Posts on Ethics and Public Policy Center

The Supreme Court’s past term made clear its lurch to the right following the appointment of John Roberts and Samuel Alito, as outlined in a recent People For the American Way Foundation report. Awareness of this fact has spread from legal analysts to the general public: A new Washington Post/ABC poll shows less than half of Americans think the Court is balanced, and 31 percent think it’s too conservative – up from 19 percent two years ago. This was the context for Sen. Chuck Schumer’s speech at the American Constitution Society last week. “There is no doubt we were hoodwinked,” he said of the confirmation hearings.

Nevertheless, right-wing activists maintain that, despite their victory in confirming Roberts and Alito and the obvious rightward tilt of the last term, the Supreme Court remains a “bastion” of liberalism. "After decades of liberal judicial activism on so many issues, the court's position remains decidedly on the left,” said Ed Whelan, president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

Ever since the election of President Bush, Republicans and their allies on the Right have frequently dealt with opposition to his controversial judicial nominations by ignoring the arguments raised by those with legitimate concerns about a nominee’s record in favor of knocking down strawmen of their own creation.  

For instance, when People For the American Way and others voiced opposition to the confirmation of Miguel Estrada, right-wing groups like The Committee for Justice responded by claiming that such opposition was rooted in the fact that Estrada was Latino and claiming that it was an affront to Hispanic-Americans, ignoring the fact that the opposition was actually due to Estrada’s own refusal to reveal anything about his own jurisprudential views and the administration’s refusal to make his full legal record available to the Senate to review.  

Then, when progressive groups opposed the nominations of Priscilla Owen and Janice Rogers Brown, the Right claimed that criticism of the nominees was both sexist and, in the case of Rogers Brown, racist – again, preferring to disregard the substantive concerns about their respective legal records.  

The Right did the exact same thing when it came to the nomination of William Pryor, ignoring serious concerns about his record that displayed a blatant hostility to reproductive choice [among other things, he called Roe vs. Wade the “worst abomination of constitutional law in our history”] and accusing those who opposed his nomination of being anti-Catholic – a tactic they trotted out again when John Roberts was nominated to the Supreme Court.   

In situations where the Right couldn’t accuse a nominee’s opponents of being specifically anti-Latino, anti-Catholic, anti-woman, or straight out racist, they attempted to conflate criticism of a nominee’s legal record with false accusations that the nominee was being accused of being racist – a tactic they deployed during the fight over the nomination of Charles Pickering.  As we explained [PDF] back in 2002:

Some Pickering supporters are arguing in effect that it is impossible to criticize Judge Pickering’s public record on the principles that govern civil rights law without accusing him of being a racist.

Thus, it should come as no surprise that with a battle brewing over the nomination of Leslie Southwick to a seat on the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit – not incidentally, the very same seat for which Charles Pickering and Michael Wallace were nominated, both of whom faced significant opposition due to their disturbing records on civil rights - the Right has reverted to form and begun using both of these tactics: claiming either that opponents of Southwick’s confirmation are racist or are accusing him of being a racist.   

“I talk to a lot of evangelicals and the only person who takes Pat Robertson seriously is Tim Russert.” So claimed Michael Cromartie, vice president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, in a speech at a church in Westchester County, New York last week. Such pointed disavowals of Robertson by other religious-right leaders have occasionally followed the televangelists more absurd and incendiary comments – such as when he declared that Ariel Sharon’s debilitating stroke was God’s punishment for “dividing God’s land” and called for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez – so you might think that Cromartie was responding to recent allegations that Robertson threatened a bodybuilder involved in lawsuit over Robertson’s “Age-Defying Shake,” or perhaps to Robertson’s warning today about Muslim politicians “taking over” the U.S. But Cromartie was trying to make the point that the televangelist, sometimes referred to as a GOP “kingmaker,” is increasingly marginalized.

But it’s hard to believe that. According to its web site, Robertson’s “700 Club” is available “in 95 percent of the television markets across the United States, the program is carried on ABC Family Channel cable network, FamilyNet, Trinity Broadcasting Network, and numerous U.S. television stations and is seen daily by approximately one million viewers.” His Christian Broadcasting Network garnered $166 million in donations from March 2005 to March 2006, and he is the second most well known religious figure in America.

