JB

As David Greenburg explains:

In American history in particular, wartime dissent has a venerable lineage. Even during that most mythic of causes, the Revolution, fully one third of Americans opposed independence, in John Adams' famous estimate, while an equal third favored it. Only in retrospect did the Revolution become an unambiguously glorious endeavor.

Dissenters spoke out against virtually every subsequent conflict. The humiliating defeats of the War of 1812 made that fight so unpopular that the states of New England considered seceding from the Union. A generation later, many Americans viewed the Mexican-American War (not unreasonably) as an act of naked U.S. aggression. In 1848, shortly after the war's conclusion, Congress censured President James Polk for "unnecessarily and unconstitutionally" commencing hostilities. Supporting the rebuke was Illinois Rep. Abraham Lincoln, who attacked Polk as "a bewildered, confounded and miserably perplexed man."

Not only have anti-war movements caused the nation little direct injury; they've made positive contributions. Dissent has produced important works of American political and social thought. Henry David Thoreau wrote his classic Civil Disobedience as a cri de coeur against the Mexican-American War ("the work of comparatively a few individuals using the standing government as their tool"). Randolph Bourne wrote his greatest essays protesting World War I.

Anti-war efforts have given rise, too, to valuable institutions and movements. From the War of 1812 emerged the first full-fledged peace organizations, a key part of the ensuing reform wave that brought penal reform, new opportunities for women, public education, and, in some states, the abolition of slavery. The aftermath of World War I saw the formation of the American Civil Liberties Union (headed by Roger Baldwin, who had been jailed for his dissent) and increasing protections for free speech.
. . . . .

If the doves were [to] give in to their critics and shut up, then we would all have to trust the Bush administration completely to decide whether to continue, escalate, or end the war. The government would have a free hand to do as it likes. Far from showing their patriotism, critics who muzzle themselves in wartime are abdicating a democratic responsibility.

Greenberg is correct to suggest that something good might well come out of the present anti-war movements. A key question for our country is whether the Perle/Wolfowitz strategy of dominating and overthrowing countries like Iraq, and possibly Iran and North Korea makes sense, or whether this course is an arrogant overreaching that will destroy our security abroad and corrupt our democracy at home. The larger strategic interests of the United States, and the path that the country will follow in the decades to come, are very much at stake in what we do now. This is the worst possible time to shut off discussion.

JB

The coverage of the Iraqi war has all but swallowed up every other subject in the mass media, particularly on cable networks like CNN and Fox News. The tendencies that were so pronounced in the first Gulf War have now become dominant in the coverage of this conflict. The major networks and cable outlets have seized upon the war as a "big story" and pursued it relentlessly to the discussion of virtually everything else. There is no doubt that this is the most important story right now, and deserves the most coverage. My criticism is that it has become the only story. That is not good for democratic self-governance.

The form of media coverage I am criticizing is not new. It evolved over many years, but it was perfected in response to scandals like the O.J. Simpson Trial and public events like the death of Princess Diana. It is part of a more general cultural phenomenon, in which the news media rush from ‘big story’ to ‘big story.’ rather than offering a wider array of issues as part of the relevant public agenda. Because the media expect that their viewers want round the clock coverage, they give them round the clock coverage, and they find every new ways to fill the time to prevent boredom and loss of audience.

This is not simply the familiar criticism that coverage of news-- and in this case of war-- has become a species of entertainment. That is a worrisome aspect of current war coverage. Rather, my point is that media coverage of the "big story" proliferates discussion about itself and pushes aside most other public discourse and most other items that might be on the public agenda of attention.

During coverage of such a "big story," the mass media does not simply repeat the same stories over and over again. Rather, to avoid boredom, the media find ever new angles to discuss. They chew over the events repeatedly, generating new lines of inquiry and new ways to cover the events. Experts are called in; maps are displayed, argument and counterargument are arranged, quarrels are produced, subsidiary controversies are stoked and relished. In this way the media coverage produces every new aspects to discuss. The culture of the big story, in short, proliferates discourse about itself.

Proliferating discussion in this way does not increasingly get to the truth – rather it approaches the question of what is true from increasingly diverse angles of inquiry. A big story's natural trajectory is not towards depth but rather breadth of coverage – it ceaselessly expands its agenda for discussion outward, capturing more and more subjects, experts, political players and other individuals as possible topics of discourse.

The problem for democracy arises because a Darwinian logic is at work. Audience attention is a scare commodity. More time spent on covering the big story and its mushrooming concerns means less time for coverage of other events. What starts as a demand for transparency – for more information and for more accountability – ends up as a form of diversion that crowds out other information and other public concerns.

While all attention is focused on the big story, government is still operating and government officials are still laying plans and hatching schemes. But nobody is watching them or paying attention to what they are doing. Public choice theory teaches us that interest groups are best able to dominate government policy making when they have concentrated interests and when the political system offers them "slack"-- that is, when public attention and the public agenda is diverted elsewhere. Similarly, government oficials are most likely to engage in self-dealing or enact unwise policies when no one is paying attention. That is precisely why the culture of the big story is so dangerous. By diverting public attention to a single story, endlessly reported and discussed, the mass media effectively increase the amount of slack available in the political system. This allows politically powerful interest groups to push their favored agendas and politicians to make unwise decisions and promulgate unwise laws without democratic oversight.

Slack has always existed in democratic political systems, but the media has played an important role in combatting this slack. But the way that media coverage has evolved has produced precisely the opposite effect-- instead of the mass media shining more light on government abuses of power; it how helps to conceal them through its obsessive focus on a single "big story." As a result, we are now going through a particularly dangerous time for American democracy. A great deal of undesireable legislation and executive decisionmaking is going to happen during this period, hiding in plain sight. It is incumbent on the media to tear themselves away from their obsessive compulsion to cover it. Increasingly, I fear that they will not.

JB

David Wagner, who runs Ninomania, has pointed out that there is evidence that the First Congress that drafted the Establishment Clause and the Congress that framed the Fourteenth Amendment engaged in support of religion in ways that many scholars today think would violate the Establishment Clause:

But then surely Prof. Balkin can see (perhaps he has never denied it -- I don't know) that the accommodations of public religiosity undertaken by the federal government in the 18th and 19th centuries, as detailed by Justice Rehnquist in his Jaffree dissent, must have been perfectly in keeping with the Establishment Clause.

