The nation's highest court chose Tuesday to decide whether the Pledge of Allegiance as recited in schools with the phrase "one nation under God" is an unconstitutional mix of church and state.

The justices will hear the appeal involving a California atheist, whose 9-year-old daughter, like most elementary school children, hears the Pledge recited daily.

Also Tuesday, the court rejected the Bush administration's request to consider whether the federal government can punish doctors for recommending marijuana to sick patients. An appeals court had said it could not.

Nine states, but not New York, have laws legalizing marijuana for patients with physician recommendations or prescriptions, and 35 states have passed legislation recognizing marijuana's medicinal value. But federal law bans the use of pot under any circumstances.

The case pits the free-speech rights of doctors against government power to keep physicians from encouraging pot use. A ruling for the administration would have doused state medical marijuana laws.

So, on the one hand, we have the high court deciding if schoolchildren ought to be saying "God" in their Pledges, and, on the other, apparently agreeing that it's cool for doctors to suggest marijuana to help their patients feel better.

Both cases hinge on the First Amendment, but the Pledge issue will be decided on the basis of establishment of religion, leaving the free-speech issues in the background.

It would have been one of those ol' freedom-to vs. freedom-from cases. Whose rights should take priority: the atheist, who is offended by the word "God," or the theist, who wants to refer to an alleged supernatural power in the Pledge?

The original Pledge, written by a Baptist minister more than a century ago, did not include the words "under God." Congress adopted that version as a patriotic tribute in 1942, and it inserted the "God" phrase more than a decade later, in 1954.

Of course, people can recite whatever version they wish, except that the Pledge has been institutionalized in government and schools.

The Oneonta Common Council and numerous other government bodies all the way to Congress recite the Pledge at the start of meetings. Schools have begun days with the Pledge for decades, though the high court already has ruled, correctly, that children could not be forced to recite it.

Presidents for years have been concluding speeches with "God bless America," presumably as a plea for some kind of divine endorsement of what they were doing.

And that's OK, some say, because our nation was founded by Christians who wrote documents such the Declaration of Independence with reasoning based on the dictates of a "God."

But the alleged metaphysical roots of our nation are entangled in contradiction and controversy. While pointing to "God" as our guide, we have consistently violated the sacred rules we attributed to such a being.

Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration, for example, could write "all men are created equal" while omitting women and slaves, which he owned. The nation has carried the banner of "God" into one war after another, and many of them have not been just, as in the case of Iraq.

Countless wars and other forms of cruelty throughout history have been based on differences in religion: Catholics against Protestants, Christians against Muslims, Muslims against Hindus, Muslims against Jews, and Protestants against different Protestants.

We've been quick to say "God" was on our side as we kill and plunder, while ignoring the teachings of our religions.

While religion may be the opiate of the individual, it is often the war cry of nations.

When Nietzsche's madman declared "God is dead" in 1882, he wasn't just spouting wishful thinking. He was being empirical. Looking at past and present, he could see that, ultimately, nations and peoples were not behaving as if they truly believed — were not living "Godly" lives.

The question facing the Supreme Court is whether saying "God" in the school-day Pledge amounts to religion, since the First Amendment guarantees that government will not "establish" religion.

Government lawyers may say the Pledge's "God" reference isn't about religion, but rather about heritage. Well, maybe it's one part of our heritage that should be eliminated from the public sphere and left in personal lives.

It's not doing our nation any good to have a fundamentalist president who believes non-Christians are condemned to hell. Look at how many non-Christians have been killed by our military since our president took office.

Maybe, since the Supreme Court respects the right of free speech for doctors, the physicians of our nation's leaders — Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney — should recommend some medicinal marijuana for them to alleviate their predilection for deceit and violence.

And who knows, smoking a little pot might help them find a "God" more worthy of the name.

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Cary Brunswick is managing editor of The Daily Star. He can be reached at (607) 432-1000, ext. 217, or cary@thedailystar.com.