If one needs more evidence of Robertson’s continued influence, especially on U.S. politics, just look at the Republican presidential candidates lining up to curry his favor. Sam Brownback and now John McCain have taken to the CBN airwaves to convince Robertson’s viewers of their conservative credentials. And both Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney are scheduled to speak at Robertson’s Regent University.

As John Green of the Pew Forum said, figures like Robertson “are moving off the stage, but they're by no means inconsequential. … They still have good reputations, particularly with evangelicals who are politically active. There are candidates who want to be seen with these people." As long as that’s true, it’s too early to declare Pat Robertson a political has-been.

Lest they “lose their very soul,” warns Cromartie. Also: “the only person who takes Pat Robertson seriously is Tim Russert.”

Writing on the National Review’s “Bench Memos” blog, Ed Whelan of the Ethics and Public Policy Center set out to rebut various statements made by Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy at a recent confirmation hearing.

Well, two can play that game.

Whelan’s first point:  

1. Leahy states that all five of the district-judge nominees at the hearing “were among those returned to the President without Senate action at the end of last Congress when Republican Senators objected to proceeding with certain of the President’s judicial nominees in September and December last year.”  This statement is clearly designed to give the trusting listener the impression that Republican senators were responsible for the fact that these nominees weren’t confirmed last year.  But no Republican senators objected to any of these nominees.  It was Democrats who decided to hold these nominees as hostages.

What Whelan doesn’t bother to mention is that the “Democrats who decided to hold these nominees as hostages” did so in retaliation for Sen. Sam Brownback’s petty hold on the nomination of Janet Neff solely because she attended a lesbian commitment ceremony back in 2002.  As the New York Times explained:

Judge Neff’s nomination was included in a package of more than a dozen nominees whose confirmation had been agreed upon by both Democrats and Republicans. Mr. Brownback’s objections held up the whole roster of nominees.

Which plays into Whelan’s second point:

2. Leahy states:  “With the five confirmations last week we have confirmed more of President Bush’s nominations in the 18 months I have served as Judiciary Committee Chairman than in the more than two years when Senator Hatch chaired the Committee with a Republican Senate majority or during the last Congress with a Republican Senate majority.”  This comparison obscures the critical fact that Democrats, including Leahy, resorted to unprecedented measures of obstruction against judicial nominations in the last two Congresses.  In other words, Leahy and his fellow Democrats, not the preceding Republican chairmen, are largely responsible for (and I’m sure claim credit with their supporters for) the low number of confirmations over the past four years.

In the 108th and 109th Congresses, the Republican-controlled Senate managed to confirm 104 and 52 of Bush’s nominees, respectively. In the 104th and 105th Congresses, when Republicans controlled the Senate under President Clinton, they managed to confirm 75 and 101 nominees, respectively.  

As noted above, Brownback’s hold on Neff ended up holding up “more than a dozen nominees whose confirmation had been agreed upon.”  The 156 nominees the Republicans confirmed during the 108th and 109th would have included more than a dozen more if Brownback hadn’t placed a hold on Neff, and that would have given President Bush approximately 170 confirmations during that time – pretty darn close to the 176 President Clinton got during the same time in his presidency.  

So Whelan shouldn’t be blaming Democrats about the “the low number of confirmations over the past four years” since it would have been nearly the same as it had been under Clinton had Brownback allowed the dozen-plus nominees to go forward as had been agreed. 

As for Whelan’s third point, it pretty much speaks for itself:  

3. Leahy complains that President Bush “has nominated only 18 African-American judges to the federal bench, compared to 53 African-American judges appointed by President Clinton in his first six years in office.”  From the numbers I have handy, it would appear that President Bush’s 18 black nominees account for slightly more than 5% of his total judicial nominees.  Blacks account for about 4% of lawyers.  Moreover, only about one in ten blacks voted for President Bush (and I’d be surprised if the figures were substantially higher among black lawyers).  So it’s reasonable to conclude that among those lawyers who share the Administration’s judicial philosophy, the percentage of blacks is much lower than 4%—perhaps around 1%.  In short, for those who focus on such measurements (I don’t), blacks are certainly not “underrepresented” among the President’s judicial nominees.

Further, the treatment that Democrats accorded conservative black nominees like Janice Rogers Brown and Jerome Holmes would be enough to deter other qualified blacks from even thinking about becoming judges. 

In other words, there are so few African American lawyers that share the president’s judicial philosophy that it is a miracle that he’s even been able to find any to nominate. And since a couple of those that he did nominate generated opposition, it is really all the Democrats’ fault anyway.  