Some of Rehnquist's exhibits, it must be noted, antedate the ratification, though not the enactment by Congress, of the 1st Amendment. Does that mean Congress was hastening to enact financial and symbolic support for religion (e.g. reenactment of the Northwest Ordinance; resolution requesting a Thanksgiving Day proclamation) that it knew perfectly well was about to become unconstitutional? Does it not seem (quoting Rehnquist) "highly unlikely that the House of Representatives would simultaneously consider proposed amendments to the Constitution and enact an important piece of territorial legislation which conflicted with the intent of those proposals"?

David's argument rests on a confusion about my views and about the nature of the criticism I was making against Justice Scalia. I myself am not an originalist, nor do I regard original intention or original understanding as the touchstone to all legitimate constitutional interpretation. I think that there are many modalities of constitutional interpretation, of equal validity, including text, history, original understandings, original intentions, consequences, structure, and narrative ethos. Moreover, I am a constitutional historicist. My view is that what the Constitution means changes over time, in response to constitutional politics and social movement contestation. Thus, you can see my views are quite different from Justice Scalia's.

My criticism of Scalia is that he states that original understanding is the touchstone of all legitimate constitutional interpretation (a view I do not hold) but he nevertheless picks and chooses the occaisions under which he will invoke original understandings, based on his substantive views about the Constitution. Pointing this fact out does not commit me to acceptance of the philosophy of original understanding as the touchstone of all legitimate constitutional interpretation. Rather, it suggests that Scalia isn't being entirely honest about what his views on constitutional interpretation are.

Indeed, my view is that people who think that original understanding is the touchstone of all legitimate constitutional interpretation often (1) don't know enough of the relevant history; (2) conveniently fail to invoke originalist arguments when they collide with their substantive views about the Constitution; or (3) fall back on various forms of prudential argument-- like reliance on previous decisions and stare decisis, to avoid unpalatable results. However, the argument for reliance on stare decisis is itself applied inconsistently, since originalists do not think that all previous decisions are immune to originalist attack, just the ones that they think aren't too bad or that they actively support. As a result, originalists generally produce constitutional interpretations that are largely (if imperfectly) consonant with their substantive views about the Constitution. This fact completely undermines the justification given for originalist interpretation-- that it restrains judges from imposing their own substantive political and policy views into constitutional law. In theory originalism does so, but in practice the interpretations of originalist judges are often tethered to their preexisting political views, and this is as true of originalists on the left like Justice Hugo Black as it is with originalists on the right, like Antonin Scalia. Both Black and Scalia have many fine qualities, but neither is (or was, in the case of Black) a particularly good historian and neither is or was really consistent about their originalism.

Now, back to David's point about the Establishment Clause. My understanding of the original understanding of the Establishment Clause was that it was a rule of federalism, allowing the states to have their own established churches, but denying an established church to the federal government. Nevertheless the antebellum Congress did a lot of things that we today would think violated separation of church and state; they supported Protestant Christianity nonpreferentially. It is mistake to think that they supported all religions equally, or even all Christian denominations equally. Rather, they tried as best they could to be neutral as between Protestant sects, much to the chagrin of Catholic immigrants who began entering the country in large numbers in the 1830's. Nobody thought there was any obligation to be even handed with respect to Judaism or Islam. So the practices of the antebellum Congress are hardly an appropriate model for constitutional conduct today. (Again, this is part of the problem of invoking original understanding as a justification without knowing how deeply embarassing the actual history often is).

After the Civil War, the Establishment Clause could not coherently be understood as a federalism principle, precisely because if one believed that it was incorporated into the Fourteenth Amendment, it would apply to the states as well. And for many years after the Civil War, the states, I might point out, were perfectly happy to impose Protestantism on their citizens, again, to the chagrin of Catholic immigrants.

The contemporary notion of nonpreferentialism as between all religions is a product of the twentieth century, and the notion that atheists and agnostics are also protected by the Establishment Clause is a product of the second part of the twentieth century. Today many religious conservatives argue that government should be permitted to promote religion (as opposed to atheism and agnosticism), as long as the govenrment promotes all religions equally. But it is a fantasy to think that this position is the same as that of the original understanding. Every originalist today who argues for nonpreferentialism between different religions is actually arguing for a position that developed at least a century after the Establishment Clause was framed. Once again this is bad history in the service of a particular substantive agenda, not devotion to the Framers' original understandings.

JB

An article in today's New York Times discusses the reasons why the press did not push the Bush Administration harder to justify its plans for war against Iraq. One important reason is Congress's abdication of opposition last fall:

Experts say the news media's role was particularly
important this time because Congress offered such a muted
challenge until the final weeks of the buildup to war. With
leading Democrats signing off on the use of military force
last fall, these experts say, the burden fell more heavily
on the news media to examine and analyze the
administration's rationale for war.

"Washington bureaus couldn't see the argument about the war
as the political conflict they're always looking for," said
Todd Gitlin, a professor of journalism and sociology at
Columbia University. "It would have had to be put on the
agenda by themselves - as something they cared about -
which is something they are loathe to do."

The natural source of partisan opposition to the war would have been the Democratic Party in Congress. But the Democrats were largely feckless during the period leading up to the war, afraid of being cast as soft on security and defense. Moreover, the Democratic leadership and a large number of Democrats joined Republicans in giving the President essentially unchecked authority to attack Iraq whenever he wanted. This mean that Congress had abidicated its fundamental role as a check on Executive adventures. Without the separation of powers to spur serious political debate, the quality of public debate suffered accordingly.

The supine nature of Congress, however, is only part of the story. Another element is the way in which press coverage has suffered from cutbacks in news organizations due to increasing media concentration and the increasing tendency of reporters to wait to be fed information from official briefings rather than going out to get it themselves.

A third element was the press's inability to rebut misleading statements by Administration officials:

The Bush administration's assertion of a connection between
Iraq and Al Qaeda was an important part of its case for
military action against Saddam Hussein, but that link was a
matter of some dispute.

Still, a recent New York Times/CBS News Poll showed that
nearly half of Americans said they believed that Saddam
Hussein was personally involved in the Sept. 11 attacks. A
Knight Ridder poll taken in early January showed that half
said they believed at least some of the 19 hijackers on
Sept. 11 were Iraqis. None were.

Some reporters based in the White House say it is hard to
compete against an administration that sticks to its
message and make its arguments at daily news briefings that
are carried live on the major cable networks, often in
their entirety. The most penetrating questions, they said,
are met only with the answers the White House wants viewers
to hear, a point of pride among administration officials.

"The questions do get asked, but they don't get answered
and that's what drives people nuts," said Bill Plante, a
CBS News White House correspondent. "The president uses his
public appearances very artfully to advance his message; he
says the same thing over and over. What I'm not convinced
of is whether that should change how we work."

White House reporters also said they were left with the
administration's assertions until investigative reporters
could check them out, which takes time.

