May 2010

• Timothy Kincaid: Review of Family Research Council’s study on lesbians.
• Think Progress: FoxNews.com edits out applause during Obama’s West Point speech.
• Joe.My.God: Hawaii Gov. Linda Lingle Meets With Anti-Gay Side On Civil Unions.
• Americans United: South Dakota Scofflaws: Pastors Mount Campaign To Rush More Pulpit Endorsements.
• Andy Birkey: GOP-linked punk rock ministry says executing gays is ‘moral’.
• Zachary Roth: GOPers Try To Derail Tea Party Favorite.
• Raw Story: Virginia governor gives NRA monopoly on teaching gun safety to kids.
• Media Matters: The intricate conspiracy to "destroy" Glenn Beck, his family, God, and the founders.

It was about a year ago that I wrote a seemingly throwaway post about the fact that Bryan Fischer had been promoted from his position running the Idaho Values Alliance, the state affiliate of the American Family Association, to a position as director of Issue Analysis for Government and Public Policy with the AFA itself and the host of a daily two-hour radio program for the organization.

Since then, Fischer has proven himself to be among the most radically right-wing figures within the contemporary Religious Right movement. 

Just last week he declared on his radio program that "God is obviously looking for is more Phinehases in our day," approvingly citing a story from the Book of Numbers about a man who killed two people with a spear for engaging in sexual immorality. 

But yesterday he managed to outdo himself once again, declaring that Adolf Hitler was gay and that he surrounded himself with gay soldiers because only gays were willing to be savage and brutal enough to carry out his agenda:

So Hitler himself was an active homosexual. And some people wonder, didn't the Germans, didn't the Nazis, persecute homosexuals? And it is true they did; they persecuted effeminate homosexuals. But Hitler recruited around him homosexuals to make up his Stormtroopers, they were his enforcers, they were his thugs. And Hitler discovered that he could not get straight soldiers to be savage and brutal and vicious enough to carry out his orders, but that homosexual soldiers basically had no limits and the savagery and brutality they were willing to inflict on whomever Hitler sent them after. So he surrounded himself, virtually all of the Stormtroopers, the Browshirts, were male homosexuals.

I feel that I should point out that Fischer is listed as a "confirmed speaker" at the next Family Research Council Values Voter Summit as are, as of today, Rep. Michele Bachmann, Rep. Mike Pence, and Mike Huckabee.

The central issue throughout the entire Rifqa Bary saga was Bary's contention that her Muslim parents were going to kill her for converting to Christianity and that, for her own safety, she had to flee to Florida and continues to refuse to have anything to do with her parents.

So I can't even being to imagine how the news that Bary has uterine cancer is going to impact this case:

Fathima Rifqa Bary, the Muslim teenager from Columbus who converted to Christianity and ran away to Florida, is being treated for uterine cancer.

Rifqa, now 17, has already undergone two operations and will have a third one Thursday, according to a close friend and her former Orlando lawyer.

"The only reason she wants this to be known is she wants people to pray for her," said John Stemberger, who represented Rifqa in her 2009 fight to stay in Florida.

She lost that battle and was returned in October to Columbus, where she lives with a foster family.

She has been in and out of the hospital but remains under the care of the foster family, said Stemberger, who said he spoke to her last week.

Jamal Jivanjee, an ordained pastor who directs an Orlando-based ministry, also confirmed that Rifqa has cancer.

In an email to her friends and supporters, he wrote, "Her situation is very serious, and she will need the help of many people in the weeks and months ahead. ... As soon as Rifqa heals from the major surgery that she will undergo this Thursday, it is expected that she will need to undergo several rounds of chemotherapy. ...

"Rifqa is in desperate need of an army of supporters to know about what is occurring regarding her situation, and to pray for her healing," Jivanjee wrote.

Reached by telephone, Rifqa's father, Mohamed Bary, would not discuss his daughter's health.

But I certainly can imagine how Bary's anti-Islam, right-wing defenders like Pamela Geller will seek to exploit this.  Here is Geller's first post on the news and you can already see that she is laying the groundwork to accuse Bary's parents and their lawyers of working to undermine Bary's medical care and trying to take advantage of her condition ... and it is only a matter of time before Geller and her ilk start accusing Bary's parents of trying to use Bary's cancer to do what they have been prevented from doing:

While this is a tragedy, how Rifqa is being victimized by her lawyers and her parents is nothing less than an atrocity. Her lawyers kept her in the dark about her condition -- despite the seriousness of her cancer -- for well over a week while they conferred with her parents and their CAIR-appointed lawyers about her treatment. While most cases like this result in a hysterectomy, Rifqa is only having the advanced malignancy removed. From what I understand, the survival rate in cases like these is only five percent.

Was she allowed to get a second opinion? No.

While she was lying ill, her lawyers brought her parents to her hospital bed. She was awaiting treatment and when she saw them, whereupon she became very agitated and upset. Her parents had to be removed.

• PFAW Statement: Senator Cornyn Exposes Right’s Hypocrisy on Judicial Philosophy.
• Justin Elliot: Souder: I'm Happy That Abstinence Vid With Mistress Now Defines Me.
• Will Bunch: Beck pushes distorted view of George Washington's Christianity to No. 1.
• Wonk Room: Tony Perkins: ‘If You Want A Military That Just Does Parades,’ Allow Gays To Openly Serve.
• Zachary Roth: Far-Right Extremists Gather At 'Liberty Convention'.
• Crooks and Liars: Sarah Palin attacks Maddow for doing her job and says Rachel was 'prejudiced' against Rand Paul.
• Raw Story: Arizona governor defends harsh immigration law with frog puppet.
• Jim Burroway: Scott Lively Initiates Renewed Push To Pass Uganda’s Anti-Gay Bill.

The American Family Association's Bryan Fischer is one of those Religious Right activsts who takes the Bible so literally that he actually advocates that all of our nation's laws should be based on and uphold Biblical values ... so much so that he recently called for a whale at Sea World to be put to death for killing its trainer in accordance with Scripture.

Which is why this clip from last Friday's radio program is rather concerning, considering that it consists of Fischer approvingly quoting Numbers 25 in which a man named Phinehas saves Israel by killing a man and a woman with a spear for engaging in "sexual immorality."

Fischer compares the "rampant sexual immorality" in the passage to modern day America and says that "what God is obviously looking for is more Phinehases in our day," urging everyone to "be a Phinehas in our own world, and in our own generation":

I want to read a passage that my wife pointed out to me this morning from Numbers 25. This is a story about a man by the name of Phinehas, the nation had lapsed into rampant sexual immorality - I don't know if that sounds familiar to you, it certainly does to me - and Phinehas was motivated to do something about this and he did something very decisive: he found an Israelite in flagrante with a Philistine woman and he ran them both through with a spear, pinned them both to the ground inside their tent, ran his spear through both of them, right into the ground. And that shook up the nation, it got their attention and they transformed, they made a decision, they turned from that kind of behavior and renewed their commitment to follow God.

[Fischer then reads Number 25: 10-13: 10 Then the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 11"Phinehas the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, has turned away My wrath from the sons of Israel in that he was jealous with My jealousy among them, so that I did not destroy the sons of Israel in My jealousy. 12"Therefore say, Behold, I give him My covenant of peace; 13and it shall be for him and his descendants after him, a covenant of a perpetual priesthood, because he was jealous for his God and made atonement for the sons of Israel."]

