They did it. They really did it.

[Stephen Maturin]

Amazing. The House of Representatives today passed a bill stripping federal courts of jurisdiction to hear cases involving constitutional challenges to the Pledge of Allegiance. The bill's text and other information is available here. You can find out how your Congress Critter voted here.

This is pretty goddamn remarkable. Jurisdiction stripping bills are frequently introduced but almost never make it past the subcommittee stage. This one actually got approved by an entire house of Congress. Jesus, help us.

More appropriately, Jesus, help the state courts. If this abomination makes it through the Senate and passes constitutional muster in the federal courts, similar nutjob bills will fall like rain. Thing is, such bills don't even come close to ending litigation of controversial federal constitutional issues; they only dump the whole mess into the laps of state court judges. Fifty separate judicial systems potentially means a whole lot of divergence in results and rationales. Goodbye uniformity, hello cluster fuck.