JB

Stuart Buck responds to my previous post by suggesting how Scalia might strike down the Michigan affirmative action plan consistent with his adherence to a philosophy of original intention. Stuart makes some fine points, and I would add only the following comments:

1. Stuart assumes that my evidence of race conscious remedial relief by the Reconstruction Era Congress that framed the Fourteenth Amendment is the Freedman's Bureau statutes. I'm actually thinking of the various acts that my colleague Jed Rubenfeld discusses in his 1997 piece on Affirmative Action in Yale L.J. They applied not only to recently freed blacks who had been enslaved, but also to free blacks who had been free for many generations.

The freedman's bureau acts, which Eric Schnapper discusses, are some evidence, but they also present many interpretive problems. Rubenfeld's argument is much cleaner.

2. Stuart doesn't adequately address the basic problem for Scalia: squaring his interpretive theory with the whole set of proof requirements the Court has added since Bakke to enforce strict scruinty. As I mentioned in my previous post on the subject, there's no evidence that the Reconstruction Era Congress thought they were required to make the sorts of findings of fact that the Court now requires. Nor in those cases, did the body that engaged in the discrimination have to be the same body that engaged in race conscious relief. Rather, Congress appears to be remedying general societal discrimination, which existing law does not permit. Quite apart from whether diversity would be a permissible goal to the Reconstruction Congress, remedying past societal discrimination clearly would be, and that would also be inconsistent with existing doctrine.

3. In conjunction with this last point, it's important to recognize that the statutes that Rubenfeld identifies can't be distinguished on the grounds that they remedied discrimination by identified victims of discrimination. They applied to free blacks without any proof of discrimination against them. That presumption is not permitted by Croson or Adarand.

4. All of this is covered in my conlaw casebook, Brest, Levinson, Balkin and Amar, Processes of Constitutional Decisionmaking (4th ed. 2000) and you can look it up for more details.

5. The basic point I am trying to make is not, as Stuart suggests, that Scalia is necessarily engaged in logical contradiction. There are certainly ways to strike down affirmative action laws even given the congressional history, and I talk about them in the casebook. Rather, my complaint is that Scalia is being hypocritical, because he has never, to my knowledge, discussed the historical issues, even though they are easy to learn about, and even though he states, to any one who will listen, that original understanding is the touchstone of constitutional interpretation. My problem with Scalia is that he speaks with the arrogant assurance of one completely convinced that he is in the right when he has not done the necessary research to justify his conclusions about the constitutionality of affirmative action.

Judging from his public writings on the subject, my first year con law students appear to know more about the original understanding of the Fourteenth Amendment than Antonin Scalia does. That, I think, is a disgrace for someone who claims to have the interpretive philosophy that he purports to have, and who has the power to shape the U.S. Constitution that he possesses.

6. Finally, the point of my previous post was to chide Scalia for a more general failing: In his opinions, he tends to invoke original intention as a rhetorical ploy when it suits his agenda, and when it does not, he simply fails to say anything at all about history or original understandings. And all the while he insists that he has no authority to do anything but follow the original understandings of the text of the Constitution. That may or may not be a logical contradiction. I do think it is hypocritical.

JB

Stuart Buck responds to my previous post on Justice Scalia by pointing out that Scalia is a textualist, not an originalist, so that he might easily strike down affirmative action laws as inconsistent with the Fourteenth Amendment.

Stuart is half right. Scalia is an adherent of original meaning, not original intention. For him, the question is about text, not secret intentions; about words, not individual or group psychology. For him, the test is what the words the Framers produced would fairly have been understood to mean at the time of their adoption. It is important to understand (and I think Stuart glosses over this point) that Scalia is not referring to what the same words fairly mean to us today, for otherwise, Scalia would be commited to a Living Constitution, which he despises.

The original understanding of the constitutional text of the Fourteenth Amendment is exactly what my previous post on colorblindness was concerned with: What did the words of the Fourteenth Amendment mean at the time they were adopted? What was their generally accepted public meaning? The answer is not difficult to discover.

It is quite clear that the words "privileges and immunities" and "equal protection" were used precisely to avoid a general rule against racial classifications. The framers did not use the word "race" in the Fourteenth Amendment (as they did in the Fifteenth, when they specifically wanted to give black males, but not women, the right to vote). They refused to adopt a rule of racial colorblindness even though such language was repeatedly pressed upon them. Nor did they create language that forbade all racial classifications. That is not the way that people in 1868 thought about the problem. Our focus on suspect classifications is anachronistic. They were concerned with the rights of citizenship-- what privileges and immunities all citizens had by virtue of being citizens. Their key idea was that all citizens should be equal before the law; that is, that they should enjoy civil equality, not political or social equality. That is what the words "privileges or immunities," and "equal protection of the laws" were fairly understood to mean in 1868. One need not look to any secret intentions to discover this. It is clear from the debates over the Fourteenth Amendment themselves, as well as from general intellectual histories of the period.

Indeed, the privileges or immunities clause, and not the equal protection clause, was understood to do most of the work in protecting civil equality. The equal protection clause was at best a minor addition emphasizing that all persons were equal before the law, which was another way of saying that all citizens enjoyed civil equality and that all other persons (remember the EP Clause refers to persons, not citizens) enjoyed the equality of rights before the law that non-citizens enjoyed. (Nobody thought that the words "equal protection" made citizens and non-citizens equal in all respects).

So we return to the question that a textualist (or more correctly, an original meaning textualist) like Scalia would ask: Were the words of the Fourteenth Amendment fairly understood at the time of their adoption to prohibit democratically elected legislatures from race conscious remedial relief? The answer is quite clearly no. The best evidence of this understanding is what the Congress that passed the Fourteenth Amendment actually did, not what their secret intentions were. They passed a whole slew of relief acts for "colored" people, both former slaves and free blacks. Many of those concerned special educational benefits for blacks.

At best, one might make a distinction between what Congress might do and what the states might do. That would mean that Adarand is wrongly decided, and the federal government today could engage in race conscious affirmative action. However, if one believes that the privileges or immunities of national citizenship bind Congress as well as the states (otherwise, why would they be privileges or immunities of *national* citizenship?) then the same rules would apply to the states as to the federal government. That means Croson is also wrongly decided.

