June, 2007

After last year’s mid-term elections dimmed its hopes that a federal constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage would pass the Congress, the D.C.-based Alliance for Marriage announced it was decamping for the field, to drum up anti-gay “caucuses” in the states. On the road to its “50-state strategy,” AFM crowed that a “Marriage Protection Caucus (TM)” was established in each of South Carolina, Maryland, and New Mexico, and its map claims several more, but it’s less clear how many actual legislators signed up in these states.

When AFM announced its “two-year plan” back in November, it also announced that it would be “deploying a diverse group of spokespersons,” claiming that its coalition was “unique and unprecedented in the degree to which it cuts across racial, cultural and religious boundary lines.” Now, AFM has begun to “deploy” Latinos, launching a California Latino Steering Committee to Protect Marriage.

AFM may have an uphill struggle recruit Latino support for an anti-gay amendment to the U.S. Constitution. A 2004 Field poll found that 57 percent of Hispanic voters in California opposed such an amendment. A 2006 poll by the Center for American Values in Public Life showed that Hispanics in the U.S. favor granting committed gay and lesbian couples the same rights as married couples in areas of hospital visitation, health insurance, and pensions by a two-to-one margin – a higher margin of support than non-Hispanics. In addition, a majority of Hispanics favor recognizing same-sex couples in either marriage or civil unions.

Other right-wing groups attacked AFM for supposedly being soft on civil unions and “counterfeit marriage,” but AFM is apparently focusing its efforts in California on a bill that would expand the rights of domestic partnerships – an act that would “erase the legal road map for marriage and the family from state law,” according to a member of AFM’s Latino committee. Nevertheless, the group’s ultimate goal remains to amend the U.S. Constitution. Speaking of efforts in some other states to erode domestic partner benefits, AFM President Matt Daniels said, "When the dust settles, we'll have a national standard for marriage. What is going on in the states is a dress rehearsal.”

New York Times, on a recent New York Times/CBS/MTV poll: “Young Americans Are Leaning Left, New Poll Finds.”

Focus on the Family’s Citizenlink, on the same poll: “Young Americans Hold Conservative Views.” The article notes that “Fifty-four percent of young adults expressed opposition to same-sex marriage.” That’s one way of looking at it. On the other hand, both young people and adults in general support either same-sex marriage or civil unions – and young people are significantly more in favor of same-sex marriage than other adults:

Earlier this month, we wrote about a controversy regarding the Albemarle County School Board in Virginia and its "backpack mail" program. As we explained then, the Jerry Falwell-affiliated Liberty Counsel had sent a letter to the school board, citing an earlier 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling striking down a Montgomery County (MD) “backpack mail” policy after it refused to distribute fliers for Child Evangelism Fellowship’s “Good News Clubs.” 

The Liberty Counsel warned the Albemarle board that its refusal to distribute fliers about a church-sponsored vacation bible school via its own "backpack mail" program was unconstitutional and the board quickly changed its policy.  

The Right was quite pleased with itself – at least until fliers for a summer camp for atheists and freethinkers started showing up in students’ backpacks.  

With that, Vision America swung into action, saying it was “outrageous to force teachers to distribute these flyers” and apparently its activists so overwhelmed the Albemarle County School Board that the board has decided to do away with the backpack mail program entirely:

This fall, the load of papers coming home with Albemarle County kids in backpack mail will be lighter: no Boy Scouts recruitments, no YMCA sign-ups, no mention of vacation Bible school. And no fliers touting atheist camp.

…

Superintendent Pam Moran told the School Board her email inbox shut down when a national organization-- Vision America headquartered in Lufkin, Texas-- got wind of the "beyond belief" Camp Quest fliers and flooded her with messages protesting school-abetted "atheistic indoctrination." Technicians had to work over the weekend to get her email back up and running.

So to recap: Liberty Counsel eagerly embraced “viewpoint neutrality” in order to get evangelical Christian materials into the schools’ “backpack mail” program, but once that neutrality extended to include atheists, Vision America stepped in and shut the program down all together. 

