Melanie Kirkpatrick reviews The Pledge in today’s Wall Street Journal (page A17). The book is by Jeffrey Owen Jones and Peter Meyer and looks like a fun historical tour of the Pledge of Allegiance, taking us from its 1892 Columbus Day origins to today’s relatively secure place in our schools. The Pledge expanded from 22 words to the current 31, was challenged unsuccessfully by Mennonites, successfully by Jehovah’s Witnesses, lost its raised-arm salute to Hitler, and withstood a Supreme Court challenge as recent as 2004. If you haven’t heard Mako Nakagawa’s story about how and where she learned the Pledge of Allegiance, stop by the Legal Line archives and take a listen. It’ll make you think. We’ll add The Pledge to the Recommended Reading List.
Dangerous Ground? Metadata goes public
Today the Washington Supreme Court reached into our home computers and pulled out our metadata for public inspection. Metadata is hidden information about an electronic document. It can be very revealing (and sometimes embarrassing). For example, e-mail metadata might show dates the mail was sent, received, replied to or forwarded, as well as blind carbon copy information (how many of us have used the bcc function), and more. Today, in O’Neill v. City of Shoreline, the Court decided that metadata associated with a private citizen’s e-mail that was forwarded to the Shoreline Deputy Mayor was subject to disclosure under the Public Records Act. This is a 5-4 decision – now tell me that your vote doesn’t count in electing our judges. Going further, the City is able to inspect the home computer of the Deputy Mayor in searching for the pesky metadata. The Court says that an inspection of the home computer is appropriate because the Deputy Mayor used her home computer for city business. The dissent argues, “I do not believe that what is contained on the hard drive of a public employee’s personal home computer, whether it is deemed ‘metadata’ or something else, is a public record.” The dissent offers us common sense. The majority provides a legal home invasion. What do you think?
Read the majority opinion at http://www.courts.wa.gov/opinions/?fa=opinions.disp&filename=823979MAJ and then review the dissent at http://www.courts.wa.gov/opinions/?fa=opinions.disp&filename=823979Di1
No More Motorcycles
“Your motorcycle days are over.” The words moved across the room in slow motion, cartoon-like, as if in a dialogue cloud. And then they sped up as they got to me and hit me right between the eyes. Her husband would never ride a motorcycle again. His motorcycle days were over.
We had just finished up a talk I had given on estate planning. We were talking about the What About Me worksheets that I like to bring up. I had passed out the worksheets and a discussion ensued about some of the little things that were important to everyone in the room. The topic of motorcycles had come up and Frank’s eyes lit up (Frank is not his real name). Frank is dealing with some significant health issues. His wife said, clearly without intending to be harsh, that Frank’s motorcycle days are over.
I don’t ride motorcycles, but I think Frank really enjoyed riding. It is a simple thing. I guess it is a little item in the grand scheme of things. But, in a flash, I felt the power of this simple thing and what the loss of it must mean. The words cut into me and opened up thoughts of little, simple things that make up my life. You know, real life. Not the big, dramatic things, but the simple stuff. Eating waffles with strawberries and whip cream, like the ones I had when I was a kid at the Seattle World’s Fair. Driving my car with the windows down. Going to a Mariner Game with my sons. Having coffee with my wife. Reading the newspaper.
Don’t take life for granted. You really never know when you might lose the ability to do and enjoy the little things.
Pledge of Allegiance Behind Barbed Wire
I remember saying the Pledge of Allegiance in school. I recall learning it so that it could be said by heart, but I don’t remember exactly when and I don’t recall much about the school room where we all learned it. While working on our upcoming Bill of Rights Project, I met Mako Nakagawa. She is a past president of the Seattle Chapter of the Japanese Americans Citizens League. She supported the redress efforts on behalf of the 27 school clerks who were forced to resign from the Seattle Public Schools in 1942 just because they were of Japanese ancestry. Can you imagine how that must have made them feel? Currently she facilitates workshops for teachers and students on the Japanese American experience during World War II.
I would ask all of us to try and remember when and where you learned the Pledge of Allegiance. And then close your eyes and picture this: Mako Nakagawa learned the Pledge of Allegiance as a 5 year old from behind barbed wire, with armed US soldiers keeping a watchful eye on her. Then, tomorrow, drop by www.bobpittman.com and listen to the story told by Mako Nakagawa on the Wednesday “Bobcast.”
“The Nine” and patriotism
I’m reading The Nine, by Jeffrey Toobin (of CNN fame). The subtitle is “Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court,” and it is living up to expectations. Toobin does a great job of taking you inside the Court, artfully weaving historical decisions into present cases and currently sitting Justices. Regarding religion and patriotism, I found his comments on the WWII era Jehovah’s Witness cases particularly relevant to some of today’s discussions. He notes that the first case regarding the flag salute and pledge of allegiance, from 1940, found the Supreme Court siding with schools and their insistence that students participate. But then, within 3 years, the Supreme Court, perhaps in recognition of “what could happen in a society where loyalty is coerced and nonconformism punished” (i.e., seeing what was happening in Europe with the Nazis), switched sides. In 1943, the Witnesses won an almost identical case (West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette). Toobin provides us with a quote from what he calls one of the most eloquent Supreme Court opinions. Justice Robert H. Jackson, in writing the majority opinion: “To believe that patriotism will not flourish if patriotic ceremonies are voluntary and spontaneous instead of a compulsory routine is to make an unflattering estimate of the appeal of our institutions to free minds…If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein. If there are any circumstances which permit an exception, they do not now occur to us.” It certainly makes one think.
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