Finally, one might try to get around this fairly convincing evidence of the public meaning of the Amendment's words by insisting that what Congress did was actually consistent with the distinction between civil, political and social equality. What Congress did was not a matter of civil equality, but a matter of social equality-- giving special welfare and educational benefts to blacks involve issues of social, not civil equality. I myself don't buy this interpretation, but let's accept it for the moment and consider its logical consequences. If the argument is correct, why doesn't the civil/political/social distinction apply equally in our own time? After all, if one is concerned with what the words of the Fourteenth Amendment were fairly understood to mean at the time they were adopted, the words "privileges and immunities" and "equal protection" *meant* civil equality, not political or social. They were meant, and were generally understood to mean, that civil, and not political or social equality was guaranteed by the Amendment. They should mean today what they meant then, at least to someone like Scalia. Under that reading, then what Michigan is doing is also not a matter of civil equality, and is therefore untouched by the Fourteenth Amendment's prohibitions.

Again, I await Scalia's opinion in the Michigan case with great interest.

JB

Well, at least that seems to follow from this speech reported by the Associated Press (via Howard Bashman):

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia on Monday said he can only interpret the Constitution as it was written and not factor in the time it was written when ruling on issues such as affirmative action.

Scalia said during a speech at the University of Toledo he can't dismiss the Constitution "and say it's the work of old, dead white males."

"The only power I have as a federal judge, I derive through that of the Constitution," he said.

As I've pointed out in a previous post, the Congress that framed the 14th Amendment did not believe in the colorblindness principle, and, moreover, it engaged in a host of race conscious remedial measures that would not pass muster under the Court's existing strict scrutiny doctrines. If I read Scalia right, I'm afraid all these doctrines will have to go out the window, including the decisions in Croson and Adarand in which Scalia himself joined.

After all, Scalia wouldn't want to be accused of imposing his own conservative predelictions on the country.

If the Framers believed that democratically elected legislatures could engage in race conscious remedial legislation, who is the Supreme Court to strike such legislation down? If the Framers thought race conscious remedial relief was constitutional, then it doesn't matter whether judges think it's bad social policy. As Scalia put it in response to a question following the speech, "As long as we're operating under [the Constitution], it is the only source of my authority."

After reading Scalia's remarks, I breathed a sigh of relief. It's good to know that at least one Justice is a man of his word, principled and devoted to the Rule of Law and the Framers' original understandings above all else.

I await his opinion in the Michigan affirmative action case.

JB

My op-ed on Iraq, of which the previous post is the first draft, appears in today's Hartford Courant.

Several readers have asked for a bill of particulars justifying my conclusions about the election.

Here's what happened in 2000.

Before the election, officials in the Florida Republican Party violated the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by purging African-American voters from the authorized voting lists, reducing the number of votes for Gore. This purging of the voting rolls was completely overshadowed by the controversies over butterfly ballot and chads, and the greater percentage of spoiled ballots by minority voters. The purging of voter rolls to exclude African-Americans, however, was the most serious violation of law and went almost completely unreported by the American press.

After the election, the U.S. Supreme Court stayed the recounts in Florida on December 9th just as Gore was about to push ahead. (Bush I) The reasons given for the stay were completely at odds with the law governing when injunctions should be issued.

The Supreme Court then handed down a decision on December 12th (Bush II) that argued that the manual recounts violated Equal Protection and that the recounts should cease permanently. The Court's interpretation of the EP Clause was unprecedented, and was supported by Justices who are opposed to novel extension of Equal Protection claims. Perhaps more suspicious, the Court argued that its interpretation of the Equal Protection Clause, announced for the first time in this case, applied only to the facts of this particular case and to no others.

Finally, the Court offered a remedy wholly inconsistent with the underlying claimed violation of Equal Protection. If the EP Clause were violated, the proper remedy would not have been to stop all recounts (for that might have violated EP as well) but to recount under a method consistent with Equal Protection.

There is no doubt that if the parties had been reversed, there would not have been five votes either for the initial stay or for the EP argument and final remedy. Indeed, there might not have been a single vote for what the Court did.

These issues are discussed at length in my academic writings. A discussion of the violations of the Federal Voting Rights Act appears here, in an article that was published in the Virginia Law Review, and a discussion of the role of the Supreme Court appears here in an article that was published in the Yale Law Journal.

JB

By the time most of you read this, we may be at war.

Many Americans will now rally around the President. All Americans will rally around and support our troops in the field. All of them hope, as I do, that the war will be short and with a minimum loss of life for both sides.

It does not matter what our position was before. Once war has started, we want things to go as well as they possibly can. We want our generals to do what it takes to win.

But the fact that we support our troops once war has begun does not mean that we would have chosen this war in the first place. Rather, the man who sits in the Oval Office has placed our country in this precarious position. Our troops are mobilized and in harm’s way. They must fight to survive.

This is not a war of necessity. It is a war of choice. A choice made by George W. Bush and his advisers.

All this would be bearable if a President clearly and legitimately elected by We the People had taken us into war. But many Americans, myself included, do not believe that Bush legitimately won the election. We believe, and continue to believe, that the election was stolen.

To many Americans, it is especially galling that we are being pushed into an unnecessary war by a man who did not legitimately attain the vast power he now enjoys. It is one thing to democratically elect a President who makes bad decisions. It is quite another if the President who leads us into danger was forced on the country through trickery and deceit.

Make no mistake: A man who took power illegally is now taking us into war. And if he miscalculates, he may well bring blood and destruction on countless numbers of people.

The election of 2000 seems so long ago for many of us. But the consequences of that struggle haunt everything that is happening today.

The President’s political legitimacy was established not by the election of 2000, but by the events of 9-11. Our country was attacked, and we needed to put aside previous disputes in order to respond to that attack. George W. Bush was, quite literally, the only President we had.

Moreover, no matter who became President, that person would have invaded Afghanistan and made war on the Taliban in response to 9-11.

But at that point important differences began to emerge. It began to matter greatly who held power.

It is hardly clear that President Gore would have made the centerpiece of his Administration a war on Iraq, and that he would have engaged in blunderbuss diplomacy that would fracture alliances of fifty years’ standing, and squander all the good will America enjoyed in the wake of the terrorist attacks.

Nor is it clear that Gore would have hatched such a grand scheme against Iraq while disregarding the mounting threat simmering in North Korea.

Every day, the consequences of the disputed election of 2000 become clearer and clearer, and that clarity is not to the advantage of the man who now wields power over us and over the whole world.

For those Americans who think that the election was illegally concluded, the path our country is traveling is deeply troubling. For we know that we would not be moving in this dark and dangerous direction but for a constitutional coup, an unlawful accession to power. We now see, all too clearly, that the power of the Presidency, obtained dishonestly and unconstitutionally two years ago, has not brought us peace, but only more struggle, more danger, more strife.

The constitutional coup of 2000 has led to a great gamble by a man we do not trust, a gamble that threatens ever more wars, ever more death and destruction.