So Phinehas is commended for his zeal, that he was willing to take action, that he was willing to act boldly, he was willing to act decisively out of his jealousy for his God and his jealous desire to see that his people, his nation, would be wholly devoted to God.

So what God is obviously looking for is more Phinehases in our day ... you know, and it's striking here, that here's the actions of one man, here is one man by his action, by his commitment, by his energy, by his commitment, by his willingness to take decisive and assertive action when that's what was called for, he alone was able to turn back the wrath of God from his people, from his nation.

So may his His tribe increase, may each one of us be a Phinehas our own world and in our own generation.

Considering that Glenn Beck has been working diligently to turn WallBuilder's David Barton into the official "historian" of the right-wing Tea Party/912 movement, it shouldn't really come as a surprise that the organization would be signing on as one of the sponsor of the next National Tea Party Unity Convention in Las Vegas ... at least that is how it appears, judging by this press release from Tea Party Nation: 

The Tea Party Unity Convention will be the most powerful political event of the summer as we network and empower attendees for the November 2010 elections.

Convention spokesman, Judson Phillips said, "We look forward to working with World Net Daily, Resistnet, The Leadership Institute, Judicial Watch, Numbers USA, Wall Builders, Voices of America, NAACCP, NC Freedom, The Dallas Tea Party, The Heritage Foundation, Chicago Young Republicans, National Tea Party Federation and others in this fight."

Featured speakers and participants include: Lou Dobbs, Joseph Farah, Andrew Breitbart, Neal Boortz, SE Cupp, Michael Reagan, Jonathan Kahn (Jon David), Lloyd Marcus, Frantz Kebreau, Ken Blackwell, Mark Thiessen, Ana Puig, Barbee Kinnison, Amy Kremer, Darla Dawald, Tom Fitton, Richard Viguerie, Michael Patrick Leahy, David DeGerolamo, Erika Franzi, Dr. B. Leland Baker, Bishop EW Jackson, Dr. William Forstchen, Fred Houck and Melody Kite.

Topics to be covered: Achieving Unity, Combating Racism Allegations, How to Raise $50,000 in 90 days For Your Tea Party Group, Fair Tax, Emergency Preparedness, Attracting and Keeping Young Activists in the Movement, Community Organizing, Women in the Tea Party Movement, Losing Our Religion, Freedom of Information Act and Open Government Laws, How to do Voter Registration Drives and Where to Find Conservative Voters.

I have to say that organizers have a real knack for getting fringe Religious Rigth activists to speak at their conventions - last time it was Rick Scarborough of Vision America, and this time it is EW Jackson:

Bishop E.W. Jackson is, even by right-wing standards, something of a fringe figure. He seems to have some ties to Rick Scarborough and appeared on Janet Porter's radio program not too long ago.

He is also Founder of Exodus Faith Ministries and last year founded something called Staying True to America's National Destiny [S.T.A.N.D] and was among the participants at the right-wing anti-hate crimes rally last year, where he railed against the legislation as the result of a "virulent strain of anti-Christian bigotry and hatred."

But today, Jackson announced his most grandiose plan yet with the formation of the STAND AMERICA PAC though which he is "declaring political war on the Democrat Party and the liberal Congressional Black Caucus" as part of an effort to end the deception that is causing the black community to support the "Coalition of the godless."

Ken Blackwell has come running to Rand Paul's defense, desperately trying to explain away Paul's post-primary claims that he didn't support the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the idea of the government combating discrimination in private enterprises in general.

Or at least that seems to be Blackwell's goal, though it is hard to say as his "defense" is utterly incoherent:

[Rand Paul] a grilling from one end of the chattering class to the other about his supposed opposition to the great Civil Rights Act of 1964. It is a fact that he stumbled in some of his answers to questions about individual titles of that act. Dr. Paul was not alive when the act was debated in front of the whole country in 1964. He needs to bone up on his history.

But the high tech lynching that is taking place now is of a piece with what the liberal media put Clarence Thomas through in 1991. Because Judge Thomas is an original construction jurist, he was seen as a threat by liberal activists. Because Justice Thomas is black, he is vilified by leftists who believe that all minorities must support their left wing causes.

I have literally no idea what that is supposed to mean ... and it only gets worse, as this is the best "defense" of Paul that Blackwell was able to come up with:

Dr. Paul is an opthalmologist. He is expert on astigmatism. What we can clearly see is the moral astigmatism of the left. For example: As a state senator in Illinois, Barack Obama voted not once but repeatedly against giving civil rights protection to newborns who survived abortion attempts. Many of these newborns were black. We know that the abortion license has produced a shockingly disparate impact in the black community. The rate of abortion is 3:1, black-to-white.

The Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is one of the three post-Civil War amendments (along with the Thirteenth and Fifteenth) that deserve to be regarded as a Magna Carta for black Americans. The Fourteenth Amendment says that all persons “born in the United States” are citizens of the United States and of the states in which they reside.

This clear intent of the framers did not matter to state senator Obama. He voted against his state’s version of the Born Alive Infants Protection Act. Was Obama hauled before media tribunals to explain his radical position? Not in the least. The liberal media--which views Obama as “a sort of God” (in the words of Newsweek’s Evan Thomas)--not only did not grill him on this shockingly radical position, they actively covered up his voting record.

You can see the moral astigmatism in the premises of all these liberal interrogators of Rand Paul.

Again, what relevance this is supposed to have to the statements made by Paul is utterly beyond me. As is Blackwell's conclusion that "Paul needs to learn history" simply so he can "avoid 'gotcha' journalists like Rachel Maddow" but that he doesn't need to do that by "reading most U.S. history textbooks" which take a "grim and oppressive view" of America's past.

Blackwell then claims that is was "conservative Republicans [who] joined with liberal Democrats to pass the great Civil Rights Act of 1964" (huh?) and that "the liberal media is trying to sandblast Ev Dirksen’s name from the Senate Office Building named for him" (double huh?):

We can’t let them do it. And helping Rand Paul is one way to stop the left from re-writing history.

Normally, when faced with a column full of falsehoods like this, I'd attempt to set the record straight ... but in this case, Blackwell has written a piece so fundamentally incoherent as to make any such effort absolutely impossible.

• Gary Bauer wants it known that Democrats who cite the Bible are complete phonies and fake Christians.
• Gary Bauer's wife wants it known that expecting the End Days to come soon is no reason to disengage from politics.
• Richard Viguerie boldly declares that "recent election defeats of establishment Republicans means congressional Republican leadership will develop backbone, especially in the Senate, and aggressively challenge the entirety of the Democratic agenda ... [and will] now much more aggressively fight Elena Kagan's nomination to the Supreme Court."
• Cliff Kincaid goes after Rand Paul for his libertarianism.
• Note to the Associated Press, CAIR "considers" Pamela Geller to be anti-Islamic because Geller is rabidly anti-Islamic. It's not a matter of interpretation; it's a simple fact.
• Finally, Bryan Fischer declares that Jesus Christ would not only support Arizona's draconian immigration law, but would "sign it so fast it'd give you a nosebleed" if he was the Governor.

Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council joined Tim Wildmon of the American Family Association on today's broadcast of AFA's "Today's Issues" during which he asserted that minority voters, especially African American voters, supported Barack Obama for President because it was a historic opportunity but are now expressing disappointment and remorse in having voted for him, and won't do so again in 2012.

Perkins also claims that many people supported Obama because John McCain failed to make a clear contrast between the two candidates and reveals that he is working "very closely" with McCain "right now on the Don't Ask, Don't Tell issue":

Update: I guess the fact that Perkins has been working so closely with McCain on DADT explains why McCain is a guest on Perkins' "Washington Watch Weekly" radio program discussing this issue.

Yesterday, we wrote a post about a shadowy group called The New Sons of Liberty which was poised to spend a $1 million on anti-gambling ads tied to Alabama's primary election.  The group exempted Roy Moore from its attacks on the grounds that he is the only candidate opposed to all forms of gambling, but nobody has been able to figure out who was behind the group or where the money was coming from.

And now the planned ad buy has been canceled:

A mysterious new political group canceled $1 million of TV advertising time for the last week of Alabama's primary elec­tion, leaving stations to scramble for new advertisers to replace what would have been a blockbuster buy.

Station sales managers said they re­ceived an e-mail shortly after 1 p.m. Thurs­day saying the ad buy for the New Sons of Liberty was being called off.

"We ask that you please cancel all buys related to this client. A spot will not be able to be made, nor will the checks be sent out," the e-mail said.

Nobody seems to be sure if this ad buy was real or a hoax or what, though Randy Brinson, president of the Christian Coalition of Alabama, said that he knows the out-of-state interests who were behind the group but cannot reveal that information because it will compromise the identity of the person who revealed it to him.

• Wonk Room: Rep. Steve King Upset That Supreme Court Decision Has ‘Turned Iowa Into The Gay Marriage Mecca’.
• Steve Benen: The Lowdown On Lowden.
• Dump Bachmann: Michele and Marcus Bachmann $3,814 In Arrears on 2009 Property Taxes.
• Alvin McEwen: Peter LaBarbera's homophobic lies reap a small benefit.
• Texas Freedom Network: Keeping Communism Out of First Grade?
• TPM: Tea Party Leader: 'Islam Is A 7th Century Death Cult Coughed Up By A Psychotic Pedophile'.

As we noted yesterday, Focus on the Family announced that it was changing the name of its c4 lobbying arm from Focus on the Family Action to CitizenLink, apparently as part of an attempt to continue with its right-wing political agenda while separating the negative ramifications of said agenda from the parent organization.

This move doesn't really make a lot of sense, as everyone knows that CitizenLink is the lobbying arm of Focus on the Family .. but apparently the powers that be over a Focus think this is a wise move: 

Focus on the Family announced Wednesday that Focus Action, the lobbying arm of the family group, is now CitizenLink, the name of Focus’ online newsletter.

“We wanted to create clarity between the two organizations,” CitizenLink spokeswoman Sonja Swiatkiewicz said.

...

Swiatkiewicz said the re-branding of Focus Action is meant to end the confusion of people attributing Focus Action’s public-policy efforts to Focus on the Family. She said Focus spends its time not in the political arena but in “helping families thrive.”

...

Swiatkiewicz said the stances of Focus Action are identical to CitizenLink’s.

So the agendas of Focus on the Family Action and CitizenLink are exactly the same, but now all the negative attention they generate when they suddenly backtrack and announce that they would oppose a gay Supreme Court nominee simply because said nominee is gay will reflect badly upon CitizenLink instead of Focus on the Family? 

How is that supposed to work, considering that people like Tom Minnery, who has been the main spokesperson for Focus Action and will presumably retain that position with "CitizenLink," are also "senior vice presidents" for Focus on the Family.

The idea that by simply changing the name of its lobbying arm, Focus on the Family is going to be able to separate itself from the political agenda of "CitizenLink" is laughable, especially since every time anyone writes about the activities of CitizenLink from now on, they are simply going to write "Focus on the Family's CitizenLink" or "CitizenLink, the political arm of Focus on the Family."

I know that I will.

On Tuesday, Rand Paul shocked the Republican establishment by winning the GOP Senate primary in Kentucky.

On Wednesday, Paul shocked everybody by suggesting that he doesn't really like the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and thinks that the government has no business fighting discrimination in private enterprises.

Not surprisingly, Republican Senators are not particularly eager to come rushing to Paul's defense, for which they are being criticized by right-wing activists like the Family Research Council's Tom McClusky:

Where the NRSC comes back into play is in how quickly its chairman, Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas), threw Rand Paul under the bus. Instead of talking to the candidate directly, or not commenting at all until he did, the Texas Senator told Politico “I don’t know what he means by that. I support non-discrimination of people, so I would need to talk to him to see what precisely his concerns were.” Translation: “I’m not a racist, but Rand Paul might be.” Not exactly strong support for a candidate you are supposed to be supporting now that he has won his primary. It is very likely the Republicans will pick up a few Senate seats this year, and even more likely two of those seats will be candidates the NRSC did not initially support, Mr. Paul and Mr. Rubio. Despite any victories the Senate Republicans might see it will definitely be time for new leadership at the NRSC prior to the 2012 elections. In that year Senate Republicans have an even larger chance of gaining the majority – but only if they play it smarter than they have been so far.

Interestingly, Paul doesn't seem to consider himself a Republican candidate so much as he does a Tea Party candidate, telling CBN's David Brody that he has no intention of blindly supporting the GOP and is instead focused on representing and unifying the Tea Party movement so that it can change the Republican Party:

Many people can be a Tea Party candidate but I think in my case it sort of fits the bill very well. I’ve never run for office, never been elected to office and I really and part of the movement in the sense that from the very beginning I went to all their meetings and many people thought that I just had the vote from the beginning. You have to earn the Tea Party vote. I interviewed with every one of the different committees in the Tea Party and they will ask you: will you be a rubber stamp for the Republican Party and that’s not a good thing because they say sometimes the Republican Party is wrong.

...

They do need a Tea Party platform and so I say lets coalesce it into some specific things and these are things I want to run on so when the primary is over and we run in the fall I don’t want to run away from the Tea Party I want to define what the tea party is.

If you go around Kentucky every tea party is by city and sometimes by county and sometimes counties have two of them and sometimes they’re not talking so it will be a job and I’m hoping since I’ve been all around the state and met everyone that I can be a conduit for bringing some of them together and I’ve been suggesting for weeks now lets have a Kentucky Tea Party Convention and try to join together and talk about a platform and I don’t see this as outside the Republican Party. I see this as an influence that can be influential within the Republican Party.

You know, it's hard to see why the Republican establishment should come rushing to defend Paul when Paul considers himself to be a Tea Party candidate on a mission to do away with the Republican establishment.

When Elena Kagan was first nominated to the Supreme Court, the hard-line anti-gay activists on the Right immediately demanded to know if she was gay on the grounds that gays are immoral, biased, and all around unfit for the court.

But then Politico reported that Kagan was not gay and the Religious Right demands died down ... until today, when Matt Barber returned to the subject in a column for WorldNetDaily:

Media, here's your question: "Solicitor Kagan, do you identify as a lesbian?" Ms. Kagan, your answer is simpler still: "Yes" or "no."

