Put an Atheist on Supreme Court

President Obama should "absolutely" take into account the religious views of his next nominee for the Supreme Court, but not for the usual reasons, Marc Cooper says. "Clearly, the next person to take the bench should be an atheist," he writes for the Los Angeles Times. Having a nonbeliever on the bench would be a "mighty blow" in favor of the Jeffersonian principles of reason and freedom.

"It's rather staggering to consider that more than two centuries after our Constitution codified the absolute separation of church and state, we've never had a single top court justice who was an atheist," writes Cooper. Thomas Jefferson himself figured the "mystical generation" of Jesus would someday be regarded as fable. So let's stop asking, "What would Jesus do," and start asking, "What would Jefferson do?" (More US Supreme Court stories.)