Washington Post editorial, September 18, 2005: Confirm John Roberts

Judge Roberts represents the best nominee liberals can reasonably expect from a conservative president who promised to appoint judges who shared his philosophy. Before his nomination, we suggested several criteria that Mr. Bush should adopt to garner broad bipartisan support: professional qualifications of the highest caliber, a modest conception of the judicial function, a strong belief in the stability of precedent, adherence to judicial philosophy, even where the results are not politically comfortable, and an appreciation that fidelity to the text of the Constitution need not mean cramped interpretations of language that was written for a changing society. Judge Roberts possesses the personal qualities we hoped for and testified impressively as to his belief in the judicial values. While he almost certainly won't surprise America with generally liberal rulings, he appears almost as unlikely to willfully use the law to advance his conservative politics.

Washington Post editorial, January 15, 2006: Confirm Samuel Alito

Humility is called for when predicting how a Supreme Court nominee will vote on key issues, or even what those issues will be, given how people and issues evolve. But it's fair to guess that Judge Alito will favor a judiciary that exercises restraint and does not substitute its judgment for that of the political branches in areas of their competence. That's not all bad.

Washington Post editorial, June 29, 2007: A Blow to Brown

Justice Kennedy's concurring opinion correctly took the four-justice plurality to task for its glib assertion, in the opinion written by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., that the "way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race." As Justice Kennedy noted, "Fifty years of experience since Brown. . . should teach us that the problem before us defies so easy a solution." There is reason to doubt whether the leeway that Justice Kennedy would give school systems would be adequate for the task, and, even if it were, to worry how long that uneasy equipoise would hold on a court tilting as far to the right as this one is.

While the national Republican Party, with the help of right-wing interest groups, has largely purged itself of moderate politicians in recent years, a new survey finds the Republican voters have not necessarily followed. GOP pollster Tony Fabrizio surveyed 2,000 self-described Republicans and found that 77 percent said employers should not have the right to fire an employee over their sexual orientation; nearly half would let gays serve openly in the military. While 61 percent called themselves “pro-life,” only 28 percent want to ban all abortions, and 72 percent said the decision should be up to the woman, her family, and her doctor, not the government. Overall, 60 percent said they would be likely to vote for a presidential candidate whom they disagreed with on abortion but who agreed with them on most other issues.

Fabrizio’s poll also showed that the economic wing of the GOP has shrunk by two-thirds in the last ten years – replaced by those concerned primarily with foreign policy and national security. Marc Ambinder has more details.

When the anti-immigrant Minutemen emerged onto the national scene, Washington Times reporter Jerry Seper wrote glowing profiles of the border vigilantes, but over the past year, relations have soured as Seper investigated allegations of shady finances from within the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps. In Seper’s reports, one mysterious factor has been the numerous ways MCDC is intertwined with a host of non-profit and for-profit organizations associated with Alan Keyes. While Chris Simcox, head of MCDC, responded once last year with some unconvincing filings, the groups and leaders implicated have remained silent.

Now, one Keyes group is responding. Although only briefly mentioned in the Times, RenewAmerica – a web site featuring writing by Keyes and like-minded commentators – calls a recent article “an obvious (and unprovoked) effort to discredit the organization.” In the article, Seper examines the FEC filings of the Minuteman PAC and discovers that 97 percent of the money it spent went to “operating expenses,” including many payments to for-profit consulting and fundraising companies associated with Keyes. These filings – as well as filings for a second Minuteman PAC – are publicly available.

In listing some of these PAC expenditures, Seper mentions RenewAmerica in passing:

Politechs Inc., a Los Angeles-based political consulting firm headed by Mary Parker Lewis, a key adviser to MCDC and a top official in several tax-exempt fundraising organizations led or founded by Mr. Keyes. In the report, the Minuteman PAC said it paid $10,000 for fundraising to Politechs. Mrs. Lewis served as chief of staff for Mr. Keyes' 1996 and 2000 presidential runs and in his 2004 senatorial race against Barack Obama in Illinois. She also is executive director of Declaration Foundation and chief of staff at Renew America, another tax-exempt fundraising group founded by Mr. Keyes.

According to RenewAmerica counsel Steven Voigt, “Ms. Lewis--a longtime colleague of Alan Keyes--is in fact Keyes' Chief of Staff, not RenewAmerica's. She's not an officer of RenewAmerica.”