Pipe down, lefties. Yes, it is relevant. Most liberals would disagree, but despite "progressive" protestations to the contrary, character does, in fact, matter. A majority of Americans still consider sexual morality – or a lack thereof – a pertinent factor in contemplating one's fitness for any public service – chiefly, perhaps, a lifetime appointment to our most supreme earthly court.

Every major world religion, thousands of years of history and uncompromising human biology have established that homosexual conduct is among other volitional behaviors rightly filed under "sexual immorality." Indeed, the majority of folks around the world – billions, actually – count this a timeless truth.

But the controversial nature of homosexuality is but one point of concern. Another involves potential conflicts of interest, "real or perceived." If we had a judicial nominee – widely believed a compulsive gambler – tapped to preside over gambling cases, would it not matter? If we had a nominee credibly rumored to use medical marijuana who might someday rule on the legality of medical marijuana, wouldn't such information be germane?

And before you liberals throw out that favorite red herring: "By this logic, Clarence Thomas shouldn't rule on cases involving race or sexuality because he's a black heterosexual male" – remember: skin color is a neutral, immutable characteristic. Being black is what someone is.

On the other hand, being "gay" is what someone does. It involves feelings and changeable behaviors. Homosexual conduct is more akin to the aforementioned gambling or pot smoking behaviors than it is to skin color (and for those in the lifestyle, especially men, sodomy most definitely involves rolling the dice). To compare "black" or "heterosexual" to "gay" is to compare apples to oranges. Understandably, many African Americans find this disingenuous comparison tremendously offensive.

Moreover, "heterosexual" is the state of sexual normalcy. It's our God-given design. There remains no credible or replicated scientific evidence to the contrary. Homosexual conduct is but one of many sexually deviant behaviors. Even Darwin's theory of evolution, which imagines "survival of the fittest," would seem to bolster this self-evident truth. You can choose political correctness. I choose moral and biological correctness.

Still, Kagan's "sexual orientation" remains the pink elephant in the room: Can a sitting justice, potentially engaged in the homosexual lifestyle, be trusted to rule on cases that might well grant special preferred government status to some – including that very justice – while, at the same time, eliminating certain free-speech and religious-liberties rights enjoyed by others? (i.e., hate-crimes laws; the Employment Non-Discrimination Act; constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act; constitutionality of "don't ask don't tell," etc.)

Let's try my favorite thought experiment with this whereby we replace instances of the word "gay" with the word "Christian" and then imagine how the Religious Right would react if we were to write something like this:

But the controversial nature of CHRISTIANITY is but one point of concern ... Still, Kagan's "CHRISTIAN" remains the elephant in the room: Can a sitting justice, potentially engaged in the CHRISTIAN lifestyle, be trusted to rule on cases that might well grant special preferred government status to some – including that very justice – while, at the same time, eliminating the very basic rights enjoyed by others? (i.e., hate-crimes laws; the Employment Non-Discrimination Act; constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act; constitutionality of "don't ask don't tell," etc.)

I'm guessing that if liberals wrote something like that about a Christian Republican SCOTUS nominee, the Right would be outraged about this sort of blatant anti-Christian bigotry.

• Rand Paul won Republican Senate nomination in Kentucky last night.
• Richard Viguerie calls Paul's win a "major vote of no confidence in Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell."
• Curt Levey of the Committee for Justice suggests that Arlen Specter's loss will make him more likely to vote against Elena Kagan.
• Isn't it amazing how the views of all women seem to so closely mirror the views of Concerned Women for America?
• Guess what? Conservative leaders now say they never really trusted Charlie Crist.
• Last night, Ken Cuccinelli spoke at a fundraiser for a Virginia abstinence education group.
• Sitting through this could quite possibly be the most unpleasant experience imaginable.
• Finally, the quote of the day from Alan Keyes on why gays shouldn't be able to get married: "Why are parents and their children forbidden to marry one another? Cut to the chase and the answer is simple. The right to marry includes legal recognition (legitimization) of the married couple’s right to have sexual relations with one another. But it is wrong for parents to have sexual relations with their children. It’s wrong for siblings to have sexual relations with each other. It’s wrong for adults to have sexual relations with underage children. Obviously, unless Mrs. Bush means to argue that these restrictions are unjustified, a committed loving relationship is not enough to establish that people “ought to have” the right to marry."

I'm posting this newest email alert sent out by Tony Perkins and the Family Research Council just because I find the whole thing rather remarkable ... and not for the just the fact that someone is willing to give FRC $100,000 to spread this sort of gargabe: 

I fervently believe the glorious Star-Spangled Banner should wave over our soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and Coast Guard heros.

President Obama wants to raise the rainbow flag of the homosexual rights movement over them.

Which will it be? That's what is at stake in Family Research Council's (FRC) campaign to stop the homosexual Left from lifting the ban on open homosexuality in the military.

That prohibition is federal law and was applied in the 1993 Clinton compromise policy called "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (DADT).

And if the Left overturns it and forces open homosexuality on the military, here are just a few of the results:

* Soldiers will be forced to live in close quarters with people who view them as sexual objects.

* Morale will plunge, discipline will suffer, and unit cohesion -- the glue that holds the military together -- will fall apart and dramatically weaken our national defense capability.

* Many highly motivated, well-trained servicemen and women will leave the military rather than serve in compromising situations . . . and many men and women simply will not join the military.

* Scarce funds will be wasted to retrofit sleeping quarters and handle discipline problems.

These threats are so severe that a generous family has committed a $100,000 matching grant to help FRC defend our military. For every dollar you give, they will give a dollar - doubling your impact!

Our military exists to fight and win wars, not engage in radical social engineering. Forcing soldiers to cohabit with people who view them as sexual objects would inevitably lead to increased sexual tension, sexual harassment, and even sexual assault.

How do I know these things? I speak almost daily with current and former military leaders.

And, I served in the U.S. Marine Corps. I know what it's like to live in an open barracks, dress, and shower in front of 70 other men. I know how critical it is for those 70 to become a single fighting unit. And I know that's impossible if just one of those 70 insists on standing apart or giving another preferential treatment.

Moreover, there have been 14 congressional hearings on homosexuality in the military over the past 16 years, and the consensus hasn't changed one bit: It's a very bad idea.

Please help us defend the law that preserves military order, discipline, and fighting effectiveness by sending the most generous contribution you can to support FRC in this urgent campaign.

I am deeply grateful for your active support for FRC. And I am certain you share my profound concern about the ever-encroaching homosexual agenda that will weaken the military's ability to protect our families. The homosexual lobby's ultimate goal is to transform the family and American society and destroy your traditional values. Our goal is to strengthen the family and your values.

Our team of staff and outside experts is working with a handful of allies. We are speaking with scores of members of congress, both Republican and Democrat. There may be action in the Senate next week. We must have the funds in place to educate leaders and the grassroots.

We have proven we can shape national policy by stretching every dollar and having an impact many times greater than our budget. Will you help us today?

As I mentioned earlier, the fight to preserve DADT comes down to this: What flag will fly over the U.S. military?

Now is the time to fight for the red, white, and blue-for God, for country, for those who serve, for our families, and for our future. I understand if you cannot donate today. But if you are able, please let me hear from you today, and remember that every dollar you give will be doubled.

I tend to avoid writing "what does it mean" posts in the days following any sort of election, mainly because I frankly have no idea what election results "mean" in terms of some larger narrative.

