Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick is my favorite legal writer, because she invariably cuts through the bullshit and makes the U.S. Supreme Court sound fun and catty. She’s also excellent at clearly laying out the issues of a case and talking about it both legal and practical terms.
Yesterday’s dispatch on the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance is a perfect example:
“The case is a mess because, whatever you may think about God or the pledge, if you really apply the case law and really think ‘God’ means ‘God,’ then Newdow [the plaintiff, who argues that the recitation of the pledge in school violates his daughter’s First Amendment rights] is right. But Newdow can’t be right. Can he?”
(The title of this entry is borrowed from Tom Waits, for no reason in particular.)