What’s more interesting, though, is Voigt’s angry denial that RenewAmerica is even a non-profit at all. “RenewAmerica is not tax-exempt,” he writes. This may come as a surprise to those who have donated to the company. In the fine print, the group says that “to avoid federal government intrusion, your donation to RenewAmerica.us is NOT tax deductible.” Registered non-profits, which don’t pay taxes, are required to report publicly their revenue, their expenditures, and the salaries of the top officials.

Voigt parlays this mention of RenewAmerica – as a biographical detail of Keyes associate Mary Lewis – into a broadside against Seper’s “bad journalism,” and adds suggestively, “I am left to wonder whether the rest of his article is equally unreliable.” But since the Keyes groups actually implicated in this article on the Minutemen’s suspicious finances have yet to respond (perhaps preoccupied with drafting Keyes to run for president), and Voigt is unwilling to look into it (“I am not counsel to any of the other organizations mentioned in that article, so I don't know”), Voigt’s editorial raises more questions than it settles.

The Des Moines Register reports that some towns in Iowa are trying to keep presidential aspirants away from local parades and other events because of the logistical and security nightmares their presence causes.

As one organizer explained, “We've spent three years creating these events and celebration. We want it to be for the people."

But apparently Sen. Sam Brownback was not one to be deterred:  

Restrictions were also placed on candidates at the John Wayne celebration in Winterset last month. No speeches, for one.

…

Trask said U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback skirted the speech restriction in Winterset by purchasing a $100 ticket for the VIP dinner during the John Wayne celebration.

"We let him speak for four minutes, and he kept his remarks to John Wayne," Trask said. "He was a favored candidate of the Wayne family.

Is Brownback really so desperate for votes in Iowa that he plunked down $100 dollars in an attempt to circumvent Winterset’s restrictions?  It sure looks that way.  Or maybe he just really, really wanted to be a part of the John Wayne Birthday Centennial Celebration.   

As we have noted repeatedly over the last several years, the Right has developed various means to defend controversial Bush administration nominations against those who raise concerns about a nominee’s views by accusing anyone who might voice such concerns of being in some way a bigot. 

As we noted recently, the Right has routinely accused those who opposed nominees such as Miguel Estrada, Priscilla Owen, and Janice Rogers Brown of being, respectively, anti-Latino, anti-woman, and straight out racist. 

Perhaps the most common accusation is that those who raise concerns about a nominee’s views are motivated by anti-religious bias, which is a charge they’ve thrown around multiple times, most notably regarding opposition to William Pryor and John Roberts.  

And they are at it again, this time in defending Dr. James Holsinger, President Bush's nominee for surgeon general, who has exhibited an open hostility to homosexuals.

Paul Weyrich levels the accusation:

In spite of his qualifications, radical homosexual activists are intent on defeating his nomination, in blatant violation of Article VI of the Constitution, because of his religious beliefs

So does Al Mohler:

In other words, Dr. Holsinger's opponents are not directing their attention to his medical experience or qualifications, but to his beliefs and responsibilities as a Christian and a member of the Judicial Council of the United Methodist Church.

…

The nomination of Dr. James Holsinger promises now to be a defining moment in American history. Will it now be necessary for a nominee to deny the teachings of his or her own church in order to be confirmed by the United States Senate?

It seems that, for the Right, any criticism of a nominee is out-of-line if the views for which the nominee is being criticized are, in some way, rooted in his or her religious faith, thereby allowing them to ignore the issue at hand, which is the nominee’s actual writings and record. 

But for some reason, the Right seems to have a different standard for Democrats and feels free to openly disparage not only their views, but their respective faiths directly.  

For example, not too long ago, the National Clergy Council openly declared that “[Sen. Barack] Obama's Christianity woefully deficient.” 

Or what about Don Feder’s recent broadside:

Democrats are to traditional religion what Islam is to tolerance.

…

It's not that Democrats aren't religious - rather that they practice a religion alien to both Christianity and Judaism.

Its doctrine includes support for abortion on demand, hate crimes legislation, the Kyoto Treaty, driver's licenses for illegal aliens, multiculturalism and a socialism of property and values.

Its priesthood is feminists, environmentalists, gay-activists and radical secularists, presided over by its college of cardinals --Rosie O'Donnell, Bill Maher, Barbra Streisand and Al Franken.