The upside of that is that I don't have to try and spin election results so that they validate my political agenda and thus avoid writing things like this piece of nonsense from Americans for Legal Immigration PAC: 

Obama Defeated: Pro Amnesty US Senator Specter Falls!‏

We have exciting news to share from the election results coming in.

We are very pleased to announce that despite President Obama's strong support, US Senator Arlen Specter bit the dust in PA tonight!  ... [S]eeing some of the biggest illegal alien Amnesty supporters in the US Senate like Bennett and Specter fall is encouraging news for our political revolution! We can hope, pray, and work hard to make sure McCain will be joining them in the unemployed category soon!

The mighty are falling as Americans of all walks of life focus on throwing those in Washington that have betrayed us DOWN!

ALIPAC seems to believe that the defeat of Arlen Specter can be attributed to the fact that he supported "amnesty" and thus, his loss should be a warning to anyone else in Congress who supports "amnesty."

Of course, that line of argument would carry more weight if ALIPAC didn't have to concede that "Specter was defeated in the Democratic primary by US Representative Joe Sestak, who is an amnesty supporter as well."

It is hard to buy ALIPAC's spin that Specter's loss proves that Americans are intent on tossing out of office anyone who support immigration reform when Specter lost to a candidates who also supports immigration reform. 

I have often wondered if the American Family Association had ever really accomplished anything with its myriad of boycotts  Often, it seems, AFA generates a lot of coverage by announcing some new boycott and then either claims victory for vague reasons or else just quietly drops it altogether.

But last week, Movie Gallery, the second-largest video-rental chain in North America, announced that it was going out of business ... and now the AFA is taking credit: 

American Family Association has worked for years to close down Movie Gallery shops, pointing out to consumers and law-enforcement authorities the company's practice of distributing hardcore pornography out of stores' "back rooms." Randy Sharp is director of special projects for AFA.

"We're now seeing that Movie Gallery, which is in its second bankruptcy in the last five years, is continuing to close more and more stores," he notes. "At one time, Movie Gallery had over 2,000 video stores. They're now down to just a few hundred."

Several years ago, AFA launched a boycott of the stores and continued it with success in several states. In Mississippi alone 80 percent of the stores were shuttered. The AFA spokesman says that came about because the pro-family group raised awareness to communities in that state, citizens became involved, and the law was enforced.

Of course, the real reason Movie Gallery is going out of business is because is has been unable to compete with the new services movie delivery services like Netflix, Redbox and the Internet.  Blockbuster is likewse struggling to stay afloat as well ... I wonder if the AFA is responsible for that as well.

Interestingly, as far as I have been able to tell, AFA's boycott of Movie Gallery started back sometime before 2001.  So it basically took AFA a decade to see success ... a decade during which technological advancements just so happen to have made Movie Gallery's business model obsolete

• FRC is now officially on the record as calling for Elena Kagan's defeat, mainly because she's not anti-gay.
• According to The Hill, Democrats are turning to the Religious Right in an effort to pass immigration reform and climate change legislation.
• 800 Virginia scientists and professors have signed a letter asking Ken Cuccinelli to drop his subpoena for documents related to the work of climate scientist Michael Mann.
• You know how not to teach a geometry lesson on angles? By using an example involving the assassination of the President of the United States.
• Richard Land has received the Phillip E. Johnson Award for Liberty and Truth from "Biola University during an event that focused on the future of the Intelligent Design movement." That is quite an impressive honor.
• Finally, Andrew Breitbart calls Rep. Michele Bachmann a "warrior for Judeo-Christian and foundational American values." I have nothing to add to that.

We've written about James David Manning, pastor of Atlah World Missionary Church, once or twice before noting that even by the standards of the Birther movement, Manning is completely off the deep end:

Manning came to public attention in the 2008 presidential election after ATLAH posted several sermons of his that were harshly critical of Democratic candidate Barack Obama on the website YouTube. Among other accusations, he called Obama a "good House Negro" in one sermon while in another he referred to Obama as "trash" due to circumstances surrounding his mixed race heritage and accused him of being a "pimp" (pimping "white women and black women") and "long-legged mack daddy," and an "emissary of the devil", citing the viral video "I Got a Crush... on Obama". He stated that Obama "has the cadence of an Islamic person,"and he called Obama's mother "trash" for becoming pregnant by a black man out of wedlock. Manning revisited this latter issue during a press conference at the National Press Club on 8 December 2008: "Generally the most noble of white society choose not to intercourse sexually with African men. So it's usually the trashier ones who make their determinations that they're going to have sex."

Manning defended his sermons in an interview on Fox News, saying that "we also have to talk about his character."He compared TV personality Oprah Winfrey, who supported Obama's campaign, to the Whore of Babylon, the "Queen of the Universe", and an Antichrist.

For the last several days, Manning and his supporters have been hosting a "trial" of President Obama [PDF], claiming that he never attended Columbia University but was actually a CIA agenda who used it as cover so he could go to Pakistan to provide money, weapons, and logistics to the Mujahideen:

The only reason I even found out about this is because I came across an interview with one of the participants discussing how Alan Keyes was supposed to participate but then backed out because of his fears that his own Birther lawsuits could be compromised by attending. 

And that is not even the craziest part.  Just try and follow this exchange between Sharon Rondeau, the interviewer, and Miki Booth, who is running for the U.S. House seat in Oklahoma:

SHARON: Do you know how Dr. Manning or any of the witnesses prove that Obama did not attend Columbia? Can he actually prove that he was in Pakistan or wherever he was instead of at Columbia?

MIKI: I don’t know how we prove it, but the only thing that makes sense is that it’s all the CIA. That would explain why all the records are scrubbed. There’s one thing that they can’t hide, and that’s the Social Security numbers. Again, how do you prove that he used those to launder money?

SHARON: Is the theory that the CIA gave Obama a new identity?

MIKI: Absolutely.

SHARON: Did they actually assign him all of these social security numbers, or do you think he did that on his own?

MIKI: Again, if the CIA was behind it, they would be involved in every single aspect of it, because the money that he was getting went to help the Mujahadeen fight the Russian invasion. Here’s another really interesting thing: the story is out there that he attended Patrice Lamumba University. About three weeks ago, I finally found the website for Patrice Lamumba, and it said, “Distinguished Alumni,” and on the list was “Barry Soetoro.”

SHARON: Really?

MIKI: Yes. And it took you to the Wikipedia page all about “President” Barack Obama and his history.

SHARON: Could that have been set up as a hoax?

MIKI: That was set up as a red herring to throw everyone off the trail of the Pakistan connection. Anyway, I saw it, and they mentioned that, and someone might have testified about it earlier in the trial. However, it was brought up again today, and I remember when I first heard about that, it was right after Rev. Manning put out the word about the trial, and right after that, he did a YouTube video where he said, “They’re lying. They’re going to say that he was actually in Russia attending Patrice Lamumba University” to throw us off. He also said, “You watch; they’re not going to deny it; they’re going to let you think that that’s where he was, but don’t fall for it. He was really in Pakistan.”

SHARON: If the CIA gave Obama a new identity or identities, why was he not stopped when he put his hat in the ring to run for president? Has anyone discussed how he got as far as he did if all his records were scrubbed?

MIKI: We can probably find out. I heard that he signed an Executive Order to seal all of his records.

