First up on the Supreme Court’s docket: Salazar v. Buono. This case poses two questions for Justice Sotomayor & Co.: Does a retired employee of the National Park Service have standing to sue over a cross erected in the Mojave National Preserve to honor the nation’s war dead? And did Congress succeed in bypassing the establishment clause dispute by transferring the land to private ownership? In what would appear to be a dry, boring civil matter, Justice Scalia entered with guns blazing.

ACLU attorney Peter Ellasberg on the symbolism of the cross: “It signifies that Jesus is the son of God and died to redeem mankind for our sins,” therefore, “due to its special religious significance, it should not stand alone as a prominent symbol in a national park.”

To which Scalia responded: “It’s erected as a war memorial. I assume it is erected in honor of all the war dead.”

Not so, Ellasberg objected: “I have been in Jewish cemeteries. There is never a cross on a tombstone of a Jew.”

Scalia blasted back: “I don’t think you can leap from that to the conclusion that the only war dead that the cross honors are the Christian war dead. I think that’s an outrageous conclusion.”

On and on it went.

What then, is the meaning of the cross? When atheists, Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Wiccans, etc., join the military, do they instantly become “saved”? The same people who complained about the flag with President Obama’s countenance on it (saying it disgraced the memories of those brave soldiers who died defending it) now say it’s the cross they were defending. I for one understand neither the logic or the fervor of those who have taken this position.

“He spends his life explaining from his pulpit that the glory of Christianity consists in the fact that though it is not true it has been found necessary to invent it.” – Hector Hugh Munro