July 2008

CNSNews reports that the American Family Association has donated 500,000 to the Proposition 8 effort in California: "The American Family Association said the $500,000 donation comes from 'years of savings.' In a message to supporters, AFA acknowledged its 'obligation to be good stewards of the gifts given to this ministry. We don’t buy anything on credit. We have no debt. We are careful to make sure your gifts are used wisely. We are very frugal with your gifts.' AFA said it has put aside money over the years so it would have the funds to meet whatever need might arise. The $500,000 for ProtectMarriage.com came from those savings, it said."

Say what you will about the Traditional Values Coalition, they refuse to tone-down or in any way moderate their militantly anti-gay agenda – here they are weighing in on the right-wing boycott of McDonalds, complete with an attack on Levi Strauss for ending its funding of the Boy Scouts:

"McDonald's has partnered with the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce (NGLCC),” said TVC Executive Director Andrea Lafferty. “It also gave this activist group a $20,000 grant to support its efforts to influence corporate America.

“When my son bounds out of kindergarten at his school, a typical request is to go to ‘Old McDonald’s.’ It’s not about the cuisine, the first question he asks when we get there is which toy are they giving away that day. Now, we are settling for a lemonade at another restaurant because, as our son says aloud every time a McDonald’s commercial airs on television or as we drive past one, – ‘McDonald’s is bad,’” said Lafferty.

…

“Like Levi Strauss, McDonald’s has become an open and aggressive supporter of the homosexual agenda,” said Lafferty. “As such, it will no longer receive my business until it rejects the homosexual political agenda and returns to what it does best: selling Happy Meals and fun to America’s children.”

…

“Hungry patrons should beware of how they spend their hard-earned dollars,” said Lafferty. “When buying a ‘Sad Meal’ from McDonald’s, they’re now helping fund the homosexual agenda. By purchasing a pair of jeans from Levi Strauss, they’re helping destroy the moral foundations of our society.”

Back during the Republican primary, James Dobson made news several times by playing a very public game of “He Loves Me Not” with the varying GOP contenders, slowly ticking off John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, and Fred Thompson as unacceptable candidates, leavings observers to guess as to whether he supported Mitt Romney or Mike Huckabee.  Those questions were put to rest once Romney dropped out and Dobson cravenly endorsed Huckabee primarily as a means to show his deep-seated opposition to McCain.  Since then, Dobson has had a predictable change of heart and now says that he might be able to support McCain after all.    

Now that attention is focusing on whom McCain will name as his running mate, the original Huckabee Fan Club, which Dobson joined late in the game, has been hard at work pushing for McCain to pick their man and warning him not to choose Romney - but Dobson apparently doesn’t share that view.  While he had initially reportedly hedged on supporting Romney out of concern that rank-and-file evangelical voters might be unwilling to support him because of his Mormon faith, it looks like those concerns, just like his concerns about McCain, have evaporated as well:

Even Focus on the Family leader James Dobson — who has softened his stance on McCain, a candidate he had said he would never vote for — doesn't think Romney would be a bad VP choice.

"Dr. Dobson liked his speech about faith very much," said spokesman Gary Schneeberger, referring to Romney's December address, where he spoke about the importance of religion in American society but that it should be separate from public responsibilities. "He wants a pro-life running mate, and Romney qualifies for that."

Early in the primary, when Dobson could have made an impact on the race with an endorsement, he chose to shout from the sidelines until events forced his hand.  Then, when his ideological allies on the Right bit the bullet and grudgingly decided to back McCain, Dobson waited weeks before finally saying “I guess I will too.”  But whereas the others have at least been trying to pressure McCain into picking the vice-presidential candidate of their choice, Dobson seems to be resigned to quietly suggesting that as long as the VP choice is at least nominally pro-life, then that is good enough.   

For a man who prides himself on sticking to his principles and translating them into political power, Dobson is doing a remarkable job this election cycle of making himself seem increasingly feckless and irrelevant.  

From Sarah Posner's most recent FundamentaList: "On Friday, the day after Obama's Berlin speech, the AFA Report's host, Fred Jackson, made note of the 'messianic tone' of the speech, then quickly denied that he believes Obama is messianic. Ed Vitagliano, one of the program's roundtable guests, chimed in, 'I don't think he's the Antichrist, but there is a spirit of Antichrist at work in the West in a very strong and open way that is leading people to want to solve their problems and have a desire to have their lives improved without Christ. That's what the spirit of Antichrist does, it denies Christ.'"

For the past few weeks, we’ve been reporting on the “Stop the War on the Poor” campaign, an effort to label “extreme environmentalists” who oppose increased domestic oil drilling as enemies of the poor.  The campaign counts among its leaders a group called Americans for American Energy, which describes itself as “a non-profit, grassroots-based organization dedicated to educating the public about the importance of greater energy independence for America and promoting public policies that support that goal.” 

As we wrote last week, Americans for American Energy was created by Pac/West Communications, a firm with considerable Republican ties, and shares a location with the consulting firm of Jim Sims, communications director for Vice President Cheney’s energy task force.  In 2007, fresh off helping to defeat attempts “to ban bear baiting in Alaska and impose new taxes on cruise ships,” Pac/West received a $3 million grant from the state of Alaska to “educate” the American public about ANWR drilling, that was later stopped by Gov. Sarah Palin because the PAC/West-Americans for American Energy efforts were “not part of an open and transparent process.”  But that was not the end for Americans for American Energy. 

Although its profile has risen along with the “Stop the War on the Poor” campaign, Americans for American Energy has been engaging in suspicious activities in western states for the last several years.  In Colorado, it released a report claiming $1.2 billion in first-year profits for natural gas drilling on the Roan Plateau, an estimate that critics, such as the Wilderness Society, claimed were based on “junk science”

Credible economic studies need to stand up to independent review, list data sources and methods, and at the very least include the names of economists who authored the report. Unbelievably, this industry-backed study does none of this.

