Until I saw Ed Brayton's post about a math teacher fired from Cal State East Bay for refusing to sign a loyalty oath, I had mostly forgotten that I might be technically guilty of perjury. Y'see, as a public employee of the state of California, I was required to sign that exact same oath:
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Of course, as Eugene Volokh points out, these sorts of loyalty oaths have never been construed to require violence, or cheering for Stanford's tax loophole, or any other specific action. The only reason they're legal at all is that they are effectively meaningless. So by requiring them, and refusing to allow Kearney-Brown's modifications, we're not doing anything to ensure that a reserve army of math teachers will wield sharp pencils and calculators against the combined onslaught of terrorists, Mike Huckabee, film critics, zombies, Zombie Mike Huckabee, and Canada. We're just making sure that men and women of integrity can never hold public office.

I usually think cynical jokes about how politicians love corruption and empty promises are too obvious to be funny, but if you like them, feel free to insert such a joke right here.

California State University East Bay has fired a math teacher after six weeks on the job because she inserted the word "nonviolently" in her state-required Oath of Allegiance form.

Marianne Kearney-Brown, a Quaker and graduate student who began teaching remedial math to undergrads Jan. 7, lost her $700-a-month part-time job after refusing to sign an 87-word Oath of Allegiance to the Constitution that the state requires of elected officials and public employees.

"I don't think it was fair at all," said Kearney-Brown. "All they care about is my name on an unaltered loyalty oath. They don't care if I meant it, and it didn't seem connected to the spirit of the oath. Nothing else mattered. My teaching didn't matter. Nothing."

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Each time, when asked to "swear (or affirm)" that she would "support and defend" the U.S. and state Constitutions "against all enemies, foreign and domestic," Kearney-Brown inserted revisions: She wrote "nonviolently" in front of the word "support," crossed out "swear," and circled "affirm." All were to conform with her Quaker beliefs, she said.

I can understand non-competes and NDAs being required for some people to start working, but to require loyalty oaths?