U.S. House Passes Akin’s
Pledge Protection Act

By Jim Day

On July 19th the U.S. House of Representatives passed 2nd District Missouri Congressman Todd Akin’s Pledge Protection Act (PPA) which protects the Pledge of Allegiance from attempts by federal courts to declare it unconstitutional because of the phrase “under God.” The PPA was overwhelmingly passed by a vote of 260 for the bill and 167 against it with 5 people not voting.

Congressman Akin issued the following statement regarding the passage of his bill: “I am thankful for the support that the House Republican leadership displayed during the passage of the Pledge Protection Act. I am also encouraged that my colleagues were not persuaded by the hand wringing of liberal activists who show no concern at the court’s desire to create some imagined utopia at the expense of the separation of powers and the Constitution itself. For federal courts to suggest that the Pledge of Allegiance is unconstitutional because of the words “under God” and to therefore prohibit children from reciting it would be to turn the First Amendment upon its head to use it as an instrument of censorship. The House today acted within its authority to check the judiciary as it ignores its proper constitutional role.”

The bill itself states: “...no court created by Act of Congress shall have any jurisdiction, and the Supreme Court shall have no appellate jurisdiction, to hear or decide any question pertaining to the interpretation of, or the validity under the Constitution of, the Pledge of Allegiance, as defined in section 4 of title 4, or its recitation.”

What was really awesome was Congressman Akin’s closing speech on the House floor during the debate. You can listen to his speech on his web site at www.house.gov/akin. For those without access to the internet the following is a transcript of that speech.

“Mr. AKIN. Mr. Chairman, I would like to start by quoting a person who I believe is the founder, or at least acknowledged as the father, of the Democratic Party, Thomas Jefferson. His words encased in stone on his monument read: ‘The God that gave us life gave us liberty.’ It goes on to say: ‘Can the liberties of a people be secure if we remove the conviction that those liberties are the gift of God?’

“The author of our Declaration well understood that it is impossible to assert that we have inalienable rights and at the same time ignore the person that gave us the inalienable rights--the God that provided those rights themselves.

“This question goes to the heart of what America has always stood for and always fought for. “We believe that there is a God that gives basic rights to all people, and it is the job of the government to protect those rights. If the courts come to the decision that we cannot acknowledge God, then we have ripped the heart out of the logic of what makes America, the fact that our rights come from God Himself, and we have thumbed our nose at Thomas Jefferson and our Declaration and our 300-plus years of history.

“Now we have good reason to fear that the Court will not be content to ignore just the Fifth Amendment and say that you can take private property from people and redistribute it without a public purpose, but that they may also decide to take the First Amendment and turn it upside down and use it as a sword of censorship rather than an oasis of free speech.

“I am not persuaded by the pious hand-wringing of liberal activists who flinch not at the courts’ unfettered march to create some imagined utopia at the expense of the separation of powers in the Constitution itself.

“It is time for the Congress to reassert our legislative authority. It is time for the Congress to signal an end to the courts’ freewheeling forays of unchecked legislative license.”

At press time the Pledge Protection Act had been read twice in the Senate and had been referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee where it now waits for the Senate to reconvene next month after Labor Day.

We need to pray that the Senate passes this bill this session and that other such bills will be introduced and passed in the future to reign in our runaway, activist courts. And, we also need to remove any and every judge/justice from any court in the land who has in the past legislated from the bench and anyone who thinks he or she has the right and power to disregard the original intent of our Constitution.