In Wyoming, its leaders falsely claimed that Gov. Dave Freudenthal was a supporter of their “powerful new oil and gas campaign,” leading the governor to write a letter disavowing the group.  In Utah, they launched an email attack on Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) that compared him to Hugo Chavez and Osama Bin Laden:

Last week, over 160,000 Utah residents received an e-mail letter indirectly comparing a New York congressman to some of the most infamous men in the world.

Along with mug shots of Osama bin Laden, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad appeared a photo of Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-N.Y.).

Hinchey's crime? Sponsoring the Red Rock Wilderness Act, a bill that would set aside 9.4 million acres of public land in Utah as wilderness.

The letter was attributed to Utah state GOP Reps. Aaron Tilton and Mike Noel, but it was the brainchild of Americans for American Energy, a Colorado-based industry group that has accepted money from, among others, the state of Alaska.

The Red Rock Wilderness Act will "WEAKEN America," the letter states. "How? Because it will hamstring our ability to produce American energy right here in Utah. That leads America to become more dependent on energy from hostile foreign nations -- some of whom fund terrorist organizations that are right now targeting our American men and women in uniform."

An online version of the letter and corresponding Web site go further, for instance with a picture of bin Laden, Chavez and Ahmadinejad. "These terror leaders also want America to continue its foreign oil dependence," reads the caption underneath the graphic.

Now, Americans for American Energy has turned from accusing its opponents of being in league with terrorists to accusing them of fighting a “war on the poor,” and this message seems to have resonated with Republicans on Capitol Hill.  A number of rank and file Congressional Republicans showed up on-message at the kick-off press conference, including Rep. Bill Sali of Idaho, co-sponsor of a bill suspiciously entitled the “Americans for American Energy Act,” which “would open ANWR and the OCS to increase production of American crude oil and give the right incentives to boost conservation, improved efficiency and bring alternative energy online sooner.”

But they’ve gained a much higher-profile ally in Senator Orrin Hatch, who mentioned the campaign, quoted one of its leaders, Bishop Harry Jackson, and plugged its website, all on the Senate floor:

Unfortunately for the Democrat party, the poor are beginning to wake up that the liberals they have always looked to are behind the War on the Poor. By War on the Poor, I refer to the movement by the anti-oil extremists to close off every good domestic oil resource, which is a direct cause of the high energy prices Americans face.

Democrats in Congress have been forced to choose between the very well funded extreme anti-oil interests and the poor, because on energy prices there is no compromise between the two. The Democrats have begun to recognize the position they are in, and are trying to have it both ways with today’s vote.

Earlier this month, a group of protesters came to Capitol Hill calling on Congress to Stop the War on the Poor by groups and congressmen who are closing off America's energy resources.

Included in the group were pastors and civil rights leaders calling on this body to unlock America's oil resources for the benefit of Americans, and especially for the benefit of lower income Americans.

One of the Participants was Bishop Harry Jackson. I would like to quote some of his remarks for the record. These are his words:

"I am a registered Democrat, but this has nothing to do with partisan politics. Unless the public understands that there are specific people and organizations that are fueling this war against the poor, nothing will change and the poor will continue to suffer. We will unmask those behind this war regardless of their political party or ideology. Party labels and partisan ideologies are meaningless when it comes to protecting the lives of America's most vulnerable citizens,"

By the way, Mr. President, you can see more about the stop the war on the poor movement on the web at www.stopwaronpoor.org.

Ironically, Niger Innis, co-chair of the Stop the War on the Poor effort, says that U. S. politicians are "being cowered by a very powerful, well-funded environmental extremist lobby that has a great deal of influence over them, and a great deal of influence over policy” and that their primary mission is "’outing’ the extremist groups and the politicians it says are doing their bidding.”

Bold words for a man heading an effort that is itself a phony Astroturf campaign on behalf of energy interests. 

OneNewsNow reports that FRC's Tony Perkins gave the staff the day off to "take part in a day of prayer and fasting for the nation": "'Literally before us, we're seeing God's institution of marriage being redefined – 5,000 years of human history disregarded. I think that the church needs to be awakened, and that begins with each of us as believers. And as we work alongside of pastors and churches, our hope is that, as a church, that we will repent, that we will take our rightful role in society ... But first we must get right with God, and that begins with our personal relationships.' According to Perkins, the nation is witnessing a rising tide of evil that threatens the very foundations of the Republic"

Just last week we were noting that the recent surge of support among Religious Right leaders for John McCain seemed to hinge largely on his willingness to follow their advice and name Mike Huckabee as his running mate.  But as decision-time nears and the campaign begins airing lists of candidates which don’t include Huckabee, these right-wing leaders sprung into action to, once again, make their opposition known to Mitt Romney, the presumed front-runner:   

Prominent evangelical leaders are warning Sen. John McCain against picking former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney as his running mate, saying their troops will abandon the Republican ticket on Election Day if that happens.

They say Mr. Romney lacks trust on issues such as outlawing abortion and opposing same-sex marriage and because he is a Mormon. Opposition is particularly powerful among those who supported former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee in the Republican presidential primaries earlier this year.

"McCain and Romney would be like oil and water," said evangelical novelist Tim LaHaye, who supported Mr. Huckabee. "We aren't against Mormonism, but Romney is not a thoroughgoing evangelical and his flip-flopping on issues is understandable in a liberal state like Massachusetts, but our people won't understand that."

…

David Barton, a former vice president of the Republican Party of Texas, said, "The key for Mr. McCain is to pick someone who opposes abortion but doesn't alienate any part of the general Republican voting coalition" as Mr. Romney does.

Longtime social-conservative leaders such as Phyllis Schlafly, Phil Burress, Donald P. Hodel and Mathew Staver said earlier this month that they can rally their voters around Mr. McCain largely on the issues of abortion and the judiciary, as long as they are confident that the vice-presidential candidate is pro-life. They are skeptical about Mr. Romney's views.

Mr. Barton, founder of the national pro-life group WallBuilders, said the downside for picking either Mr. Romney or Mr. Huckabee is that evangelicals still would vote for Mr. McCain on Nov. 4 - given the alternative of Mr. Obama - but not work as hard organizing and getting out the vote.

