Supreme Court Decides Pledge Case on Technicality

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Monday that California atheist Michael Newdow lacked the right to bring a constitutional challenge to the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, avoiding a decision on the key church-state issue.

By an 8-0 vote, the justices overturned a controversial decision by a U.S. appeals court in California that reciting the phrase amounted to a violation of church-state separation.

The ruling by the justices was based on the technicality that Newdow could not bring the case before the court because he did not have legal control over his daughter, on whose behalf he was arguing....

--Reuters

Poor Karl Rove -- nobody's upset about gay marriage and now the Supremes have deprived him of the other election-year wedge issue he was counting on. He must be kicking himself. And devious Tony Scalia went to all the trouble of recusing himself in this case, in the hope that there'd be a 4-4 tie and the California ruling would stand, but his little trick didn't work