It calls for atonement for the sins of sexism, homophobia, the religious right, the gun lobby, pharmaceutical companies, big oil, Guantanamo, Halliburton and trans-fatty acids.

Its vision of Kingdom Come looks a lot like San Francisco on a Saturday night.

Or what about Paul Weyrich himself, who once attacked John Kerry, Tom Harkin and Dick Durbin for being “nothing but hypocrites” who were” trying to take advantage of their Catholic faith when its suits their purposes on the campaign trail, but shirking the obligations that really come with that faith” and called on the media to differentiate between “politicians [who] have taken stands in accordance with their faith and are therefore ‘observant,’ true Catholics and which ones are non-observant, only claiming to be Catholic.”

Apparently, for the Right, opposing a Bush nominee is proof of blatant religious bigotry, whereas directly denigrating the faith of Democrats is perfectly acceptable.   

Former Sen. Fred Thompson, who is reportedly going to announce his candidacy for president soon, recently offered his video greetings to the annual convention of the National Right to Life Committee, an organization that endorsed him when he ran for Senate in 1994. While Thompson has so far been favorably received by the Religious Right– with the possible exception of James Dobson – the recent Supreme Court decision regarding the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act is a reminder that groups like NRLC may have second thoughts about him.

The case, FEC v. Wisconsin Right to Life, limited parts of the campaign-finance law that regulated “issue ads” implicating a candidate for office. While anti-abortion activists were not the only critics of the law to appreciate the decision, the case had a particular relevance for them with an NRLC state affiliate’s name on the docket. And such activists have also made campaign finance into a campaign issue for presidential candidate John McCain, the co-author of the bill – despite McCain’s fervent opposition to abortion.

When it comes to Thompson, these activists might remember his role as sherpa for John Roberts during his contentious confirmation to be chief justice of the Court, and Roberts was the author of the Wisconsin Right to Life decision. But, as National Journal reporter Marc Ambinder reminds us, Thompson was also a major backer of campaign reform during his time in the Senate, when he chaired the committee investigating campaign finance – and he picked a nasty fight with a handful of advocacy groups, including the same National Right to Life Committee.

In 1997, Thompson used a Senate government affairs committee hearing to probe the electioneering of National Right to Life and other groups, and his subpoena request for internal NRTL documents was strongly resisted by counsel -- including James Bopp, Jr., who now advises Mitt Romney.

In addition, Thompson wrote a friend-of-the-court brief in 2003 in support of the law’s overturned provisions:

Thompson wrote that "sham issue advocacy by non-party groups" was a "problem" that BCRA "addresses." Congress, Thompson wrote, "had a compelling interest in enacting the BCRA reforms. The rapidly increasing practices of raising and spending soft money (with a significant focus on sham ‘issue ads’ that unquestionably influence federal elections) fully justify the BCRA reforms.”

Thompson and McCain were the only two Republican senators “firmly committed” to campaign reform, as the New York Times reported in 1997, and that advocacy has apparently cost McCain much support from a part of the right-wing base that would seemingly take to him. Will Thompson’s campaign reform past come back to haunt him?

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has been skulking around the Republican presidential primary race in recent months, saying that announcing this early is “stupid”  and, in the mean time, attempting to build grassroots support by running a separate campaign, ostensibly not on behalf of himself, but for “the future.” On the web site of his futuristic organization, called “American Solutions for Winning the Future,” you can count down the days until September 27, when Gingrich will apparently let the cat out of the bag. Meanwhile, he’s been rebuilding contacts (confessing adultery to James Dobson, for example) and working to reestablish his “intellectual firebrand” reputation on the Right that he lost after the unpopularity of the government shutdown and the Clinton impeachment – along with his own scandals – led him to resign from the House.

Gingrich’s operation recently commissioned a poll to prove support for his ideas; according to Gingrich, “By 84 to 12, the American People Support the Key Proposition of American Solutions.” Just what are these ideas? From Gingrich’s newsletter:

92% believe we need to provide long-term solutions instead of short-term fixes (only 5% believe it is unimportant);

80% believe we must strengthen and revitalize America's core values (only 9% believe that is unimportant); and

67% favor moving the government into the 21st Century (only 15% believe that is unimportant).