"Romney would bring to the ticket as much enthusiasm from supporters as Huckabee would bring, but Romney's would be from fiscal conservatives and Huckabee's would be evangelicals," he said.

Of course, Barton and just about every other person mentioned in this article just so happened to sign on to the Colorado letter that essentially warned McCain that he’d better pick Huckabee or else, so it is not as if they are disinterested observers. 

Barton’s suggestion that Romney would generate a lot of excitement among fiscal conservatives is a little suspect given that the best that organizations like Club for Growth could say about him was that they were “reasonably optimistic that [he] would generally advocate a pro-growth agenda."  It’s laughable to think that Romney would match among fiscal conservatives the rabid enthusiasm that Huckabee has had throughout the process from Religious Right leaders.    

Even so, what Barton and the other Religious Right leaders quoted in the article seem to be doing is daring McCain to pick a side:  us or them; bringing to a head a clash between social and fiscal conservatives that has been brewing ever since Republicans lost control of Congress back in 2006.

Religious Right groups are voicing their opposition to efforts to honor gay rights activist Harvey Milk: "'What significant contribution did Harvey Milk bring to the state of California – other than encouraging gay people to come out of the closet?' asked Benjamin Lopez of the Traditional Values Coalition. 'This is yet another example of them trying to normalize and force acceptance of the gay lifestyle upon people,' he said ... Randy Thomasson, of Campaign for California Children and Families, which opposes AB 2567, said the bill is a new tactic in a long push to portray homosexuality in a positive light to kids. 'Harvey Milk Day is the equivalent of having Gay Day at every school in the state,' he said."

Jerry Sutton's Two Rivers Baptist Church in Nashville, Tennessee had hosted the Family Research Council's Justice Sunday II rally and was scheduled to host one of Rick Scarborough's upcoming crusades, but now Sutton has agreed to retire amid an lawsuit over alleged financial improprieties: "By a more than 3-to-1 margin, members of Two Rivers Baptist Church approved a $314,000 retirement package for the Rev. Jerry Sutton on Sunday, clearing the way for the embattled minister to leave the congregation he has led for more than 22 years ... Sutton and church leaders hope his retirement will bring an end to a 14-month conflict. In the summer of 2007, a group of dissident church members sued Two Rivers, seeking Sutton's ouster and access to church financial records."

It was only last year that People For the American Way Foundation helped represent parents in Odessa, Texas against a school board determined to use public schools to promote a particular religious doctrine. “HA! Take that you dang heathens!” the school district’s curriculum director wrote triumphantly after the board voted to use the Religious Right-backed National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools program. The board settled the lawsuit by dropping NCBCPS.

So it’s natural that advocates of church-state separation would be skeptical of the Texas State Board of Education’s decision last week to approve Bible courses statewide, without providing specific educational or constitutional guidelines.

Mark Chancey, associate professor in religious studies at Southern Methodist University, has studied Bible classes already offered in about 25 districts for the Texas Freedom Network.

The study found most of the courses were explicitly devotional with almost exclusively Christian, usually Protestant, perspectives.

It also found that most were taught by teachers with no academic training in biblical, religious or theological studies and who were not familiar with the issues of separation of church and state.

"Some classes promote creation science. Some classes denigrate Judaism. Some classes explicitly encourage students to convert to Christianity or to adopt Christian devotional practices," Chancey said. "This is all well documented, and the board knows it."

On the other hand, the Religious Right is gung-ho about the move. Decrying “[e]nemies of the First Amendment,” Rod Parsley’s Center for Moral Clarity (a supporter of the unconstitutional NCBCPS curriculum) wrote, “We’re glad legislative and educational leaders in Texas have ignored the shrill arguments of the anti-faith fringe, and we hope other states follow suit.”

Jonathan Saenz of the Liberty Legal Institute and the Free Market Foundation similar predicted that “Texas is going to be seen as a leader on this issue,” and also characterized skeptics as fanatical opponents of religious freedom:

"There are enemies of religious freedom all across our state of Texas and across the country, and they'll do anything and stop at nothing to restrict academic freedom and restrict the religious rights of students," Saenz contends. "They simply do not want kids, even on their own choice, to be able to look at the Bible." The State Board of Education is discussing this week how to develop the proposed new courses.

And Gordon Robertson, Pat Robertson’s normally soft-spoken son, compared efforts to prevent the government from proselytizing in the classroom to outlawing Christmas and Thanksgiving:

Given the Religious Right’s steady efforts over the years to push campaigns like NCBCPS, Robertson shouldn’t be surprised that advocates of church-state separation insist on a distinction between teaching about the Bible objectively and promoting a particular brand of faith.

Organizers of “The Call,” a kind of youth-oriented spin-off of the Promise Keepers on the National Mall in 2000, said the D.C. location wasn’t about influencing politics but about “fasting and prayer for the benefit of the nation.” But as “The Call” continued over the years as an itinerant stadium show, that apolitical evangelism attitude apparently wore off. Founder Lou Engle described his goals for an August 16 rally on the National Mall to OneNewsNow:

There is good reason to make a plea for heaven's intervention, he says. "Just to see what's taking place in California: redefinition of marriage -- [and] the next thing is transgender marriage," Engle laments. "This is part of what's going on, let alone with DC and the elections coming up."

He includes an election-related issue that surfaces now and then -- judicial appointments. "I believe it's a defining moment of who the next judges are," says Engle. "Those judges are going to help shape the future of America unless something happens. We desperately need heaven right now."

Engle told the Christian Post that he’s not making any endorsements, but he made clear what the presidential election boils down to:

We don’t purposely hold gatherings before elections, but this one I felt was so critical because the ideologies that are being promoted through different candidates have the implications just like in 2000.

The implications are huge for the issues of abortion, issue of marriage, or the kind of judges that don’t keep opening the door to the legality of every kind supposed freedom – which is really no freedom. It is really licensing to break away from the foundational moral principle upon which society will really flourish.  …

We will not be praying for any candidate or against any candidate. But our declaration is that abortion is not a political issue, it is a moral issue and we are praying that God will raise up candidates that will hold high values on the life of the unborn. And so we will cry out, “Give us judges, give us a candidate, give us a president who will stand for life.” And obviously some of the statements that these candidates have made really are…we are really in a defining moment.