Santorum at Ethics and Public Policy Center, Talent at Heritage (and with Romney).

After losing his Senate seat, Rick Santorum has quickly rebounded and joined the right-wing Ethics and Public Policy Center where he will head up a program called – literally – America’s Enemies.

The EPPC press release says:

"As a United States Senator, Rick Santorum was a champion of efforts to counter the threat of radical Islamic fascism, to protect victims of religious persecution, and to promote democracy and religious liberty around the world," said EPPC President Ed Whelan.  "We are honored that he is joining EPPC to continue his important and courageous work on these matters."

"In these perilous and uncertain times, I believe it is critical that we define the threats that confront America," said Mr. Santorum.  "Without a clear definition and precise understanding of our enemies we cannot fight effectively and our own citizens become divided.  It is my hope that the America's Enemies program at EPPC will help the American people -- including our leaders -- understand and communicate with clarity, honesty, and consistency the enemies we face and the complex and enormous threat that they pose to our lives and the freedoms we all enjoy."

According to an article in The National Review, Santorum has big plans for his new program:

“It’s a stark name,” says Santorum. “But we wanted to be candid about the fact that America really does have enemies and to point out that the nature of these enemies is much more complex than what people realize. It’s not just Islamic fascism, but also Venezuela, North Korea, and, increasingly in my opinion, Russia.”

…

How will a former senator adjust to life at a think tank? “This is a very impressive group of folks who share my worldview more than any other group in town,” says Santorum. “We’re going to have a lot of synergy. I know that I’m not the foremost scholar in the world, but I can offer a lot of ideas and help put together a communications strategy to describe the threats we face. Communication is a big problem, as the results of the elections in November show.”

Santorum plans to organize lectures and conferences, write articles, and work on a book. (His book agent is Kathy Lubbers, who is Newt Gingrich’s daughter.) “We expect to be very, very active,” he says. One of his focal points will be religious liberty and how people of faith might confront radical Islam.

Now that he is out of the Senate, it was nice of the EPPC to give Santorum a platform from which he can continue his work defending the country against its terrorist enemies by making bizarre comparisons to “Lord of the Rings.”

On a positive note, at least Santorum’s home in Virginia has now become a convenience instead of a political liability.  

Activist claims justice attended funeral against supposed church-state rulings.

“With regard to judges,” the Third Branch Conference activist says. Ed Whelan calls for last-minute lame-duck up-or-down votes on controversial nominees.

Appearing in Wednesday’s edition of the Washington Post was an op-ed by Joseph Loconte and Michael Cromartie, both affiliated with the right-wing Ethics and Public Policy Center, entitled “Let's Stop Stereotyping Evangelicals.”

The gist of the piece was that the culture’s conception of evangelicals “is a gross caricature” because it ignores “evangelicalism's deepening social conscience.” 

There can be no doubt that certain segments of the evangelical community have long been committed to social and justice issues beyond the Right’s standard anti-abortion and anti-gay agenda. In fact, as we noted in a post the other day, the National Association of Evangelicals is attempting to broaden its agenda to include everything from global warming to the crisis in Darfur, Sudan. Of course, such efforts have not been welcomed by some right-wing pundits and Religious Right leaders, some of whom are attempting to discredit this effort by tying it directly to the NAE’s disgraced former president, Ted Haggard. 

Loconte and Cromartie insist

Even the Moral Majority in its most belligerent form amounted to nothing more terrifying than churchgoers flocking peacefully to the polls on Election Day. The only people who want a biblical theocracy in America are completely outside the evangelical mainstream, their influence negligible.

So as Jerry Falwell and other ministers were jumping into politics, leaders such as Charles Colson -- former Nixon aide turned born-again Christian -- were charting another path. In 1976 Colson launched Prison Fellowship, a ministry to inmates, to address the soaring crime problem. Today it ranks as the largest prison ministry in the world, active in most U.S. prisons and in 112 countries. "Crime and violence frustrate every political answer," he has said, "because there can be no solution apart from character and creed." No organization has done more to bring redemption and hope to inmates and their families.

Colson’s organization has indeed been very effective reaching out to inmates.  Unfortunately, it hasn’t always been doing so in a manner that is constitutional

He tells Human Events. Also: Lefever of Ethics and Public Policy Center warns U.S. “character and moral stature” will fall like the Roman Empire.