Forcing all individuals making court testimony to swear on the Christian Bible is equivalent to a state endorsement of religion, and worse than that, is completely useless and stupid. Religious texts have no place in government buildings, especially as points of centrality to the proceedings therein. Making someone take an oath on the Christian Bible before they give testimony is just like saying they have to be a practicing Christian in order for their testimony to be valid. All metaphysical arguments aside, our constitution clearly states that all citizens, and therefore the court testimony of all citizens, are equal under the law, regardless of their religious practices. Even for the 8% of the population for whom swearing on the Bible has any relevance, the practice is still irrelevant in comparison to the law, i.e., even if your oath is more sincere in your heart if you have your hand on the Bible, the oath you take in court is a legal one, and it is a criminal offense to knowingly lie when you take the stand, Bibles notwithstanding. Can you imagine if that Bible oath were the only policy at work in the court? The vast majority of Americans would have no obligation to tell the truth on the stand, and justice would never be done. Give him a Quran to hold and he might care, but swearing on the Bible doesn't mean a thing to a Muslim. And even if you have a Bible, a Torah, a Quran, a Bahgavad Gita, a Book of Mormon, an Eight-Fold Path leaflet, and the fucking Tao of Pooh, you've still got my crazy ass to deal with, and there are more of me than Christians like to think. Basically, the practice of swearing on the Bible in court is both thoroughly illegal and entirely useless. So why does this antiquated ritual remain in practice? For the same reason causing everything that's wrong in America - this country is run by the beaurocratic, go-around-your-ass-to-get-to-your-thumb Christian establishment. Get a couple of atheists on the bench who don't give a fuck about your little Jewvows, and we'll get something accomplished - I'll skip the Bible and your pathetic little fear that God will smite you if you tell a fib, and show you the wrath of the great American penal system should your testimony prove untrue.
And another thing: do liberals not have to take Economic, Legal, and Political Systems in high school? The job of the judicial branch of the government is to interpret the written word of the law, not to write it. With the exception of the Supreme Court, no judicial body has the right to set judicial or legal precedent. That's the job of the legislature. Once they make the laws, then you can put people in jail for it, but not until then. I don't care who you put in Congress or what sort of liberal, fascist laws they might pass, but conservatives and only conservatives belong in judge's robes. Because conservatives won't illegally legislate from the bench, nor will they read technicalities into the law that aren't there. Similarly, the job of the legislature is to represent the wishes of their constituency. The idea behind a representative democracy is that the citizens elect people to cast their votes for them. Those representatives are not supposed to make decisions on their own accord, but rather they are involved in the voting district from which they are elected, and they find out what the people want and then they cast a vote respecting that, regardless of whether they personally agree with it. Much like the Presidential Electoral College, they are middle men and nothing more, and the only reason Congress exists at all is because it's impossible or at least extremely difficult to have a true democracy with a population this size. Sorry about that, I just know too many people who don't know how the government works, and far fewer who know how it ought to work.
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