Pledge case decided . . . in a clever roundabout way.

You might have noticed I’m not shy about bashing the Supreme Court when they deserve it. But I have to hand it to them – they handled the Pledge of Allegiance case very shrewdly.

It just came out that they dismissed the Pledge case since the nutcase dad’s custody status is questionable at best. So the Court got rid of the case without having to rule on any of those nasty Constitutional questions.

But Chief Justice Rehnquist did add that the Pledge does not violate the Constitution. And guess who concurred? Sandra Day O’Connor. Now O’Connor is often the deciding vote in close cases, so her concurrence lets the anti-pledge fanatics know that they don’t have a snowball’s chance for the near future at least.

So the esteemed Court got rid of the Pledge case without having to make a controversial ruling. At the same time, they sent a strong signal that should discourage any similar lawsuits for a while. Shrewd, very shrewd indeed.