If war comes, I want our troops to win. I will pray that our generals are discerning, that their strategies are sound, and that their victory is speedy.

But I have no confidence in the man who sent them into war. He knows only how to seize power, not how to use it wisely.

Alea jacta est. The die has been cast by a would-be 21st-century Caesar.

Let us hope that we do not end up paying for his arrogance.

JB

Like many others, I greatly enjoy Tom Friedman's columns at the New York Times. If you read them closely over the past three weeks or so, you will notice a very interesting shift going on. Friedman originally came out fairly strongly in favor of the war, recognizing the risks, but arguing that it would help bring democracy to Iraq and presage a remaking of the Middle East. In short, he supported the war on Iraq largely in terms of spreading democratic values, and creating a progressive model of Muslim democracy for the entire region.

That was the argument he made on January 26th. Since that point, his weekly columns have gotten progressively worried. Friedman has gradually realized that his war isn't Bush's war. He has figured out that Bush isn't really serious about the degree of nation building that is necessary to make the war with Iraq justified in Friedman's terms.

Indeed, what Friedman has gradually come to recognize with increasing alarm in the past month is that he simply doesn't trust Bush to do the right thing. He has been reduced, in his latest column, to wishing that Tony Blair, and not Bush, were calling the shots. The reason is that he thinks Bush is not pursuing the sort of war Friedman wants to fight:

I deeply identify with the president's vision of ending Saddam Hussein's tyranny and building a more decent, progressive Iraq. If done right, it could be so important to the future of the Arab-Muslim world, which is why I won't give up on this war. But can this Bush team be counted on to do it right? Mr. Bush's greatest weakness is that too many people, at home and abroad, smell that he's not really interested in repairing the world. Everything is about the war on terrorism.

A recent article in the New York Times shows why Friedman is hoping against hope. A panel of national security experts, drawn from both Republican and Democratic Administrations, has suggested that "the cost of postwar reconstruction of Iraq will be at least $20 billion a year and will require the long-term deployment of 75,000 to 200,000 troops to prevent widespread instability and violence against former members of Saddam Hussein's government."

However, the article continues, that is not exactly what the Bush Adminstration has in mind:

At the Pentagon yesterday, two senior Defense Department officials, speaking to reporters on condition that they not be identified, said the new office charged with establishing a postwar administration hoped to be able to turn over control to an interim Iraqi government within months. But they did not say how they planned to root out the thousands of intelligence and security service agents that Mr. Hussein is known to have placed within virtually every government ministry.

The officials said Iraq's frozen assets might be tapped to pay for the Iraqi government salaries, or some of Iraq's oil revenues might be used to finance the interim government. That had not yet been decided, they said.

For those readers who think that the reason we should fight this war is to rid the world of a despicable tyrant and replace him with a vibrant democracy, I salute you. I applaud your idealism and your commitment to making this a better, freer world. But you need to realize that your agenda is not Bush's agenda. Your motives are not his motives. He is playing you, and all of us, for fools. Don't be taken in. He isn't serious about making the long term commitment that will be necessary to secure a democratic state in Iraq. And, as a result, he is going to make this world an even bigger mess, and an even more dangerous place than it was before he became President.

God help us. God help us all.

JB

The New York Times reports that Federal District Judge Michael Mukasey in the Southern District in Manhattan has reaffirmed his earlier ruling in December that Jose Padilla has the right to consult with counsel. Padilla, an American citizen, was accused by the government of conspiring with Al Qaeda operatives to bring a "dirty bomb" (a bomb that explodes radioactive material) into the United States. He was arrested May 8th in Chicago, returning from a trip to Pakistan. At first the Justice Department claimed that he was being held as a material witness, but on June 9th, they stated that he was an enemy combatant and had effectively no Bill of Rights protections, including no right to consult with counsel.

The district court disagreed, ordering that Padilla be permitted to meet with counsel in December. However, instead of complying with the judge's order, the Justice Department asked the judge to reconsider his decision. The judge made clear in today's written order that he would not accept further delay, as the Times reports:

"Lest any confusion remain, this is not a suggestion or a request that Padilla be permitted to consult with counsel, and it is certainly not an invitation to conduct a further `dialogue' about whether he will be permitted to do so. It is a ruling -- a determination -- that he will be permitted to do so," the judge said.

The Justice Department was wrong to insist that by simply designating some one an enemy combatant, the Executive can strip away the basic constitutional protections that all citizens enjoy. If the government can strip away Padilla's rights at will, it can strip away yours and mine. When you give government arbitrary power, eventually it will use that power arbitrarily.

I for one fully believe that members of the Justice Department are trying to keep our country safe. But I do not think that good intentions justify a blank check to the Executive. Even the best of intentions must be constrained by basic rights; otherwise, convinced of its own rectitude, the government will overreach.

It is important that courts exercise some check on the Adminstration's zeal. But it is equally important that members of the public make their opposition heard as well. Courts will not keep us safe from government overreaching in times like these. Only we ourselves can do that.

JB

Deborah Sontag's article on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond Virgina in today's New York Times explains why it matters who sits on the circuit courts:

The appellate courts, created in the late 19th century to relieve overcrowding of the Supreme Court's docket, decide about 28,000 cases a year compared with the highest court's 75 or so. Practically speaking, they have the final say in most matters of law; their reach is broader, if not deeper, than the Supreme Court's itself.

Judges on the Fourth Circuit say that they just follow the Supreme Court's lead. And it is true that the Fourth Circuit is the appellate court closest in thinking to the Rehnquist Court. But the relationship is symbiotic: the Fourth Circuit does not just imitate; it also initiates. It pushes the envelope, testing the boundaries of conservative doctrine in the area of, say, reasserting states rights over big government. Sometimes, the Supreme Court reins in the Fourth Circuit, reversing its more experimental decisions, but it also upholds them or leaves them alone to become the law of the land. There is a cross-fertilization, which could see its apotheosis this spring: the Fourth Circuit is dominated intellectually by two very different conservative judges, J. Harvie Wilkinson 3rd and J. Michael Luttig, both of whom are leading candidates for the next Supreme Court vacancy.

Lower courts-- which are sometimes called "inferior courts" because Art. I. section 8, cl. 9 of the Constitution speaks of "Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court"-- play an important role in such constitutional transformations for four reasons. First, they are effectively the last word on the Constitution in a whole host of areas that the Supreme Court has not yet considered. Second, they apply and implement existing Supreme Court decisions, which can very often be spun in a more liberal or more conservative direction. Third, the lower courts are a proving and testing grounds for innovative constitutional claims by social movements and their ideological allies. Lower courts can provide either a sympathetic or hostile ear to innovative constitutional claims, helping to shape cases and caselaw in preparation for the moment when the Supreme Court focuses on them. Fourth, lower courts (and particularly district courts) have the ability to find facts or render procedural decisions that shape the record on appeal to the Supreme Court and limit what that court can do or else effectively insulate a decision from review.