SHARON: He did; I recall reading about it shortly after his “coronation.”

MIKI: So no one can get his Punahou or other records. The ones that they absolutely don’t want anybody seeing are those that were scrubbed such as the passport records which involved Brennan, who worked for that company which worked with the CIA. They have the means, the wherewithal, to be able to scrub those passport records, and it’s known and reported about that breach where all three, McCain, Clinton and Obama’s records were breached. So the theory is that the late Lt. Quarles Harris knew something and he was supposedly working with the investigator, but which investigators we don’t know; perhaps just the local cops. And then he ended up being murdered. The only person who had a key to open that door was snuffed out. So that was discussed, and this is material that we had already heard. But again, there is the CIA connection. There’s Brennan, and now what’s Brennan doing now? So it’s just all too cozy.

SHARON: No one could have known 20 years ago that Obama was going to run for president. Is there a theory that he was recruited by the CIA because he could speak the language?

MIKI: Yes.

SHARON: Why would there have been a need to provide Obama with a fake past? Others have worked undercover for the CIA but the CIA perhaps doesn’t go to these lengths to hide it. What is your theory about that?

MIKI: Well, tomorrow they’re calling a witness who is an ex-KGB agent who wants to talk and feels that his life is in danger and he may as well get it out there. But getting back to the CIA, we know that the United States was financing the pushback against the Russian invasion. We were working with them and gave them money and guns. So where do you find these people to recruit to get them to do that? You look for someone who will fit, with a Muslim background who can speak at least a dialect of their language. And where do they recruit these people? They find these loners like Barack Obama at Occidental who are on a foreign-student status (again, those records were scrubbed), but he probably held a passport under the name of “Barry Soetoro” from Indonesia.

SHARON: Has any evidence come out about that yet that you’ve heard?

MIKI: No. There again, those records were either scrubbed…it’s all hidden. And it’s only the CIA that can do all of this. No matter how much they did, things have still leaked out. Almost everything that we’re hearing now we already knew. It had been leaked out, or we knew about it, and they couldn’t hide that. But wherever they could hide stuff, they did. But I think what happened was that they never expected that he would run for president. First he was a state senator in Illinois, and he used thug techniques to knock off the competition.

It was ten years ago that Lou Engle held his first The Call rally on the National Mall in Washington, DC.  The event was, Engle claimed in his book "The Call Revolution," the reason George W. Bush won the election:

We had gathered in September ... because of the upcoming national elections. Our hope was to challenge young people to maintain a 40-day fast with prayer for our nation that would lead up to the elections. Later, when the presidential election make history with its bizarre circumstances and final victory for President Bush, I felt assured that the prayer and fasting of those youth had made a real difference in the electoral outcome.

On the tenth anniversary of that event, Engle is bringing The Call back to California as he seeks to build a "wall of intercession for the battle for marriage, as well as the battle for the sanctity of life" and unleash a "great, great Jesus movement" that will "literally be a wall that holds back darkness in our nation": 

Ten years ago, four hundred thousand young people gathered to The Mall in DC to fast and pray. Now, ten years later the stakes couldn’t be higher. I think everywhere in America people sense we’re in a massive moment of transition. Political shifts are taking place and seismic spiritual shifts are also taking place. There are pockets of revival, souls are being saved, something is going on right now.

Also, there’s a sense of uncertainty of the future. Where are we going? California has always been at the center of great shifts. We dare to believe that at such a time as this, if the church will pray and join in united massive fasting and prayer, California could become the hinge of history and begin to release blessing, revival and righteousness back into this nation. 

Anti-gay "family values" Congressman Mark Souder (R-IN) will be resigning from Congress after it was revealed that he'd been having an affair with a staff member:

Rep. Mark Souder (R-IN), a champion of abstinence education and traditional family values, will resign effective Friday after an affair with a female staffer in his district office, he announced today.

He said in a statement that he "sinned against God, my wife and my family by having a mutual relationship with a part-time member of my staff." And he blamed the atmosphere in Washington for forcing him to make the move:

"In the poisonous environment of Washington, D.C., any personal failing is seized upon, often twisted, for political gain. I am resigning rather than to put my family through that painful, drawn-out process."

I wasn't even planning on writing about this because Souder was mostly unknown ... plus, finding out that a self-proclaimed "family values" Republican congressmen has been having an affair barely even qualifies as news these days.

But in this case, the hypocrisy is especially glaring as last year Souder produced a video on the importance of abstinence education ... with the very woman with whom he was reportedly having the affair: 

Rep. Mark Souder (R-IN) had an affair with a part-time staffer named Tracy Jackson, Fox is reporting. Jackson played the role of interviewer for a Souder Web video show on the issues of the day -- including one on the value of abstinence.

Dubbed "Congressional Update with Congressman Mark Souder," the show hit on issues like intelligent design and fencing the border.

In the November 2009 abstinence video, Jackson introduces Souder this way: "You've been a longtime advocate for abstinence education and in 2006 you had your staff conduct a report entitled 'Abstinence and its Critics' which discredits many claims purveyed by those who oppose abstinence education."

• Texas Freedom Network: Rally with TFN for Education over Politics.
• David Weigel: Thugs and criminals, they keep you in the dark!
• Alan Colmes: Gingrich: No Hearings Needed, Just Withdraw Kagan’s Nomination; She’s Anti-Military.
• Religion Dispatches: That’s Dr. Glenn Beck—Thanks to Liberty University.
• Towleroad: George 'Rentboy' Rekers Once Tried to 'Spank the Gay' Out of Effeminate Boys.
• Think Progress: Pawlenty: Gays Shouldn’t Have The Power To Decide What To Do With The Body Of A Deceased Partner.
• Steve Benen: Conservatives Find Great Importance In Miss USA Pageant.
• AMERICAblog: Obama appoints self-proclaimed 'proud homophobe', who refers to gays as 'sodomites', and denies climate change, to fix oil spill.
• Andy Birkey: Is Bachmann supporting the birther movement?

Last week we noted how the Religious Right, and more specifically Matt Barber, were using the arrest of a Christian street preacher in Britain as a scare-tactic, warning Christians in the US that the same thing was going to happen to them if they don't stand up to things like hate crimes laws and ENDA and defend their religious liberties.  

Well, via Joe.My.God, we see that the charges against the preacher have now been dropped:

Charges have been dropped against a Christian preacher who told a police officer homosexuality was "a sin".

Dale Mcalpine, 42, was accused of a public order offence after speaking to a community support officer (PCSO) in Workington, Cumbria, in April.

...

Mr Mcalpine was charged with breaching section 5 of the Public Order Act by allegedly using threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress.

He was due to stand trial later this year, but the CPS have now confirmed they will not be prosecuting.

A spokeswoman said: "We keep cases under constant review and following a further review of all the evidence in this case we were no longer satisfied that there was sufficient evidence to provide a realistic prospect of conviction and we have therefore discontinued the proceedings against Mr Mcalpine."

...

Chf Supt Steve Johnson, police commander for West Cumbria, said: "We would like to reassure the public that we respect, and are committed to upholding, the fundamental right to freedom of expression.

"We are just as committed to maintaining the peace and preventing people feeling alarmed or distressed by the actions of others in public places.

"Our officers and staff often have to make difficult decisions whilst balancing the law and people's human rights, this is not easy especially when on occasions opinions and interpretations differ."