While Engle is unlikely to come close to the 400,000 people organizers claimed attended the 2000 rally, he will have the help of Mike Huckabee, as Sarah Posner reported. Posner also noted that Engle is taking his act on the road with a 40-day fast in California culminating in another stadium rally days before the election. Engle told the Christian Post that this will be about “the salvation, for the deliverance, and healing of the homosexuals”:

We are not coming pointing the finger with anger at the homosexuals, but we do believe that what is taking place here with these bills is fueled by another realm. It is a spiritual realm of power of darkness.

Spiritual power of darkness seeking to release ideologies that destroy lives, families, nations, [sic] and on that day, Nov. 1, we are going to pray and resist with the power of the cross – God hold back these power that’s seeking to be released. We are standing and saying God have mercy, hold these things back so that the definition of marriage can be sustained in this nation for our children and our children sake.

This is what happens when people like Elaine Donnelly are allowed to testify before Congress: "Donnelly treated the panel to an extraordinary exhibition of rage. She warned of 'transgenders in the military.' She warned that lesbians would take pictures of people in the shower. She spoke ominously of gays spreading 'HIV positivity' through the ranks."

From Politicker: "A group of Pennsylvania residents concerned about U.S. Sen. John McCain's (R-Ariz.) stance on abortion is trying to put former GOP presidential candidate Alan Keyes on the ballot."

Last week, we reported on a “War on the Poor” rally, led by Niger Innis of the Congress of Racial Equality, Bishop Harry Jackson of the High Impact Leadership Coalition, and Americans for American Energy, in which environmentalists who oppose increased domestic drilling were accused of being “environmental racists, environmental terrorists.”  

Together, Americans for American Energy, CORE, and Jackson produced the appearance of a “grassroots” campaign. From a new press release promising more name-calling:

The national campaign was officially launched at a protest rally last week on Capitol Hill where more than 15 speakers spoke to a crowd of nearly 100 families and advocates for the poor protested with signs and chants of "Stop the War on the Poor" before a phalanx of news media cameras, Congressional staffers and others.

Of course, some of the “nearly 100 families” in attendance (a bit of an exaggeration to begin with) seem to have had varying motives for being there:

While some rally attendees told Mandel about their difficulties "budgeting around today's gasoline prices," others "backed away from a reporter with a notebook. ... One woman, who declined to give her name, said she was demonstrating at her boss's behest."

And as for the organizers behind the “War on the Poor” campaign, they may not be what they seem either.

From John Stossel's latest column: "I asked the Family Research Council's Sprigg whom the government protects when it closes down sex shops. 'The government is protecting actually the people who patronize those shops because I don't think it's in their interest to use pornography and sex toys'."

Or at least think that they are: "David Zucker, the director and writer who helped create 'Airplane!' and 'The Naked Gun' franchise has called on Hollywood’s tiny but tightly knit Republican A-list crowd to help him make a broad yet unusually right-leaning political satire titled 'An American Carol' ... Another 'Carol' scene takes place inside a portable toilet stall, where Malone is repeatedly slapped around by real-life Fox News host Bill O’Reilly, accompanied by the spirits of former President John F. Kennedy and World War II icon Gen. George Patton ... Not only does the character attempt a boycott of the Fourth of July, but he also lends unwitting aid to jihadists plotting to blow up Madison Square Garden. Through the imagined interventions of Patton, the dead presidents and country singer Trace Adkins, Moore’s surrogate travels through history, eventually coming around to embrace patriotic values."

It appears we spoke too soon when we declared Alan Keyes’s presidential hopes over in April. Keyes had failed to make any headway in the Republican primary, and when he quit the GOP to become the nominee of the Constitution Party—the Howard Phillips fringe group that won James Dobson’s protest vote in 1996—he discovered that the activists at the Constitution Party convention didn’t care for him too much, rejecting him 3-to-1 in favor of Chuck Baldwin.

Keyes is no stranger to political failure, having lost (by similar margins) three Senate races in two states, along with two previous presidential runs. This year he waxed philosophical: “I kind of represent, in political terms, the abortion. You're invited in, but they kill you. You're invited in, but they kill you.”

But somehow, Keyes has found a way to continue his quixotic race. An article in FrontPage magazine (which described Keyes as “the Energizer Loser”) detailed how disgruntled members of California’s Constitution Party delegation (known there as the American Independent Party) broke away from the national party after it rejected Keyes.

And now it seems that the California Secretary of State is recognizing the breakaway faction. So, barring any further legal action, Keyes is going to be a real presidential candidate in November. At least in California. Why, Keyes’s presence on the ballot may even siphon enough far-right votes from John McCain to tip the state’s electoral votes to Barack Obama.

While this must be an exciting moment for the Keyes camp, one has to wonder: If Keyes “represent[ed], in political terms, the abortion” before, what does he metaphorically represent now?

Janet Folger is still claiming that she is going to end up in prison - this time if they don't stop gay marriage: "Let me cut to the chase: If we don't win the marriage battle, now on the ballot in California, Florida and Arizona, people who disagree with homosexual behavior will ... go to jail."

Richard Land and James Dobson have had a series of disagreements in recent months, especially over the issue of Fred Thompson’s presidential candidacy, of which Land was an active and vocal supporter.  While Land never criticized Dobson by name for his repeated attacks on Thompson, Land was always first out of the gate to defend Thompson against Dobson’s attacks, seemingly, at least in part, in an attempt to establish himself as something of a counterpart to Dobson in the right-wing political sphere. 

After Thompson’s candidacy crashed ignominiously, Land disappeared from the pundit scene for awhile, but his efforts to establish himself in the media appear to have paid off because “Fox and Friends” decided to bring him on today to explain, of all things, why James Dobson is suddenly warming up to John McCain. 