That’s right: The people of this nation prefer “solutions” to “fixes,” are in favor of our “core values,” and generally support a government located in the same time period as its citizenry. Other results from the poll show widespread support for “Defeating America’s enemies” and belief in the prediction that “new technology and science” will “open up incredible possibilities” – in “a variety of fields”!

Since Gingrich -- famous for pushing the far-right “Contract with America” and for his aggressive, no-holds-barred attack on the Clinton Administration -- is not going to be running on the Care Bears ticket, it’s unclear why he’s spending so much money promoting these vague platitudes. While he retains his “gut connection” with the GOP’s right-wing base, he understands that playing to that base “drives away the non-base.” Perhaps “winning the future” means forgetting when the name Newt Gingrich meant partisan rancor and a 24 percent favorability rating.

Tony Perkins and Chuck Donovan - president and executive vice president, respectively, of the Family Research Council – took to the pages of the Politico today to state in no-uncertain terms that the prospect of a Rudy Giuliani victory in the GOP presidential primary is completely unacceptable to the Right:  

Now comes Mayor Giuliani, telling us that the moral core [opposition to abortion] of his party is no big deal after all. On this, Rudy is wrong. He is sparking a fight whose moral seriousness appears, so far, to be lost on many of his allies. The Wall Street Journal, for example, has editorialized that advocates for life are raising questions about Rudy because we want to be on television. Excuse me, but if we really wanted headlines and flashbulbs, we would sacrifice our core convictions and hug Rudy at noon in Times Square.

…

Make no mistake, however; the aim of social conservatives is not to strew the path of the Republican Party with roses. We are not waiting in the winner's circle with a garland of roses for whoever becomes the GOP nominee. Social conservatives have entered the political fray with abiding beliefs about mediating institutions like church and family that both coincide with and make smaller government conservatism possible. Their first allegiance is to those beliefs, however, and not to a party label.

It is odd that Perkins and Donovan would warn they and their right-wing activists and allies are not beholden to a “party label,” considering that their recent, and upcoming, activities certainly suggest otherwise.

For good measure, they also trot out their favorite bogus claim that all Republican electoral losses can in one way or another be attributed to the fact that the GOP abandoned its right-wing base: 

Today, the Republican Party is in trouble with the body politic not because it has been too "pro-life," too committed to budget restraint or too devoted to ethics in government. The GOP is struggling today because voters have come to believe that it "grew in office." The GOP "grew" comfortable with close proximity to the spending power, piling up earmarks to suit members' personal interests. The GOP "grew" addicted to the perks of office, soliciting and dispensing favors to lobbyists bankrolled by gambling interests. The GOP "grew" comfortable with the homosexual subculture, proclaiming devotion to the family but protecting then-Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) from public exposure of his misconduct.

FRC’s ire is directed not only at Giuliani, but also his supporters who have been more or less telling right-wing activists to put a sock in it when it comes to concerns about the candidate’s position on choice. But FRC clearly has no intention of staying silent, going so far as to proclaim that, should he win the GOP primary, Giuliani “will bury his party's future hopes” by ultimately destroying the heretofore mutually beneficial political relationship between the Republican Party and its right-wing base.

Janice Crouse of Concerned Women for America attacked Code Pink, a “women-initiated” anti-war protest group, for advocating policies that are somehow too masculine. From the Dallas Morning News:

[Crouse] said Code Pink members "talk out of both sides of their mouths."

"They emphasize their femininity but advocate policies that are very aggressive and more often associated with men," she said.

"They cloak it all in a soft pink covering, when underneath they are hard as nails," she said. "They advocate for the most radical of leftist positions," such as impeachment of the president.

It does seem odd to claim that opposing war – Code Pink’s central issue – is the “aggressive” policy. Beyond simply insulting its opponents by impugning their gender – like Ann Coulter calling John Edwards a “faggot” – it’s unclear what CWA means by policies “associated with men.” Back in 1998, of course, Concerned Women for America called for the impeachment of President Clinton. But lest CWA be accused of cloaking themselves in “a soft pink covering,” just look at the group’s policy director, the former boxer and insurance salesman Matt “Bam Bam” Barber.