This is now the second time in recent months that efforts by the Religious Right to use this sort of foreign case as a scare tactic has been undermined by the fact that the charges have been dropped and free speech rights upheld.

Late last year we wrote a post based on a video posted by Bruce Wilson in which Lou Engle explained how he had come to live with Sen. Sam Brownback for seven months:

As I was mobilizing for Boston I said to kids in California ‘we need to dig the dwells of revival in Harvard and close the door of false ideologies that have come through Boston’. Amazingly a week later, I received a phone call from the US Senator from Kansas, Senator Sam Brownback, he’s a godly man. He calls me up, he says ‘Lou, I’m in England, you need to dig the dwells of revival in Harvard and close the door of false ideologies that have come through Boston’. Almost word for word. A Senator was prophesizing me, glory to God.

In fact, it was prophesized to me that I would be connected with a man named Senator Sam Brownback from Kansas. But I forgot about the prophecy, so when I rented a condo in DC to mobilize for The Call, a week later I received a phone call from the owner of the condo and he said ‘there’s a man named Senator Sam Brownback. His condo just burnt down, he wants to know if he could stay in your condo’. I became the room mate of Senator Brownback for 7 months. We began to get dreams that he would be the president of the United States and right now, who knows? We are praying.

Now, via Frederick Clarkson, we see that the Kansas Democratic Party is making this an issue in the race for Governor, asking people to sign a petition demanding that Brownback denounce and distance himself from Engle:

“This is the type of behavior one would expect from Fred Phelps – not from someone who has the ear of Kansas’ most ambitious politician. We are calling on Senator Brownback to denounce Lou Engle for his hateful rhetoric and extreme agenda,” said Kenny Johnston, Executive Director of the Kansas Democratic Party, “If this is the sort of company Brownback keeps, it speaks volumes about the kind of Governor he would be.”

The next Governor of Kansas needs a laser-like focus on creating quality jobs. We can't afford to let a strong and lasting economic recovery be jeopardized by divisive and narrow interests. Now, more than ever, Kansans can't afford an out-of-touch Washington politician who will open the doors of Ceder Crest to extremists like Lou Engle.

In order to demonstrate that he will focus on policies that unite Kansans to solve the challenges that confront our state Sam Brownback needs to demonstrate his independence from right-wing extremists, and strongly denounce Lou Engle.

• Marco Rubio is reportedly set to pick up the endorsements of Frank Pavone and David Barton.
• Pat Buchanan is now a fan of diversity ... by which he means the Supreme Court has too many Jews.
• Elena Kagan might be getting support for lots of conservative legal experts, but the Judicial Crisis Network remains unimpressed.
• Randy Thomasson says Harvey Milk Day is a "moral crime" and that "teachers, principals, and schools that push Harvey Milk's values are responsible for the degradation of children as human beings."
• Neither Focus on the Family nor the Family Research Council are willing to comment on the evangelical push for immigration reform.
• Quote of the day from Maggie Gallagher: "My own complaint about the religious right is not that it is too much in politics, but that it is not enough. In too many cases, religious conservatives talk like they are in politics, make demands like they are in politics, issue threats like they are in politics -- but they do not create the institutions that are at the heart of politics: organizations that raise money and spend it electing politicians who will vote for their cause."
• Finally, Sir Reginald Bling (aka Randall Terry) has something to say:

Founded as the Judicial Confirmation Network to press for confirmation of all of President Bush's judicial nominee, the group recently underwent a name change which reflects the fact that the confirmation of judges is no longer their mission, thus re-naming themselves the Judicial Crisis Network.

And the Judicial Crisis Network is now hard at work leading the opposition to the nomination of Elena Kagan, demanding that "the Obama administration, The Clinton Presidential Library and the national archives to expedite the process of releasing all of Elena Kagan's documents from her service in the Clinton administration" and launching a viral ad campaign against her:

The Judicial Crisis Network today launched a viral campaign to educate and mobilize conservative activists on the questionable record of President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Elena Kagan.

While Kagan was Dean of the Harvard Law School, the sole issue upon on which she took a public stand was the "don't ask, don't tell" policy. Dean Kagan banned the military from recruiting for the JAG Corps on Harvard's campus during a time of war. When Dean Kagan’s legal argument for keeping the military off campus was presented to the Supreme Court, it was unanimously rejected.

“The debate over Kagan will focus on her status as an Obama insider who was picked to ‘rubber-stamp’ the president's domestic policy agenda, especially if legislation pertaining to healthcare and financial regulatory reform are challenged in court,” stated Carrie Severino, chief counsel and policy director to the Judicial Crisis Network.

JCN is distributing a video to its 1 million e-activists involved in SCOTUS and Court issues. Web ads will run in Virginia, Nebraska, Arkansas, Louisiana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Alaska, and Montana.

Script of the video:

Elena Kagan, who, as the Dean of Harvard Law School, kicked the military off campus - incredibly - during a time of war.

When Dean Kagan’s legal argument attempting to keep the military off campus was presented to the very court President Obama would appoint her to, the Supreme Court unanimously rejected Kagan’s argument.

America deserves better.

This is a slightly edited version of the ad the group ran last year:

• Texas Freedom Network: Far Right Smears Clergy from Press Conference.
• David Weigel: Hawaii's anti-'birther' bill becomes law.
• Terry Krepel: Manuel Miranda changes his tune on Kagan.
• Joe.My.God: Catholic School Refuses Student With Two Moms.
• Raw Story: Lewis Black: Beck uses more swastikas than the History Channel:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Back in Black - Glenn Beck's Nazi Tourette's
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

When I saw that Ed Whelan of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and Carrie Severino of the Judicial Crisis Network had spent nearly an hour discussing Elena Kagan's nomination to the Supreme Court with Terry Jeffrey, editor in chief of CNSNews.com, I certainly wasn't expecting it to be exciting.

But I didn't expect it to be downright painful ... but that is exactly what it was, as Jeffrey tried to use the Citizen's United decision, which he held up as a fundamental victory for the First Amendment, to make the case that Kagan should have resigned her position as Solicitor General rather than try to strip Americans of their basic rights.

To their credit, both Whelan and Severino repeatedly shot down Jeffrey's claims ... but it didn't matter, as every explanation they offered just seemed to further convince Jeffrey that government lawyers and Supreme Court justices and basically all lawyers are morally unfit to hold public office on the grounds that they are willing to argue positions with which they might not agree.

All of this eventually leads Jeffrey to start asking random hypothetical questions about whether an anti-choice Solicitor General who worked for a pro-choice administration would be morally fit to hold the office ... as if that is relevant to anything at all. 

So if you want to see the single least informative discussion of Elena Kagan's Supreme Court nomination, jump ahead to the 5:00 mark of this video and watch as Whelan and Severino struggle to deal with Jeffrey's never-ending stream of nonsense:

The Pacific Justice Institute is not a particularly well-known group.  In fact, it is quite likely that most people who read this blog don't even recognize the name ... but they probably recognize this video:

That is Brad Dacus, PJI 's President, explaining before the 2008 election how failure to pass Prop 8 in California would be akin to failing to stop Hitler.

But just because PJI is less well-known than many of the other right-wing legal groups, that doesn't mean that it doesn't have some rather high-profile supporters, like Karl Rove and James Dobson:

Addressing a group of roughly 600 people, a senior advisor to former president George W. Bush recently spoke on the importance of faith, family and freedom -- the "timeless values of America."