After bogusly insisting that he refuses to endorse candidates (which would probably come as a surprise to Thompson), Land got down to business explaining how Barack Obama is “probably the most radically pro-abortion candidate to ever be nominated by a major party” and that Dobson, like the rest of the Religious Right, has decided that they’ll “take a third-rate fireman over a first-class arsonist”: 

“I think [Dobson’s announcement] will have more impact with laypeople than it will with anybody else, because Dr. Dobson has a huge following. People trust him, they listen to him. He’s got a multi-million radio audience. He really comes into their homes and he's given them advice about their families. It will have a big impact if he chooses to endorse Sen. McCain.

“I think that Sen. Obama is probably the most radically pro-abortion candidate to ever be nominated by a major party. He voted against the Born Alive Protection Act in Illinois, which is an act that says that if a baby manages to survive its abortion, the doctor has to try to save it instead of allowing it to die of neglect or even killing it.... That's about as radically pro-abortion as you can get.

“I think Dr. Dobson is coming to the conclusion in sort of nicer terms what I hear all the time from people all across the country who are evangelicals [and that] is “Look, John McCain wasn't my first choice, John McCain wasn't my second choice, but I'll take a third-rate fireman over a first-class arsonist.” And they see Barack Obama as a first-class arsonist for the things they believe in.

“I think [McCain’s VP pick is] critically important and I think it's one reason why Dr. Dobson said that he might endorse John McCain and [that] he was perhaps leaning towards it. He wants to wait and see what that vice presidential pick is because if he picks a pro-life vice presidential running mate, that will be an enormous boost. If he picks a pro-choice running mate, it will deflate any momentum he's managed to build among evangelicals.

When James Dobson decided to begin a radio broadside against Barack Obama’s religious faith, he responded to criticism that he was “throwing stones” by repeating his attack—even implying Obama is “deceitful” when claiming to have become Christian—all while expressing outrage that anyone might take issue with his pronouncements.

Now Gary Cass, a former lieutenant of the late D. James Kennedy, is trying out the same reverse-umbrage. Cass started a group last year called the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission, which clumsily tried to equate gay-rights legislation, a TV report on the Religious Right, and a killing spree at a Colorado church under the general rubric “Christian-bashing.”

But Cass really seemed to hit his stride when he fine-tuned his “Christian-bashing” concept to focus on attacking the faith of his political opponents, starting with Mitt Romney’s Mormonism. He launched a “True Christian VP” campaign last month to advance the notion that those who disagree with his position on abortion and gay marriage are not “real Christians.” That included Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Responding to Dobson’s attack on Obama, Cass reiterates his claim that Obama is not Christian—and makes Obama out to be the “bully”:

"Like a typical playground bully, Obama takes the first swing then get's angry when the victim of his attack tries to defend themself.[”]

According to Cass, Obama’s “first swing” was to say he is Christian.

"In a calculated ploy to strip away votes from Christian pro-life / pro-family conservatives, Obama has made a concerted effort to make his faith a campaign issue. But when his faith and ethics are scrutinized and revealed not to be Christian, Obama then claims he is a victim of conservative Christians like Jim Dobson and organizations like CADC.

"If Obama is a victim, he is a victim of his own radical theology and policies. They are so radical in fact that faithful Christians cannot simply stand by and let Obama defame and attempt to redefine the Faith by associating it with his wildly aberrant beliefs and radical policies. …

"To the extent that Obama wants to make headlines by making his faith an issue, he should be required to define and defend his beliefs and actions. The mainstream media cannot or will not do it. Thank God for Dr. Dobson and others who will not sit back and watch the Christian faith be defamed by being associated with Obama's most radical beliefs and policies.

"CADC pleges be there to defend those who will oppose any politican like Obama who seeks to exploit the Faith by distorting and attacking the scriptures."

That's right, you can now get your own ACLJ-branded phone and help out Pat Robertson's American Center for Law and Justice just by switching to their new cell phone plan: "Affinity4 announces the launch of their new ACLJ (American Center for Law and Justice) Wireless Phone Service, allowing ACLJ members to continue assisting the ACLJ in the efforts to preserve traditional values and protect our religious and constitutional freedoms ... all by simply making a phone call. This new wireless service allows ACLJ members to take a stand with the ACLJ and use their purchasing power to send a strong message to the major phone companies who don't support traditional values. With this service, an ACLJ member can receive important ACLJ updates right from their phone."

It was just five months ago that James Dobson declared unequivocally that he would not, under any circumstances, ever support John McCain for president, saying “I cannot, and I will not, vote for Sen. John McCain, as a matter of conscience.”   In fact, so opposed to McCain was Dobson that he went so far as to organize an effort to secure one million signatures in opposition to McCain’s nomination and then publicly reiterated his vehement opposition to his nomination just a few months later.  

But wouldn’t you know it, like every other craven political calculation and empty threat he has ever made, Dobson has changed his mind and concluded that Barack Obama is such a monumental threat to this nation that he almost has no other choice but to blatantly violate his own conscience for the greater good of the Republican Party:

Conservative Christian leader James Dobson has softened his stance against Republican presidential hopeful John McCain, saying he could reverse his position and endorse the Arizona senator despite serious misgivings.

"I never thought I would hear myself saying this," Dobson said in a radio broadcast to air Monday. "... While I am not endorsing Senator John McCain, the possibility is there that I might."

So why is Dobson suddenly changing his tune?  In short, he is absolutely terrified of Obama:

He is also supportive of the entire gay activist agenda.  We're not just talking about showing respect for people and equal rights for all citizens of the United States.  It’s not referring to it in those terms. He’s talking about homosexual marriage. I mean, he makes no bones about that. He's talking about hate crimes legislation which would limit religious liberty, I have no doubt about that, that ministers and others - people like us - are going to very quickly be prohibited from expressing your faith and your theology on certain views.  … Just so many aspects of his views on that issue that keep me awake at night frankly … that he is so extreme, that he does threaten traditional family life and pro-moral values … This has been the most difficult moral dilemma for me.  It’s why you haven’t heard me say much about it because I have struggled on this issue.  And there are some concerns here that matter to me more than my own life and neither of the candidates is consistent with my views in that regard. But Senator McCain is certainly closer to them then Senator Obama, by a wide margin. And there's no doubt, at least no doubt in my mind, about whose policies will result in more babies being killed. Or who will do the greatest damage to the institution of marriage and the family. I'm convinced that Senator McCain comes closer to what I believe. So I am not endorsing Senator McCain today … But as of this moment, I have to take into account the fact that Senator John McCain has voted pro-life consistently and that's a fact. He says he favors marriage between a man and a woman, I believe that. He opposes homosexual adoption. He favors smaller government and lower taxes and he seems to understand the Muslim threat, which matters a lot to me – I am very concerned about that.

Below is the full transcript of today’s program in which Dobson and the Southern Baptist Convention's Al Mohler explain just how “alarming” Barack Obama’s political and theological views are and the dire threat he poses to “traditional family life and pro-moral values":

As John McCain continues to work to win over right-wing leaders, activists, and voters, the one constant theme he has been hammering is his pledge to nominate judges like John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court; a promise that has lately been paying dividends.

But now it looks like some disgruntled Republicans are starting to push back against the idea McCain can be trusted to uphold his promise. For instance, Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr recently published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal less-than-subtly entitled "Judges Are No Reason to Vote for McCain":

The judiciary is becoming an important election issue. John McCain is warning conservatives that control of today's finely balanced Supreme Court depends on his election. Unfortunately, his jurisprudence is likely to be anything but conservative.

...

Mr. McCain is a convenient convert to the cause of sound judicial appointments. He has never paid much attention to judicial philosophy, backing both Clinton Supreme Court nominees – Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. He also participated in the so-called "Gang of 14," which favored centrist over conservative nominees as part of a compromise between President George W. Bush and Senate Democrats.

...

[E]ven if a President McCain were to influence the court, it would not likely be in a genuinely conservative direction. His jurisprudence is not conservative.

Barr obviously has his own electoral agenda in mind by seeking to undermine McCain's appeal to conservative voters on the issue of judges in hopes of winning their support himself, he is not alone in making the case that McCain's promises on judges cannot be trusted, with Bruce Bartlett making the same point in an op-ed in Politico:

[McCain] has already repudiated the best hope Republicans had for circumventing Democratic opposition: the so-called nuclear option, which would have forced the Senate to give all federal court nominees an up-or-down vote. McCain basically destroyed any hope of getting a parliamentary ruling on this scheme by putting together the Gang of 14, a bipartisan group of senators that agreed to allow all qualified nominees to have a vote before the full Senate.

Conservatives have to ask themselves whether the man who torpedoed the nuclear option is really likely to fight to the bitter end for the kinds of justices they want to see on the court.

McCain needs all the help he can get right now winning over right-wing leaders and having former high-profile Republicans out there undermining his key selling point and reminding them of his role in the "Gang of 14" certainly isn't helping his cause.

As Media Matters and Americans United reported, Pat Robertson accused them and People For the American Way of trying to “squelch” his speech. Our method of “stifling” his freedom of expression? We broadcast his own words. From Tuesday’s “700 Club”:

Well our next guest and our next story I know about personally. There’s an organization called People For the American Way. They have camped on this program for decades. They record every single word that I say. If there’s any possibility that they can catch something or change it and then feed it to the AP, they do, and so the next thing you know it’s a big story.

Then, added to them is one of [the] ACLU operatives who started an organization called Americans United for Separation of Church and State. They have people assigned to monitor every word, and then to take those words, change them often, take connectives out of them, change the sense of it, and then feed it to a willing agent in the Associated Press. Then, on top of that, there’s another group, which has backing from somebody like George Soros, called, what is it, Media Matters.

So there are three of them trying to stifle the speech on this program and to embarrass those who make it.

Now, monitoring and responding to the Religious Right has been part of People For the American Way’s mission since 1981, so it’s true that we have been watching Robertson and other televangelists as they have sought to expand their political influence. And while it’s been years since Robertson’s 1988 presidential run, when he finished second in the Iowa caucus and birthed the Christian Coalition, he remains the head of an enormous media and religious empire, including the Christian Broadcasting Network, the “700 Club” (which contractually remains on the mainstream ABC Family channel), Regent University (whose low-ranked law school placed a number of graduates in the Bush Justice Department), and the affiliated American Center for Law and Justice (whose head, Jay Sekulow, played a key role in picking Bush’s judicial nominees).

Given Robertson’s continuing political clout, it shouldn’t be surprising that folks pay attention to him and even criticize him. As for “embarrassing” him, well, he does enough of that himself. Like when he and guest Jerry Falwell blamed us for the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Get the Flash Player to see this video clip.

In the past, Robertson has complained about being “misquoted”—like when he said Ariel Sharon’s debilitating stroke was divine punishment for “dividing God’s land.” But given that we provided the full transcript and video of his comments, the claim did not hold up to scrutiny.

Even more absurd, however, is Robertson’s complaint that we are trying to censor him. In fact, it is completely the opposite. We bring Robertson’s message—in his own words—to a whole new audience.

Phill Kline has been something of a right-wing cause célèbre ever since he used his position as Attorney General in Kansas to launch a one-man crusade against Planned Parenthood and subpoena "records of more than 80 women and girls who received abortions in 2003 at two clinics" in the state, ostensibly in a "search for evidence of illegal late-term abortions and child rape."

As it turned out, it was his obsession with abortion that did him in when he was up for re-election in 2006 when he lost his position to Paul Morrison. But then, in an odd twist, the Johnson County Republican Party's precinct leaders elected him to finish out the remainder of Morrison's term as Johnson Country Attorney General and now he is running for re-election, even though he hasn't been particularly keen on actually showing up for work.

And now the Kansas City Star reports that Klein is scheduled to join Rick Scarborough at one of his one-day "Crusade to Save America" events on July 28th in Overland Park - and Scarborough is insisting that this is not election-related at all:

A conservative organization based in Texas is reaching out to pastors and their churches in Johnson County before the upcoming Aug. 5 primary.

The Rev. Rick Scarborough, who founded Vision America, said this week that his group would not be endorsing any candidate. But Johnson County District Attorney Phill Kline, who is seeking a full four-year term, is expected to share his faith at three of four events set up for clergy and at a public rally July 28, Scarborough said.

