did not interfere with or deny the rights of others to participate.

The standards established in Barnette have been expanded and clarified by subsequent lower court rulings. The Maryland Supreme Court invalidated a requirement that students objecting to the flag salute stand while the rest of the class recited the Pledge of Allegiance. See State v. Lundquist, 278 A. 2d 263 (1971). In 1973, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ordered a school to allow a student to remain quietly seated during the flag salute. See Goetz v. Ansell, 477 F.2d 636 (2d. Cir. 1973).

In 2002, Section 171.021, RSMo (Missouri Revised Statutes) was amended to state that "every school in this state which is supported in whole or in part by public moneys shall ensure that the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America is recited in at least one scheduled class of every pupil enrolled in that school no less often than once per week. No student shall be required to recite the Pledge of Allegiance."

I want to print these out on a single sheet of paper and carry them with me so that next time my theater teacher- or anyone else, for that bloody matter- tells me I have to stand during the Pledge I can refuse, then hand her the paper.

None of these cases are in a court in my state, but I think the general message is pretty clear.

I Wish I Was a Yippie

A while back, Xeno lent me Abbie Hoffman's book Soon to be a Major Motion Picture with the condition that after I read it, I would give it to our school's library. I'm not incredibly ashamed to say that I have not held myself to my promise. It's a really good book. I intend on finding a copy at McKay's or a similar bookstore and giving that to the school library.

Anyways, the book kind of opened my eyes. Things happened in the sixties and seventies. The anti-war movement, moves for free speech, the Chicago Eight! Not to mention the levitation of the Pentagon, Pigasus, and the throwing of money into the NY Stock Exchange.

I'm at work doing nothing- for there is nothing for me to do- so I defaulted to Wikipedia mind-expansion. I read the entire article on Abbie Hoffman as well as the article on Yippies, and now I really wish I'd been born in the mid-forties so I could've been a part of everything that happened during the sixties.

Schoolwork Over the Summer

I don't mind it. I, personally, have to read two books (Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Invisible Man) and answer one to two composition notebooks' worth of questions about them. For my own personal bettering in literature, I'm also working my way through The Norton Introduction to Literature: Shorter Eighth Edition. That's for AP English 3.

I'm also taking Personal Finance online this summer. I've always been able to grasp things quickly and teach myself when necessary, so why not? It's a required credit, and I'd rather take it in a month over a summer rather than spend one-seventh of my senior year wasting my time with it.

Now, I can understand why, after a certain point, homework can seem ridiculous- for example, the 10-minutes-per-grade rule: that you take your grade (for a high school junior, that would be 11) and multiply it by ten to get the number of minutes you should reasonably spend on homework. I, personally, never spent 100 minutes on homework last year, as a sophomore, and I don't intend on spending 110 minutes on homework next year.

Then again, I've never done very much of my homework at home, preferring to do it during "wasted time": in the car to or from school, after a test in a different subject, after the teacher is done lecturing but the period isn't over, etc.

I know that I have- or at least, I used to have, before my little break- a few readers in their teen years. What do y'all think? Homework? School work over the summer? Down with education?

Wal-Mart Will Stalk You Through Your Undies

Well, they say they won't, but they certainly will have the ability once they begin installing RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) chips in jeans and underwear next month, in order to more efficiently track their shipments of your mother's XXL boot-cuts.

But Artemis, you whine, rudely interrupting my subtle attempts at a yo-mama joke, I don't know what a Radio Friggin' Doohickey is. Why should I care? It's like a bar code, right? They've been using bar codes since the seventies, and nobody gives a crap about 'em. At this point, I'm ready to smack you in the face. First off, you interrupted me. That is not cool, my friend. Not cool. Secondly, no, RFID chips and bar codes are not the same thing. They do have one basic thing in common (both of them contain a certain amount of data, and when they're read, this data is sent to a "reading device," like a computer or cash register, which uses that information to do important things like figure out what it is you're attempting to buy or make sure your passport is the real deal), but the way they do their jobs is so different, it's like comparing Elmo (the bar code: sweet, if a little slow) with Oscar the fucking Grouch (the RFID chip: a slimy son of a bitch who'll cuss you out soon as he'll look at ya).

See, a bar code is a printed series of bars that form a code. (Gettit? That's why it's called a bar code.) When a magic wand is waved over this series of bars, elves appear and make the computer register the fact that you are adding the Deluxe Blu-Ray edition of All Dogs Go to Heaven to your pile of things to buy. The bar code must be visible to the scanner-wand, and the average furthest the bar code can be is about 12 inches. On the total opposite side of the tech spectrum, an RFID chip is a small (like, teeny-tiny) chip that is installed- sewn, implanted, etc.- in whatever it is the installer is trying to track. Not only do RFID chips not have to be visible in order to be read, but they also can be read at pretty amazing distances (one was read from a distance of 69 feet at DEFCON, and that was in 2005- just think about how much technology in general has improved since then!). They can even be read through wallets (if a criminal has the right equipment, they can bump into you, get close enough to your credit cards to scan the numbers and info off them, and use those numbers to purchase things online- and you won't even know about it until your statement comes at the end of the month, unless the credit card company decides to freeze your card) and cars (like the FasTrak®, which can be used to drive non-stop through toll plazas in San Fran- the FasTrak® is read by magical RFID-readers inside the toll booths, and suddenly they not only have a record of all your comings and goings through the toll plaza... they have a record of where you've been the entire month!).


If a Wal-Mart employee forgot to rip out or disable the RFID chip in your jeans (the latter of which is actually impossible- they can stop monitoring it, but unless it gets killed- more on that in a moment- the chip will never really be disabled), then all of a sudden Wal-Mart can see where your pants, and therefore you on the days you wear those pants, are going. They'll know where you eat lunch, what grocery store you shop at, that you're heading to Tony's apartment four nights a week. 


My preferred method of killing an RFID chip is sticking that mofo in the microwave. Nuking that SOB for 30 seconds ought to do the trick. Leaves an arc of burnt metal, but whatever. You are no longer being tracked. Or even potentially tracked.

Independence Day Festivities

I call it Independence Day, because Fourth of July makes you sound like a retard. Independence Day makes it sound like a real holiday, drawn from deep within our nation's history; Fourth of July seems like some dudes just wanted an excuse to set off fireworks and drink cold beer on their front lawn. "So... uh... wanna blow some shit up this weekend?" "Can I bring my kids?" "Yeah, sure. Bring some beer, too." "Okay. Uh... why are we doing this?" "Er... what's Saturday's date?" "July fourth." "'Cause it's the fuckin' Fourth of July, man!"*

This weekend I get to go to a marina in Maryville where my stepdad keeps his boat and watch the fireworks there like we did last year. My dad has the rest of the kids since he and mom are supposed to alternate each year, but- to quote him directly- "It kinda seems like you have your own agenda, so whatever you want to do is fine." And quite frankly, I'm good with spending as little time with the she-devil (ahem, stepmother) and her demon spawn (I MEANT STEPBROTHER!) as possible.

In honor of this holiday (whatever you choose to call it), I changed the design of this blog to something American yet still without much class. Unheard of, right? It was fun to change around the looks- I know I promised the old layout would be there to stay, but when Blogger updated to a "Template Designer (new!)" I couldn't resist trying it out. I'm happy to tell you I love it. Definitely something to try if you like tinkering with appearances!

So, what are your plans for Independence Day/Fourth of July? What do you call it? I look forward to the interesting responses I'm sure I'll glean from y'all.

*Don't tell me you didn't imagine Will Ferrell saying that. Just me?