At the Pacific Justice Institute's 2010 Celebration of Justice Banquet in Anaheim, California, Karl Rove exhorted listeners to defend these values and to make an "argument" for them in all communities. He praised the family as the source that defines America and molds its individuals, saying, "It's in the family where hearts and minds of children are shaped. If society loves and cherishes life, it is because families love and cherish life."

...

He exhorted the audience to continue taking a stand for the values in which they believe, concluding that "if we stay in the fight, we will win the fight. If we love our country, we need to defend our country."

Other gala speakers included PJI attorney Brad Dacus, Dr. James Dobson, and Father Frank Pastore of Priests for Life.

For those that are interested, the East Bay Express ran a good profile of Dacus and PJI last year:

Religious convictions have compelled Dacus to take on such cases as a fight to allow Bakersfield students to opt out of a homosexual teacher's class, a tussle with a Utah public school that he claims was peddling a book "promoting witchcraft" via the Scholastic Book Club catalog, and — while employed by the conservative Rutherford Institute — the defense of the family of a teenage Nebraska boy who, with his parents' help, had his girlfriend arrested for seeking an abortion. For the courts to find in favor of the girl, Dacus told Time in 1994, would have had "a chilling effect" on free speech.

Last week, Family Research Council co-founder George Rekers was discovered returning from an overseas trip with a "rent boy."

Since then, FRC has issued a statement distancing itself from Rekers, saying it had had no contact with him in over a decade, he's resigned from the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality, been scrubbed from the University of South Carolina medical school's website, and announced that he is undergoing spiritual therapy so that he can "can more fully understand my weaknesses" ... all while threatening to sue anyone who says he is gay.

What kind of law firm would be willing to represet Rekers in such a suit, you ask?

The Jerry Falwell-founded kind, of course: 

A leading religious legal defense group said it is standing with George A. Rekers, the conservative expert on gay behavior who has seen his career implode amid media reports that he took a young gay travel companion to Europe with him.

Officials at the Liberty Counsel said Wednesday they would back Mr. Rekers if he followed through on his threat this week to sue media outlets and others for trying to discredit him.

"I think [Mr. Rekers] would have a great case to file a defamation action," said Mathew D. Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel said.

"I think it was a completely arranged setup," he said, referring to the presence of writers of the free weekly Miami New Times at Miami International Airport when Mr. Rekers and his hired travel companion arrived in the United States April 13.

I can't even say this is surprising, as Liberty Counsel easily ranks among the most viciously anti-gay organizations operating today. 

• How long does it take a write a book?  Not very long, I guess, since Sarah Palin has another one coming out this fall.
• Friends say that Elena Kagan is not gay. Will that stop the Religious Right's attacks? Not likely.
• Once upon a time, the GOP had different standards for Supreme Court nominees.
• Cindy Jacobs participated in an hour-long live chat for Charisma Magazine last night.  It was disappointingly dull.
• Congratulations to Gov. Bob McDonnell on being named Regent University's "Alumnus of the Year."
• Finally, the quote of the day from the Family Research Council's Peter Sprigg's op-ed in the Washington Times opposing ENDA: "It is simply inevitable that when they see a brawny 6' 2" man with broad shoulders, large hands, large feet, a protruding Adam's apple, facial stubble, and a deep voice wearing high heels, pantyhose and a skirt, many customers or clients may be put off. An employer should not be forced to ignore this risk."

It was just earlier today that I was noting that Matt Barber was using the arrest of Dale Mcalpine to try and terrify Christians into thinking that they are about to be rounded up and imprisoned here in the United States.

Now, Rick Scarborough of Vision America has sent out an new email alert, also making the same claim, but using it to generate opposition to Elena Kagan:

On October 22, 2009 Hate Crimes protection was extended to sexual orientation by the Senate and sent to the President's desk to be signed shortly thereafter.

On April 20, 2010, police arrested Dale McAlpine, a 42-year-old Baptist street preacher in Britain for telling a passerby -- in earshot of a policewoman -- that God views homosexuality as a sin. Under Britain's Public Order Act 1986, which forbids "using threatening, abusive or insulting words ... tending to and causing harassment, alarm or distress," he will face a criminal trial at a date yet to be determined. McAlpine was fingerprinted, given a DNA swab and retina scan, and was locked in a police cell for seven hours.

The law was in place for 24 years before it was applied to a preacher of the Gospel, but now, in Great Britain, you can go to jail for agreeing with the Holy Bible on homosexuality. And you can rest assured America is on a collision course with the same tragic conclusion.

The appointment of Elena Kagan is the latest step toward the moral abyss for America. As the President's latest pick for the Supreme Court, this judicial neophyte is a doctrinaire radical leftist with a written disdain for the Constitution of the United States, the very document which she will be sworn to uphold if approved by the Senate, an almost fore drawn conclusion unless enough God fearing Americans raise their voices and demand that she be withdrawn.

...

The real losers are not the preachers who will go to jail, for they shall find God's presence there and be rewarded in this and the next life. The real losers are those caught up in a sin that our Government forbids us to tell the truth about, without being threatened with arrest.

Can't happen here? Just ask Rev. Dale McAlpine of Great Britain.

Till they come for me, I am going to continue to announce the truth and pray for revival in America.

Scarborough urges activist to sign up to blast fax "ALL 100 Senators for just $99" to urge them to oppose Kagan.  

Gordon Klingenschmitt is offering the same service for only $38.

When it was first reported that Dale Mcalpine, a Christian street preacher in Britain, was arrested for saying that homosexuality is a sin, you know it was only a matter of time before the Religious Right in the US started using this incident to work up fears about how this is exactly what gays want to do to Christians here in America.

Case in point:

Liberty Counsel Cultural Affairs Analyst Matt Barber raised the warning that such cases will be seen more and more in America, too.

"We know that what's happening in Europe and what's happening in Canada offers us a window into the future of what will happen here in the United States," he said. "The hate crimes laws and employment sexual orientation laws such as ENDA, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act here in the United States, have been the precursor to the more oppressive hate speech laws," Barber explained.

"Make no mistake, those laws we have now for hate crimes and the more present danger with ENDA, these laws are the precursor in the U. S. for the same kind of criminalization of Christianity that's happening in the U. K.," Barber said.

...

"Their goal is to silence any dissent and to silence under any penalty of law the Biblical recognition and expression of a traditional Judeo-Christian world view relative to sexual behavior and sexual morality," Barber said.

He warned if unchecked, the radical homosexual lobby will ensure that the U.S. goes the same direction as Britain.

"We've seen the same kind of vague language and loopholes that are used to prosecute Mr. McAlpine in Great Britain show up in laws employed here in the United States to prosecute individuals for non-violent speech, for simply sharing a Biblical world view relative to sexual morality," Barber said.  

This WND article also contains audio of the entire interview with Barber, during which he also claims that after he first learned of this incident, he "started perusing a number of homosexual news sites and homosexual blogs" and found that "the majority of homosexuals and homosexual activists for this same kind of homophobia/hate speech persecution here in the United States" and goes on to say that this is exactly what the Human Rights Campaign, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, Kevin Jennings, Chai Feldblum want to see happen in this country.