Scarborough said Kline would appear not as a candidate but as district attorney.

“We can’t endorse a candidate and don’t, but we do hope people will vote not as Republicans or Democrats but as followers of Christ,” Scarborough said. “We try to get Christians to vote their biblical values.”

...

Kline has been “forewarned and carefully advised” that nothing will be said about his candidacy, Scarborough said.

“Legally, any elected official can come to an event and discuss his faith,” Scarborough said. Kline also is expected to provide an update to his constituents on his criminal case against Planned Parenthood’s clinic in Overland Park, where abortions are performed.

Not too long ago, James Dobson personally endorsed Kline's re-election bid and Scarborough even invited Dobson to participate in the event, but it looks like even James Dobson has enough sense to avoid being seen in public with the likes of these two right-wing zealots:

Organizers had hoped that James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, would speak at the rally, but a spokesman with the group said he would not be able to attend.

A gathering led by Niger Innis of the Congress of Racial Equality, Bishop Harry Jackson of the High Impact Leadership Coalition, and the new group Americans for American Energy held a press conference yesterday demanding increased “American Energy” production.  Their contentions were twofold: that high energy costs disproportionately harm low-income families, and that increased domestic oil drilling would solve the problem.  Standing in the way: the “elitist Volvo-driving” environmentalists. Watch:

Although CORE was once a prominent civil rights group, after Niger Innis’s father, Roy, took control in 1968, he led it to the far right, honoring Karl Rove at its Martin Luther King dinner, backing extreme Bush judges, and defending oil companies. According to a Mother Jones article, “Innis has been accused by founder James Farmer and other black leaders of renting out CORE’s historic reputation to corporations like Monsanto and ExxonMobil. (CORE even mounted a counterprotest to environmentalists picketing an ExxonMobil shareholders’ meeting.)”

For CORE, this event was no different. Niger Innis proclaimed his coalition to open up domestic drilling to be “very much like the civil rights revolution in its diversity and in its moral passion.”

Early in the press conference, Harry Jackson defined the enemy: “The fact is that we have environmental groups who are basically elitist, they are trying to dramatically change our lives, they are basically saying that they want to have a wholesale transformation of our culture and society.” Limiting drilling in ANWR, he said, is “a huge problem.”

While he once again claimed to be a Democratic voter, Jackson is a frequent spokesman for groups and causes on the Religious Right, and he’s apparently expanding his portfolio to issues of the economic Right. Jackson took the time yesterday to hawk the new book he co-wrote with Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, which included a chapter on anti-environmentalism as a “faith” issue.

A long series of Congressional Republicans followed, extolling the virtues of American energy, gleefully leading the crowd in chants of “Stop the War on the Poor,” and continuing the assault on environmentalists. A representative of Americans for American Energy, Colorado State Sen. Bill Cadman, called out the “environmental racists, environmental terrorists.” Democrats were also a favorite target.

While President Bush conceded yesterday that any short-term effects of new drilling would be “psycholog[ical],” a poster prominently displayed throughout the event promised that Republican policies would lower the price of gas to $2.13 a gallon. The Democratic plan, according to the poster, would only reduce the price of gas by five cents. Cost estimates were attributed to “various sources.” 

Oil companies were mentioned only once, by Leland Hogan of the Utah Farm Bureau, who asserted that they make their decisions “by what the political climate is,” not “business decisions.” Hogan and his compatriots evidently hoped that the political landscape would change enough to allow the white knight of the poor, Big Oil, to roll over the “extreme environmentalists” and roll out $2.13 gas.

After James Dobson’s decision to launch an ill-tempered and tendentious attack on Barack Obama’s faith (with follow-up broadcasts), the Focus on the Family founder couldn’t have been surprised to hear criticism—even from his own side. “If Christian conservatives want to be taken seriously, they need to make serious arguments and speak with intellectual integrity,” wrote Peter Wehner of the right-wing Ethics and Public Policy Center. “In this instance, Dobson didn't. He has set back his cause and made some of us who are evangelicals and conservatives wince.”

But Dobson mustered an impressive showing of umbrage against a pro-Obama ad from a group called Matthew 25 Network. “You know it’s an election year when certain people start grabbing headlines by attacking the faith of presidential candidates,” the ad says. “With all these stones being cast at Senator Obama, it can be hard to know what to believe.” The ad then quotes Obama describing the power of faith, without discussing politics or particulars: “Kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side, I felt that I heard God’s spirit beckoning me.  I submitted myself to his will and dedicated myself to discovering his truth.”

Dobson, taking the ad to be directed at himself, responded with a segment at the beginning of his radio show yesterday.

DOBSON: For one thing, nobody is trying to grab headlines. Who needs ‘em? I get ‘em without even trying, even if I wanted them. And we are also not throwing stones at Senator Obama for his faith. That’s off the wall. We are responding to his comment about the Bible and about us and about the Constitution and that was the point of what we had to say.

TOM MINNERY: And it’s also true that the Bible has other things to say about how people speak, and the, the tongue, the tongue can be deceitful, and people don’t always speak the truth, and there’s some reasons to doubt what it is we’re about to hear.

According to Minnery, a vice-president at Focus, Obama’s description of his conversion is “deceitful” because the senator is “one left-wing liberal on the issue of abortion.” Furthermore, Minnery said “we have to question whether he’s even sincere as he speaks so lovingly about religion.”

Now, it may sound like Dobson and Minnery were once again directly denying the validity of their political opponent’s profession of Christianity. But Dobson, seconds later, took personal offense at such a notion:

DOBSON: Well we need to get to the program that we prepared for today, but we did want to make this statement, because we don’t want to leave it on the record that we’re throwing stones at Senator Obama to grab the headlines. That’s very offensive to me personally, and I’m sure it is to you as well.

MINNERY: And I appreciate your wanting to defend the evangelical beliefs in the Bible.