Presidents reshape constitutional law through their appointments to the Supreme Court. But their appointments to the lower courts also matter, too, and perhaps even more, in determining what the Constitution means in day-to-day litigation. Moreover, because lower court nominees are generally subjected to much less scrutiny by Congress, Presidents often have a much freer hand in stocking the lower courts with more strongly ideological candidates. Although Supreme Court Justices get most of the glory, lower court judges are the shock troops of any effective and sustained constitutional revolution. This is a point that has not been lost on the Republican Party.

JB

As Paul Krugman reports in Friday's New York Times, the Bush Adminstration has begun to threaten our neighbor to the South. Apparently, if Mexico votes against the U.S. resolution on Iraq, a little "discipline" will have to be applied, and the Bush Administration can't guarantee that the American people won't take it out on Mexicans, or, for that matter, Mexican-American citizens in the U.S.

Last week The Economist quoted an American diplomat who warned that if Mexico didn't vote for a U.S. resolution it could "stir up feelings" against Mexicans in the United States. He compared the situation to that of Japanese-Americans who were interned after 1941, and wondered whether Mexico "wants to stir the fires of jingoism during a war."

Incredible stuff, but easy to dismiss as long as the diplomat was unidentified. Then came President Bush's Monday interview with Copley News Service. He alluded to the possibility of reprisals if Mexico didn't vote America's way, saying, "I don't expect there to be significant retribution from the government" — emphasizing the word "government." He then went on to suggest that there might, however, be a reaction from other quarters, citing "an interesting phenomena taking place here in America about the French . . . a backlash against the French, not stirred up by anybody except the people."

And Mr. Bush then said that if Mexico or other countries oppose the United States, "there will be a certain sense of discipline."

These remarks went virtually unreported by the ever-protective U.S. media, but they created a political firestorm in Mexico. The White House has been frantically backpedaling, claiming that when Mr. Bush talked of "discipline" he wasn't making a threat. But in the context of the rest of the interview, it's clear that he was.

What I want to know is, why isn't Bush in bigger trouble than Trent Lott?

JB

Here’s a little separation of powers problem I’ve been worrying about for a while, ever since the Senate held hearings last week on the cost of the war with Iraq.

The Bush Administration has been refusing to answer questions about how much the war with Iraq will cost. Outside studies have placed the cost as ranging from anywhere from $50 billion ( cheap, quick victory, short, easy, reconstruction) to more than a trillion dollars (tough, difficult victory, long, difficult reconstruction).

The White House argues that it shouldn’t have to provide any estimates because the timing and length or war, and the duration and nature of post-war peacekeeping and reconstruction, are currently unknown. Therefore, the President should be allowed to go ahead with the war and Congress will get the bill later, and, of course, it is expected to pay that bill in full.

The problem with this approach is that it significantly undermines the separation of powers and its constitutionally mandated set of checks and balances. The President is Commander-in-Chief, but Congress has the power to declare war. Originally, the Framers separated the powers to declare war from the power to command troops because of the fear that Presidents might attempt to aggrandize themselves by continually getting the country into one war after another. (Think Napoleon). Requiring Congressional authorization helps rein in presidential ambitions and presidential overreaching. This sort of check and balance has been made relatively ineffective in the twentieth century. Moreover, in the case of Iraq, Congress has given the President authority to attack Iraq based on his representations of the danger and need for military action.

Nevertheless, suppose it turns out that the President has not been altogether honest about the need for war, or suppose he mishandles the diplomacy necessary to ensure support from our allies, or suppose that he tries to demagogue the issue in order to increase his political standing at the expense of what Congress believes is the national interest. Does the separation of powers in our constitutional system offer any recourse, once Congress has given him authority to go to war?

Yes it does. Congress has the power to appropriate funding for all government expenditures, including military expenditures for wars. If Congress thinks that the President is misbehaving, or is engaged in an unwise military adventure, it can rein him in through its power of the purse. It’s important to recognize that to exercise this check and balance, Congress doesn’t actually have to refuse to appropriate funds for American troops; it is politically risky to do this when our men and women are fighting overseas. But it can use the appropriations process as a method of oversight– it can ask the tough questions that the Executive might rather not answer, and it can hold the Executive accountable if the President screws up or is trying to pull a fast one.

The Administration’s preferred strategy of pay-as-you-go short circuits this method of accountability. By refusing to divulge information about what the war might cost, or even what the Administration thinks the war might cost, the President is telling Congress that it is expected to simply dole out money as the President thinks best. This allows the President to get the country into a terrible mess, at which point he can simply turn to Congress and demand that it appropriate as much money as it takes to clean up that mess.

This Administration has long been known for its lust for secrecy and its desire not to be held accountable for anything. Ironically, the Administration has insisted that other institutions (e.g. failing schools) must be held accountable by withdrawing funding if they don’t measure up to standards of success.

But all joking aside, there is an important constitutional issue at stake. Congress should stand up to the President and members of his Administration when they refuse to explain how much the war and reconstruction will cost and how long the war and reconstruction will last. If the President genuinely doesn’t know the answers to these questions, that’s a reason not to go down this path-- for the President’s strategy may very well be unwise and dangerous. And if the President does know and simply isn’t telling, there is an even greater need to stand up to him, for it is likely that the reason he isn’t telling the truth is that the American people would not countenance what he secretly wants to do. If so, Congress has a duty to protect the national interest by acting as a counterweight to presidential ambitions and presidential overreaching.

Our Constitution isn’t perfect, but separation of powers is one of the most important features Americans have for checking potential abuses of authority. Congress should not allow the President to do an end run around our constitutional system by stonewalling on crucial questions of war and peace.

JB

In this week’s edition of Newsweek, Steven Brill reports that in the original version of the Patriot Act, Attorney General John Ashcroft proposed suspending the writ of habeas corpus indefinitely.

In legal terms, this would mean that the government would be permitted to arrest and detain people-- citizens and non citizens alike-- at will, and without the right to a judicial hearing to determine the legality of their detention.

In Article I, section 9, clause 2, the U.S. Constitution permits Congress to suspend the writ, but only “when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.” It seems quite clear that although 9-11 was a traumatic event in our nation’s history, it did not require full-scale suspension of the writ so that the police could arrest anyone and hold them as long as they liked. Perhaps even more disturbing, Ashcroft’s proposal for suspension of the writ had no time limit. It would last as long as the government wanted it to last.

