Wednesday Writs: SCOTUS and Almighty God Edition

Em Carpenter

Em was one of those argumentative children who was sarcastically encouraged to become a lawyer, so she did. She is a proud life-long West Virginian, and, paradoxically, a liberal. In addition to writing about society, politics and culture, she enjoys cooking, podcasts, reading, and pretending to be a runner. She will correct your grammar. You can find her on Twitter.

Related Post Roulette

13 Responses

  1. Doctor Jay says:

    When I watched one of the Apollo missions on TV, I recall an astronaut, I don’t know which one, looking up at the Earth and saying, on mike, “Well, so much for Madalyn Murray O’Hair” which was how I heard of her. It might have been Neal Armstrong, but I really don’t remember.Report

    • Madalyn Murray O’Hair is a name I remember from childhood, like Clair Boothe Luce or John Cameron Swayze. I knew she was an atheist, but that seemed unremarkable; we believed in one God and most of the people we knew believed in two (I was as yet unaware of the finer points of Christian theology), so zero seemed like another valid choice.Report

  2. Jaybird says:

    I find myself of two minds on the whole “dairy farmers want the creators of the so-called ‘almond milk’ to call it something else!” debate.

    So I clicked on the link and saw the egg PB&J and now I’m just pissed off.

    So enjoy this picture.

    Report

    • DensityDuck in reply to Jaybird says:

      The dairy farmers do kind of have a point in that if you call something “milk” then consumers will probably expect it to be Basically The Same Thing As Milk in terms of nutritional content, and if it isn’t, then that can cause trouble. (to bring it to an odd place, I’ll cite Orwell, talking about the “tinned milk” and “condensed milk” sold in Britain after World War II, which was basically cornstarch Kool-Aid but people thought it was an okay substitute because it said “milk” on the label.)

      Is this something that needs an actual law? Heck no. But it’s not as though this is pure anticompetitive regulatory-capture bullshit. It is absolutely the case that people would sell watered-down paint as “diet milk” if they thought they could get away with it.Report

      • dragonfrog in reply to DensityDuck says:

        I dunno, we don’t expect “almond butter” to be nutritionally the same as butter, “breadfruit” to be the same as bread, “Welsh rabbit” to be the same as rabbit, “ginger ale” to be the same as ale, etc. And I definitely don’t expect the parson’s nose or girl guide cookies to be soylent green…Report

        • Jaybird in reply to dragonfrog says:

          I remember the debate that we had over “Vitamin Water” a million years ago and I was convinced that, yeah, the corporation was acting recklessly by calling itself that, coupling it with its advertising campaign.

          I mean, I used to take the attitude of the judge in the Crunchberries case. Now I suspect that it is not the case that it is reasonable to expect that adults ought to know that there are no fields of crunchberry bushes, taken to Commander Crunch on the Crunchberry Express.

          Anyway, “Almond Milk” can reasonably be misinterpreted. “Almond Juice” might be better.

          I can see the argument, anyway. I no longer see it as an absurd one.Report

  3. Mark says:

    Does anyone know why Pennsylvania passed that Bible passage law in 1959? The state had been around for quite a while by then. Shock at the death of Buddy Holly? I wonder why they felt the necessity.Report

    • Chip Daniels in reply to Mark says:

      Maybe for the same reason “under God” was added in 1954.

      Commies.Report

      • James K in reply to Chip Daniels says:

        Also when “In God we Trust” was added to your currency. The 1950s was the point where the Us government got a lot more Jesus-y.

        I find it interesting that, of all the things one might find objectionable about Marx and Communism, that it was atheism that the US government decided it needed to ceremonially oppose.Report

        • CJColucci in reply to James K says:

          I was in grade school in central New York when the practice of Government Prayer (TM) was shut down. Despite all the howls from outside, I distinctly remember how little we schoolkids cared. We didn’t want to be in school, let alone pray in it, or listen (as a bunch of Italian, Irish, and Polish Catholics) to some teacher droning on from the King James Bible. There will be prayer in school as long as there is algebra. The government should stay out of it.Report

  4. mike shupp says:

    L3. No no no. Surely you remember the case that went to the Supremes back about 1960: “Loving vs Virginia”.Report

  5. Oscar Gordon says:

    Em, no apologies necessary. Welcome back.Report