In case you thought the anti-immigrant fever of 2006 had broken, restrictionist think tanks are still promoting restriction, states are still passing immigrant crackdowns, and  there are still plenty of hard-core cranks across the country. A story from CBS 13 in Sacramento, California featured one man ennobled by his passion for confronting day laborers with a trailer-mounted billboard saying “DEPORT THEM ALL.”

[Davi Rodriguez] drives the sign up and down the streets of Sacramento where day laborers wait for work, sometimes videotaping the reactions and uploading them to YouTube. Workers we talked to say they feel harassed, and they're losing jobs.

(The CBS 13 site has video of the report.)

Harassment of day laborers is a common tactic of local anti-immigrant vigilantes. Rodriguez’s billboard directed viewers to go to the website of Save Our State, the group that wrote the blueprint for local immigration crackdowns in Hazleton, Pennsylvania and dozens of other cities. Two years ago, Save Our State founder Joseph Turner described his method of “saving” California from becoming a “Third World cesspool”:

"With as little as five people you can shut down a day-laborer center," says Mr. Turner, because employers will be too intimidated to stop and hire them. Contractors have been deterred from hiring from these sites during the protests and in several days that followed. Home Depot declines to comment on Mr. Turner.

As Turner explained then in another interview, this is all a way of expressing himself as a “proud nationalist”:

"I believe this country is superior and I believe our culture is superior to all others," he declared.

He sees illegal immigrants as the pre-eminent threat to that culture.

Details continue to emerge about the meeting last week in Colorado where a large group right-wing leaders gathered and decided to back John McCain, with David Barton telling The Brody File that more than 90% in attendance agreed to support McCain primarily because they abhor Barack Obama and, as we noted yesterday, are really concerned about the future of the Supreme Court :

There were 83 state and national leaders in the room from all over the country. They included heavyweights Phyllis Schlafly, Tim and Beverly LaHaye, Phil Burress, Mat Staver and representatives from Focus on the Family, Concerned Women for America and the American Family Association.

David Barton, President of the conservative WallBuilders group was there too. I spoke with him about the meeting and he tells me roughly 75 of the 83 were on board for McCain at the end of the meeting.  

…

They don't want Barack Obama picking Supreme Court judges. That's why the judges issue is very important to this group and they believe McCain will be there on judges. They plan to let their supporters know about it. The "base" may be mobilizing very soon.

Charisma Magazine also provide some inside details, such as the fact that Mike Huckabee’s daughter Sarah was reportedly in attendance and that McCain has apparently been meeting with militant anti-abortion activist Alveda King, which makes sense seeing as she’s been supporting him for months.   

But the culmination of the meeting was the agreement by those in attendance to sign on to something called the “Declaration of American Values” put together by Mat Staver and David Barton.  If this sounds familiar, it is probably because it is a lot like the Values Voters’ Contract With Congress that a similar group of right-wing activists unveiled heading into the 2006 election.  The primary difference between the two is that the new declaration has dropped the laundry list of legislation they wanted to see passed that made up the bulk of the Values Voters’ Contract in favor of vague language about the “sanctity of human life” and the importance of securing our “national sovereignty and domestic tranquility” … almost as if they don’t anticipate that their legislative agenda has any chance of moving forward in the next Congress:  

The Christian Defense Coalition ramps up its campaign against Obama on abortion with a press conference and an eye-catching new graphic. Rev. Patrick J. Mahoney: “Senator Obama would become 'The Abortion President,' with the most extremist policies on abortion of any President in history. Senator Obama's views on abortion are so radical that he even wants American citizens to pay for them. This would include Catholics, Evangelicals and all people of faith.”

Kathryn Jean Lopez explains why Huckabee woudn’t “give divine strength to the GOP ticket”: “The problem with Huckabee is that he is not conservative… Although Huckabee struck an attractive populist tone, his solutions tend to be statist…Huckabee ran on identity politics — usually a mainstay of liberal Democrats…With McCain’s own troubled past and record with conservatives, he doesn’t need to add to the ideological muddle.”

Once upon a time, Tom DeLay was one of the most powerful men in Washington ... that is, until he was indicted and resigned his seat in Congress in 2006.

Since then, DeLay has kept something of a low profile while he has been busy trying to turn his Coalition for a Conservative Majority into a right-wing version of MoveOn.org, but that doesn't mean that his right-wing friends have forgotten him. In fact, over the weekend, DeLay joined Rick Scarborough, one of his "closest friends," for Sunday services at Scarborough's Texas church:

Former Congressman Tom Delay not only told East Texans but also showed them that he believes there is no separation between church and state. "I believe faith is the foundation of political activity because your world view is who you are," Delay explained.

A belief the Senior Pastor at Harvest Point Church, Rick Scarborough, shares with the former congressman and that's why he asked him to share the pulpit this morning. Scarborough said, "Every time I walk into a polling booth I'm mixing church and state because I am the church and I am the state. Whenever I drive down the highway I'm mixing church and driving. This morning earlier, you can thank God for this, I mixed church and showering but I can't separate that part of me."

At today's service Delay told East Texans how he plans to use that belief along with others to fill voids he says are in the conservative movement. Creating more grassroots efforts along with building better communication blocks are just 2 of his goals. "We've got some great think tanks in Washington D.C. but we have no action tanks," Delay said. But he plans to put the party into action and get people to the polls this November.

It is nice to know that Scarborough's friendship with DeLay survived the former Majority Leader's fall from power - after all, it would have been pretty embarrassing if Scarborough had abandoned DeLay after once comparing him to Christ:

"I believe the most damaging thing that Tom DeLay has done in his life is take his faith seriously into public office, which made him a target for all those who despise the cause of Christ," Scarborough said, introducing DeLay yesterday. When DeLay finished, the host reminded the politician: "God always does his best work right after a crucifixion."

Of course, the last time DeLay and Scarborough got together, it was for Scarborough's “Confronting the Judicial War on Faith" Conference in 2005 and it generated a lot more coverage and controversy because DeLay delivered a taped message railing against judiciary which was followed by a panelist whose suggested solution to dealing with judges the Right doesn't like was to approvingly paraphrase Joesph Stalin's slogan: "Death solves all problems: no man, no problem."