Just as Republican presidential candidate Sam Brownback is apologizing to fellow contender Mitt Romney for an aide’s e-mail attacking Mormonism, a Southern Baptist leader suggested Evangelicals would not vote for a Mormon. Leading a panel entitled “Mitt Romney: Should Evangelicals Vote for a Mormon President?” at a conference in Missouri, Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary president R. Phillip Roberts – author of “Mormonism Unmasked” – suggested that voting for a Mormon could be an act “disloyal” to Jesus Christ:

Roberts acknowledged that there is no "religious test" for any presidential candidate; they are free to hold whatever belief -- or non-belief -- they choose. At the same time, voters have every right and reason to allow their "substantive informed religious opinions to inform [their] voting habits" without being faulted for bigotry, he noted. …

"As believers and followers of Jesus Christ, a candidate's spiritual values are not the only criteria, by any means, for public office, but as voters, exercising our rights as citizens, to ignore altogether candidates' religious perspectives would be potentially unwise, irresponsible and possible disloyal to our allegiance to Jesus Christ, Lord of lords and King of kings."

Roberts also had a warning for Evangelical leaders who endorse Romney – such as members of the candidate’s new “Faith and Values Steering Committee,” unveiled last week: "When we endorse a candidate, that [endorsement] carries with it enormous implications, and if Mitt Romney is elected as president of the United States, there's a great [spiritual] responsibility on the part of those who have advocated his candidacy," said Roberts.

After men were arrested for plotting to attack the Fort Dix army base, right-wing activist and former presidential candidate Gary Bauer called for an investigation into U.S. mosques, warning that Saudi money was fomenting extremism across the country. “Let the ACLU howl about ‘religious freedom,’” wrote Bauer. Now Bauer is applauding a Justice Department order that cleared out prison chapel libraries of books ranging from “When Bad Things Happen to Good People” to Christian tracts to Islamic texts. The Bureau of Prisons also called for audio and video monitoring of prison worship areas.

No word from prison evangelist and religious-right commentator Charles Colson – he’s been busy warning that “Islam is a vicious, evil … Islamo-fascism is evil incarnate.”

Seeming to echo those sentiments, Bauer’s praise for the crackdown on inmate religion is limited to its effects on Muslims, and he goes further, warning of “the extremists who are not behind bars” and calling for the government to monitor mosques. To justify spying on houses of worship, Bauer asserts that this is something Christians aren’t bothered by:

Bauer says he and most Christians do not fear someone from the federal government sitting in their church and listening to a typical sermon, so mosques should not be bothered by it either.

Prepare yourself, because the Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, American Values, and the Alliance Defense Fund announced that they will be hosting a follow-up to last year’s “Values Voters Summit.”

Apparently not only are they committed to mobilizing their activists for 2008, they are also hoping to influence the primaries as well, which would explain why they’ve scheduled the event a full year in advance of the actual election:

FRC Action President Tony Perkins and cosponsors Dr. James Dobson, Gary Bauer and Alan Sears will once again be joined by a distinguished line-up of speakers addressing grassroots leaders from across the country.

"This event is a call to action for voter participation, education and training and a rallying event for people who want to transform the political landscape on issues such as the sanctity of life and marriage, religious freedom, health care, radical Islam, judicial activism, immigration reform, geopolitics, the media and much more," said FRC Action President Tony Perkins.

But more importantly, the organizers state that “this year, all 2008 presidential hopefuls and a number of noteworthy conservative leaders will be invited to speak.” 

Does that include Democratic candidates?  That remains to be seen.  

Rest assured, we’ll be keeping an eye on developments to see just which “presidential hopefuls” agree to join the likes of James Dobson, Tony Perkins, and Gary Bauer at this year’s summit.  

Bishop Harry Jackson’s High Impact Leadership Coalition ran an ad in the D.C. newspaper Roll Call last week to oppose the Hate Crimes Prevention Act under consideration in Congress. Raising the tired right-wing canard that “prosecutors and anti-Christian groups will use loop holes in this proposed legislation to muzzle the church,” the ad sought to drive a wedge between blacks, who are covered by federal hate-crimes law now, and gays, who seek the same protection against violent crime motivated by hatred: