Concerned Women for America

As Brian noted earlier, Live Action has finally gotten around to releasing its hoax video attack on Planned Parenthood, despite the fact that Planned Parenthood had already reported the "potential sex trafficking" to law enforcement officials.

And despite the fact that Live Action's Lila Rose got her start working with James O'Keefe and that this new video heavily resembles O'Keefe's own notorious ACORN smear job, Religious Right are already lining-up behind Rose and using the video as an excuse to attack Planned Parenthood:

Marjorie Dannenfelser - President, Susan B. Anthony List

"The exploitive roots and track record of Planned Parenthood is a largely untold story that now cannot be ignored. The horror of the logic behind Planned Parenthood's founding has come to roost in this modern form: it is the primary partner of those who degrade and exploit women. The exploitation of women by men through abortion was vehemently rejected by the early feminists. Yet today's footage and the unbroken trail of like evidence is a natural extension of founder eugenicist Margaret Sanger's worldview, who saw vulnerable citizens like African-Americans, the poor, and immigrants as 'human weeds' and 'reckless breeders.' She believed 'the most merciful thing a large family does to one of its infants is to kill it.' Certainly, this is not a heritage that embraces the intrinsic value of every human being. The unbroken chain of examples of such exploitation is appalling, and to further the injustice, this organization insists that it deserves the continued support of taxpayers. The moment for taxpayers to reject their compulsory involvement in Planned Parenthood has arrived. If it stays in business at all, it should do so on its own dime."

Abby Johnson - Former Planned Parenthood Clinic Director turned Pro-Life Advocate, Author of Unplanned

"As a former Planned Parenthood director, it is not surprising to me that this organization would protect individuals involved in sex trafficking. It actually seems like a natural fit. Planned Parenthood is involved in the violent killing of children and has no regard for life. People who traffic these young women for sex have no regard for their lives and are often involved in violent crimes. As someone who has witnessed this connection first hand as a clinic worker, I am so thankful Planned Parenthood's connection to this industry is being exposed."

Marie Tasy - Executive Director, New Jersey Right to Life

"New Jersey taxpayers and every state and federal elected official and law enforcement agency throughout this country should be outraged that an organization claiming to conduct 'extensive community outreach' has been caught on tape doing everything in its power to conceal the sexual abuse and exploitation of girls as young as 14. When Planned Parenthood says they provide 'family planning' services and brags that 'we welcome everyone -- regardless of race, age, income, sexual orientation, or disability,' what they really mean is that they're willing to make money on anyone, even child sex slaves."

Tony Perkins - President, Family Research Council

"Planned Parenthood has again proven that they are nothing more than a money-grabbing and highly corrupt abortion organization that will conceal a crime as disgusting as child prostitution -- and ensure that it quietly continues. Americans work too hard for their dollars to fund an organization this devoid of concern for young women and basic decency, much less to the tune of $350 million a year."

Dr. Charmaine Yoest - President & CEO, Americans United for Life

"This video will help Americans see the appalling truth behind Planned Parenthood's glossy public relations machine. The world's largest abortion provider poses as the defender of women's health in the glare of the spotlight. But when real women enter their doors, only money matters. We must make defunding Planned Parenthood a national priority: not one tax dollar should be given to fuel the abortion industry. Americans United for Life is proud to stand with Lila Rose and Live Action in their courageous work exposing the threat to women posed by the abortion industry and Planned Parenthood."

Wendy Wright - CEO, Concerned Women for America

"Sex traffickers will take their victims to abortionists to end pregnancies or test for sexually transmitted diseases in order to keep their victims usable for sale. Planned Parenthood has apparently realized this, and that they could make not only one sale, but repeat sales. Medical professionals are on the front lines to detect a sex trafficking victim and are duty-bound to rescue the victims. Imagine the crushing despair of a trafficking victim, taken outside the shadows to a 'respectable' government-funded health care provider, only to learn that they are partnering with the trafficker to assist his illegal abuse. This latest tape confirms that Planned Parenthood continues to partner with abusing men against the women and girls they claim to serve. Congress and state governments need to quit funding Planned Parenthood and their corrupt practices that abuse women."

David Bereit - National Campaign Director, 40 Days for Life

"As the father of a young girl, I cannot imagine any parent trusting Planned Parenthood with their daughter after watching this shocking and disturbing video. The revelation that a Planned Parenthood office is willing to aid and abet illegal trafficking of sex slaves -- to help line the pockets of pimps with cash -- raises the question: Who else is being exploited at Planned Parenthood's other 820 locations? This demands an immediate federal investigation for the sake of all our daughters, and -- at the very least -- Congress should freeze all taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood until the investigation is complete."

Kristan Hawkins - Executive Director, Students for Life of America

"This explosive video confirms what many of us in the pro-life movement have long suspected; that Planned Parenthood engages in practices that exploit women and underage girls in human sex trafficking and statutory rape. Now, thanks to this sting operation, we have the proof. Pro-Life students must share this video with their classmates, friends and teachers. Planned Parenthood can’t be trusted on -- or off -- campus."

Dr. Alveda King and Fr. Frank Pavone - Priests for Life

"Now we know that Planned Parenthood is not only targeting the abortion of black babies, but they are eager and willing to cover up the prostitution enslavement of young girls -- including minorities -- so long as they make money doing it. We must defund Planned Parenthood and their bogus claims of protecting women."

Yesterday, a leader of the Religious Right declared that Episcopal Church should no longer be considered Christian because the church backs equality for gays and lesbians. Now, the Episcopal Church is under attack from the Institute on Religion and Democracy, a far-right organization with a history of vilifying mainline denominations, as a result of the church’s support for environmentalism and action to combat climate change. Writing for David Horowitz’s far-right Front Page Magazine, IRD president Mark Tooley assails Episcopalians for working to promote environmental protection and assistance for developing countries, stating that for Episcopalians, “‘the Earth’ displaces a higher authority whom believers better merits a ‘relationship.’”

Tooley’s criticism of the Episcopal Church reflects the growth of climate change denialism among Religious Right leaders. The Cornwall Alliance, joined by representatives of groups including Focus on the Family, Concerned Women for America, the Family Research Council, and the American Family Association, recently announced a campaign against “The Green Dragon.” Members of the campaign attacked environmentalists’ “lust for political power” and accused them of “pointing people away from God,” “believing and promoting exaggerations and myths,” and “scaring little children to achieve [their] political ends,” among other charges.

Similarly, Tooley recycles bogus “Climategate” accusations and claims that the Episcopal Church’s efforts to protect the environment and work against climate change actually show that Episcopalians are “fear-mongers” who are replacing “the concept of divine judgment with apocalyptic environmental scare scenarios.” Tooley writes:

These particular Episcopal global warming fear-mongers came from the north and the south and the east and the west, as though in fulfillment of the biblical end times. Or more specifically, they came from South America, Central America, the Caribbean, and the U.S., including the bishops of California, who no doubt would be piously loath to miss any global warming guilt-fest.

“We have lost a sense of connection with the world, and have become dominators rather than ‘good gardeners;’ over-developed countries have given themselves over to the sin of consumerism,” a fretful statement by the group intoned. “This sin, as sin always does, has clouded and distorted all our relationships: between people, with the Earth, and with our creator God.” The Religious Left sometimes, a little pantheistically, likes to speak of “relationships” with inanimate objects, like “the Earth.” For them, sometimes “the Earth” displaces a higher authority whom believers better merits a “relationship.”

The Episcopal group met around the theme of “climate justice” December 7 – 10, 2010 in San Pedro de Macorís, Dominican Republic at the Bishop Kellogg Retreat Center, intentionally overlapping with the United Nations’ climate change meeting in Mexico. For the Religious Left, the UN carries almost transcendent authority, though perhaps not so much as “the Earth.”

…

The Anglican global warming group also committed to “recruit and empower a core of missionaries from the global south” to come to the United States, “in a ministry of accompaniment and consciousness-raising about the effects of climate change.” Traditional Christians understand missionaries as proclaimers of the Gospel. But the Religious Left has mostly reinterpreted redemption to mean conformity to its own political agenda. Its “missionaries” declare the Good News of reduced political and economic liberty in service to statism and international regulation.

…

According to the Episcopal News Service, about 30 attended the Anglican global warming jamboree, including seminarians from Berkeley Divinity School, Yale Divinity School and several Latin American institutions. No doubt all were suitably enraged when told about repeated instances of “climate injustice” such as the consumption of resources “at such a frantic rate that we are stealing from the future generations of the Earth.” Participants complained about rising water levels “displacing entire island populations,” deforestation, the “decimation” of indigenous peoples, and degraded rivers affected by toxic runoff and human waste. All are the sinister products of global warming, the organizers insisted, having largely replaced the concept of divine judgment with apocalyptic environmental scare scenarios.