The portrait that Brill paints is of a politician particularly eager to amass more power for himself and to promote himself as crucial to preserving the nation’s security. Equally worrisome, Ashcroft is portrayed as particularly uninterested in legal niceties, particularly the legal distinctions that lawyers use to secure basic civil rights.

Beyond [Ashcroft's] predilection to want to control as much as he could, some on his own staff thought that another reason Ashcroft hadn’t “scrubbed” the bill [i.e. vetted it with relevant departments] beforehand was that he didn’t appreciate the significance of the prosecutor-written laundry list he was proposing. Although Ashcroft is a graduate of the highly regarded University of Chicago Law School and a former Missouri state attorney general, even some of his own deputies at Justice were surprised by how uninterested he was in the niceties of the law. One veteran staffer recalls that through six different meetings on this bill and another key legal initiative, he had never once heard Ashcroft cite a legal case and had watched him blanch when someone in the room cited a case, as if that person was discourteously speaking another language. Whether it was lack of interest or lack of intellectual firepower, the Attorney General seemed not to appreciate the complexities of the constitutional issues he was dealing with.

I grew up in Missouri, and I well remember Ashcroft in earlier phases of his legal career, as state Attorney General, governor, and later as Senator. My impression of him then is the same as now: A man who cares nothing for civil liberties. Or, put to put it more accurately, he cares only for civil liberties of those people he likes, in particular gun owners.

When Ashcroft was first proposed as U.S. Attorney General, he was repeatedly asked whether he would enforce civil rights laws and protections rather than attempt to undermine them. Ashcroft insisted indignantly that of course he would. One might conclude from Brill’s article that Ashcroft was not altogether accurate in his representations of his bona fides. But anyone who knew of Ashcroft’s previous record in public service would know that Ashcroft is the last person who could be trusted to keep our civil liberties safe from government overreaching. After all, overreaching is what Ashcroft knows how to do best. It is what he has done throughout his career. Bullying is his stock in trade, unfairness is his modus operandi.

The President should fire this man immediately and replace him with someone who genuinely cares about our Constitution and our civil rights. The only problem is, President Bush probably agrees with him, for he has, if anything, even less interest in these issues.

JB

Assuming that nothing that happens can sway Bush's mind when it is made up (think tax cuts) when exactly will the war start? I had originally thought it would be when the skies over Iraq are darkest, near the new moon, which fell on March 2d and will occur again on April 1. But a more likely date is the middle of March. (Ides of March, anyone? Et tu Bushe?) Read Michael O'Hanlon's views on the question, courtesy of Tacitus.

JB

Capitol Hill Blue reports that Bush's advisors have begun suggesting that he not press for a second resolution at the U.N. on the grounds that it is likely to fail.

"The vote in Turkey f**cked things up big time," grumbles one White House aide. "It pushes our timetable back. On the other hand, it might give us a chance to save face."

"Saving face" means backing away from a showdown with the UN Security Council next week and agreeing to let the weapons inspection process run its course.

"The arrest of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed gives us some breathing room," says a Bush strategist. "We can concentrate on the favorable publicity generated by the arrest and the valuable intelligence we have gained from that event."

Mohammed, arrested in Pakistan, masterminded the 9-11 terrorist attacks. CIA agents found computer files, memos and other materials which pointed to plans for new attacks against the U.S.

"The prudent thing to do would be to let Iraq cool off on a back burner and concentrate on Mohammed," says Democratic strategist Arnold Beckins. "Saddam isn't going anywhere. There's too much heat on him right now for him to pull something."

Right now, only the U.S., Britain and Spain favor immediate military action against Iraq. With most of the other allies lining up against the U.S., Bush faces both a diplomatic and public relations nightmare if he proceeds against Hussein without UN backing.

"We've always needed an exit strategy," admits one White House aide. "Circumstances have given us one. We shouldn't ignore it."

(1) Would that all of this were true. I'd be thrilled if Bush decided to take more time. As I've noted before, if you are planning a war, October is a much better time to have it than March. I'd be even happier if Bush decided to declare victory and go home, arguing that his threats of armed action have effectively boxed Saddam in for the present.

(2) Despite my hopes that he will see the error of his ways at this late date, I very much doubt that Bush will refrain from going to war, given his temperament and all the signals he's been sending over the past few months. He seems determined to do the wrong thing at the wrong time for all the wrong reasons.

(3) The reason why Bush is being put in this pickle is that his Administration has been simply terrible at diplomacy. By alienating his allies, throwing his weight around, and insisting that nothing anyone else does can sway him, Bush has effectively made it impossible to achieve what he most desires-- a strong U.N. resolution placing the support of the world community behind his goal of disarming and replacing Saddam. The Administration's problem has been that it doesn't take diplomacy seriously-- it appears to believe that tough talk and threats of force are the only way to get things done internationally. The events of the last few months have proved that this position is both naive and dangerous. If Bush has to back down at this point, he will reap what he has sown. And if he goes to war regardless, we all will reap what he has sown.

JB

Nat Hentoff adds a piece on the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003, popularly known as Patriot Act II. The bill, which was drafted in secret, was leaked on February 7th. You can find my assessment of the Act here and here. EPIC has a useful compendium of resources, including the ACLU's section by section analysis of the proposed act.

As TalkLeft points out, there is a real danger that this bill is going to get introduced as soon as we go to war with Iraq. It's very important that people keep the issue before the public and get Ashcroft and the Bush Adminstration to disassociate themselves from the bill's unconstitutional provisions. Up to this point, the mainstream press has been giving them too much of a free ride. It's entirely appropriate, I think to ask our leaders if they actually support stripping the citizenship of natural born citizens if they contribute money to organizations that the Attorney General deems subversive. The press should also ask Bush and Ashcroft whether they agree that state and local governments should be given free rein to spy on innocent citizens who belong to unpopular groups by preventing courts from enjoining such practices. I think that the more Americans know about what the Administration is proposing in secret, the less confidence they will have that our leaders are really keeping us safe as opposed to aggrandizing their own power.

JB

Dwight Meredith has been running a series of valuable posts on the Bush Administration's tendency to lie, mislead, and generally to say one thing while doing another. I first noticed this tendency during the 2000 campaign. When Vice President Gore argued that Bush's proposed tax cuts would cause severe deficits and mainly benefit very rich people, Bush simply repeated over and over that these criticisms were "fuzzy math." It seems quite clear in retrospect that it is Bush who has been the master of fuzzy math. His Administration has repeatedly fudged figures, and hidden the long term costs of his tax cuts. It has announced support for a wide variety of programs and policies-- like homeland security-- and then cut back on spending for them in its budgets. It has repeatedly asserted its belief in the values of decentralization and federalism and then told the states that they will have to go it alone in funding and financing programs, with the result that state and local governments are in their worst fiscal crisis in many many years.

