Fiddlesticks

Sometimes I wonder if this world is one of those really bad movies where politicians are blatantly evil. Then I realize, no, this isn’t a really bad movie — it’s just a really bad reality.

Never mind what side of the issue you stand on regarding whether the anti-Communist-era Congress was right or wrong in adding “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954 — I don’t believe anyone in their right mind can possibly think this is the proper time to be debating it, given everything else that’s going on in the U.S. and world.

The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Todd Akin, R-Mo., said America was a nation of God-given inalienable rights and that’s why the country is in a war against “radical Islamists.” Democrats wouldn’t want to “cut and run” in Iraq, he said, “if they understood the importance of those basic principles and that inalienable rights are impossible without a recognition of God and that’s why the pledge bill is important and not irrelevant or trivial.”

This is not fiddling while Rome burns — this is making sure Nero plays patriotic tunes.

But never mind that. The context of this bill is to “protect” the Pledge from legal challenges in the courts, under the guise of our “founding principles” being threatened by such challenges.

That’s right — they want to protect our Constitutional rights by taking them away.

In addition to the pledge protection bill, the House GOP’s “American values agenda” includes the gay marriage amendment, a ban on human cloning, a bill requiring women seeking late-term abortions to be informed that the fetus feels pain, an Internet gambling ban bill that has passed the House and several gun rights bills.

Eliot is still right.

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.