I'm a fan of the show and I have to say that this is the most perfect summation of the plot I've heard yet: "These guys treat the situation like a past-due water bill." I live for the eps that explore "the situation" but instead get weird ex-Nazi mysteries.

That said, I was highly annoyed that the way we were supposed to know that we were in an alternate Fringeverse is because the giant floaty letters don't know how to spell.

This would be exactly why I neither watched LOST nor read anyone's Twitter or FB stream who was watching it.

Dittos.

After having read through the amicus (which is written in hilariously bad English and has so many typos I wonder where the author went to law school—I'd've flunked out of Legal Research & Writing if I submitted this!), I am struck by open they are about their agenda and similarly, how closed-minded they are about who they're excluding. They are simultaneously broad (they lump all "Protestants" together as well as all Pagan faiths as "Wicca"—another hilarious misunderstanding) and narrow (believing that only monotheistic faiths can be religions under the constitution). Their self-contradictory statements can even be found in the Complaint itself (which includes in its "five religions") "Native American"—which is neither a monolithic faith nor in many cases a monotheistic one. I can only hope that our judicial system stands up, as it used to, for those who traditionally have little or no voice.

Actually, it truly expresses their intent: to build walls between themselves and Everyone Else; to build walls between the government (which they want to control) and the governed. I'm quite impressed that they didn't call themselves BridgeBuilders and try to advance the theory that they're really just trying to bring people together.

I find it telling that they call themselves "WallBuilders". At least they're wearing their ideology on their sleeves (since they're not "BridgeBuilders").

You know, this is an interesting coda to the original post—what does the California constitution say about freedom of religion? Very often, the California constitution is more permissive/liberal than the US Constitution (as, for example, with regard to the genders, homosexuality, and marijuana). Does anyone know why this is being brought under federal rather than State jurisdiction? The California constitution was written much more recently, so "establishment of religion" would have a different "historical" meaning here than it would for the Founding Fathers (since that is the argument being put forth).

I may or may not have danced around naked when I heard the news. I've actually been thinking of getting a netbook for around the house surfing

Wait, so a single eye qualifies as the Eye of Horus? So if I wink at someone, it's not a come-hither thing, it's a sign of being in a secret society? Wow, and here all this time I thought I was picking up people!

Yeah, that occurred to me on occasion. It seems like the jobs are: Ministry, Auror, and Teacher. There don't seem to be too many Wizarding grocers…although I guess one could accomplish that without an O.W.L.