How does the Bush Administration get away with this? It gets away with it by stating that the President believes in X and then, some days or weeks later, failing to fund X or doing the exact opposite of X. For example, the President will say that he supports clean air and water, and a healthy environment in a public statement, and then will cut funding for EPA enforcement or weaken environmental regulations. Or he will announce that he strongly believes in Americorps but cut it out of his budget. He will announce that the government needs to make the homeland safe and denounce those who oppose him as uninterested in protecting the homeland and then fail to appropriate sufficient money for homeland security in his budget.

This strategy puts the burden on the press, and the public, to connect the earlier statement of what the Administration says it believes in and promises to do with what it actually does later on. If the press and the public do not follow up, because the news cycle has moved on, or the public's attention has been diverted to other matters, then the Administration gets away with it. It appears to be in favor of the environment while actually harming it; it seems to be in favor of helping states take on regulatory tasks while actually refusing them any help; it appears to be devoted to making America safe while actually failing to make the necessary expenditures to guarantee our safety. Because there is no follow up, and no follow through, the Administration can have it both ways. It can say whatever it thinks is popular, or compassionate, or fair, and then do things that are unpopular, heartless, and deeply unfair.

If, by some chance, an intrepid journalist or commentator asks the Administation how it can justify its policies given its stated committments, the response is simple: The journalist is wrong. The Administration remains committed to a strong environment, a healthy economy, more jobs for more Americans, fair tax breaks for everyone, a safe and secure homeland, and so on. That is to say, the Administration simply insists that it isn't doing what it is in fact doing, and then dares journalists to prove otherwise. And even if they prove otherwise, the Administration will simply deny that proof has been offered.

The Administration, in other words, has learned that in the current media world, it is enough simply to say things over and over again, and wait for the news cycle to bury any inconsistencies. It has, so far, at least, been a fairly effective strategy, for most Americans do not really know great a disconnect there is between this President's public pronouncments and his actual policies. And if the Administration has its way, they never will.

JB

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has issued an opinion refusing to rehear its June 2002 decision holding that the Pledge of Allegiance may not be recited in public schools if it includes the words "under God," which were added by Congressional act in 1954.

Politicians will have a field day with this one, especially as we are about to go to war.

Is the Ninth Circuit's decision correct? Well, it's not obviously incorrect, but the court could have decided the case the other way.

First, consider a much easier case. Suppose that in 1954 Congress modified the pledge to say "under Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior." There seems to be little doubt that public school teachers could not lead classes in recitation of that version of the Pledge of Allegiance at the beginning of each school day. It is too sectarian a statement. Similarly, even if the Pledge said "One Nation, with fervent belief in a God who created us all," it might seem to be too obvious an endorsement of a particular theological position. The one thing that the state may not do under the First Amendment's Establishment Clause is endorse a particular concept of religion or religious belief as the correct or official one. Nor may it create its own theological beliefs or doctrines and pronounce them as the official beliefs of the government. To do this is to violate the most central command of the Establishment Clause.

But Congress didn't do this exactly in 1954. Instead it asserted that the United States is one nation "under God." Now is this an endorsement of a religious viewpoint? Is it an assertion of a preferred or official position about a religious point of view? Well, on its face it appears to be. And given the time the amendment was made, it might well have been designed to distinguish God-fearing Americans from godless Communists in Soviet Russia.

Nevertheless, the expression "under God" might fall into a small category of situations or cases that have been called "ceremonial Deism." These are situations where people express hope or faith or trust in God through traditional and styilized invocations that have very little religious feeling to them. Ceremonial Deism is hallowed by long practice and tends to lose its religious significance over time. The idea is that it has become essentially secular and people shouldn't get too upset about it; it is just the sort of thing one is supposed to say on important occasions and we shouldn't understand it as an official religious point of view.

An example of ceremonial Deism is the use of the motto "In God We Trust" on the nation's coins. That motto is so old (and the way the sentiment is expressed is so archaic) that it seems backgrounded in social life. Nevertheless, the idea of ceremonial Deism is quite tricky, for it relies on a generalized sense of social meaning. If Congress changed the motto from the archaic "In God We Trust" to the more straightforward "We Believe in God" it might be unconstitutional, because the new motto would no longer be hallowed by long usage and it would appear to be a more direct endorsement of a religious viewpoint. What differentiates "In God We Trust" from "We Believe in God" is not that the phrases have different meanings (they actually mean pretty much the same thing) but that we would suspect that the replacement of the first with the second was motivated by a desire to impose a particular religious viewpoint. Otherwise, why change the wording?

Under this line of reasoning, Congress might well have violated the Establishment Clause in 1954 when it added the words "under God," for Americans had gotten along quite well just saying "one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all" for decades. But, over time, the use of the words has become comfortable like an old shoe, and has lost its religious edge. It's purely ceremonial, and we can retain it.

Note that the doctrine of ceremonial Deism is a double edged sword. It allows state officials to acknowledge God's existence, but only by requiring them to affirm that the meaning of the acknowledgment is purely ceremonial and doesn't reflect fervent adherence to a particular religious belief. However, one suspects that many people want to invoke God's name precisely because they do have such fervent beliefs and they want other people to share in those beliefs, or, at the very least, publicly say the words that reflect such beliefs. But *that* purpose for legislation really is impermissible-- Our Constitution doesn't allow us to force our religion on other people.

If the Supreme Court takes the Ninth Circuit case, they may very well reverse the decision on the grounds I've just outlined-- that the pledge is just ceremonial Deism, and therefore doesn't mean what religious Americans want it to mean. That would be a predictable result, and an ironic one.

But the irony works in both directions. For a court to strike down the words "under God," particularly when they have been said formulaicly for decades, may have exactly the opposite social meaning-- suggesting that the court is attempting to remove God from the public square. Ceremonial Deism by its nature tries to have it both ways. It treats certain religious expressions as being both religious and not "really" religious. It justifies this on the grounds that the practice is one of long standing and its religious content has long since faded into the background. The problem, however, is then that deviating from the status quo in any direction-- making the goverment's claims more overtly religious or removing the religious language altogether-- seems to create a social meaning of non-neutrality with respect to religion. So in most cases the best thing to do with examples of ceremonial Deism is just to leave them alone.