“Our hope is in God … who does not forget the covenants made with the Earth, and our hope is in our capacity to love,” the Anglican/Episcopal statement decreed, without citing a Scriptural reference for where the Almighty ever made agreements with “the Earth.” But as devoted servants of “the Earth,” the Episcopal Church segment of the Religious Left no doubt will persevere in its increasingly dubious global warming crusade, perhaps relating to a lonely Noah when he built the ark, and no doubt hoping for eventual vindication.

The National Organization for Marriage embraced the World Congress of Families’ list of the “10 Best and Worst Developments for the Family in 2010,” which claims that the Republican victory in the midterm election was the "best development for the family" in 2010. The World Congress of Families is a militantly anti-gay organization that has spoken out against the purportedly-gay Teletubby Tinky-Winky and partners with other Religious Right groups such as Concerned Women for America, the Family Research Council, the American Family Association, Focus on the Family, the Alliance Defense Fund, and Peter LaBarbera’s Americans For Truth About Homosexuality. According to the list, the election of a Republican majority in the House of Representatives was the best development for families in 2010, along with moves towards anti-choice laws around the world. The WCF’s worst developments include: “Mexico City institutes same-sex marriage;” “repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell;” and “EU tries for stealth recognition of same-sex marriage,” which the group lumps together with issues such as prostitution and out-of-wedlock birth. Read the full list:

The 10 Best Developments are:

1. The U.S. elects a pro-family House of Representatives

2. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev begins discussion of his nation's demographic crisis

3. California voters reject marijuana legalization

4. Canadians refuse to legalize euthanasia

5. Spain holds huge pro-life rallies challenging expansion of abortion

6. U.K. plans to block children's access to Internet porn

7. Developing nation reject E.U. "sexual orientation" mandate

8. Regarding abortion, Europe preserves right of conscience for medical professionals

9. Hungary's new government considers pro-life/pro-marriage constitution and

10. U.N. members reject special rapporteur's recommendations on sexuality education.

Here are The 10 Worst Developments for the Family:

1. Ontario court tries to legalize prostitution in Canada

2. Mexico City institutes same-sex marriage

3. New Kenyan Constitution undermines right to life

4. Ted Turner calls for worldwide one-child policy

5. Hollywood is sexualizing teen girls

6. In U.S., high levels of out-of-wedlock birth among less educated

7. Repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell

8. Planned Parenthood says abortion and contraception are economic stimulus

9. Growing anti-Christian bigotry in Europe and

10. EU tries for stealth recognition of same-sex marriage.

Anti-choice activists are hosting a rally outside the Virginia capitol on Thursday at which VA Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli and representatives of the Virginia Family Foundation were scheduled to participate ... that is until they found out the rally was designed to pressure Gov. Bob McDonnell to place tighter restrictions on women's clinics.

Upon learning that, Cuccinelli and the VA Family Foundation dropped out:

Both Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R) and the conservative Family Foundation declined to participate in an anti-abortion rally scheduled for Thursday outside the Capitol to avoid "confronting" McDonnell after they found out that organizers designed the event to pressure the governor.

Both Cuccinelli (R) and Family Foundation Chaplain Bishop E.W. Jackson Sr. had been scheduled to attend the rally, which will take place on the second day of the General Assembly's annual session.

"While Attorney General Cuccinelli is a long-time pro-life leader and is very supportive of the people redressing their grievances with their elected officials at a rally like this, he does not support calling on his client -- the governor -- to circumvent the normal public regulatory process, even for the most laudable of goals,'' Cuccinelli spokesman Brian Gottstein said. "While this may be a favored approach to getting a more immediate resolution to the abortion clinic issue, the expanded use of this power -- generally reserved for emergency situations -- would set a bad precedent, allowing future governors to abuse such a power."

Del. Bob Marshall, who is speaking at the rally, describes the Family Foundation's absence as "odd" and "inconsistent" and wonders whether it has to do with the group's president's husband employment with McDonnell. Several conservative activists also e-mailed Family Foundation President Victoria Cobb accusing her of remaining "silent'' because of her desire to not "confront" the governor, according to e-mails provided to The Post.

...

Several organizations, including the American Freedom Project and Hampton Roads for Life, have organized a petition drive to encourage McDonnell to act.

"Governor Bob McDonnell is reluctant to give the directive to the state Board of Health to move forward in promulgating these regulations,'' said Mike Prunty of the American Freedom Project. "This is somewhat puzzling to some because he built his political career as a 'pro-life candidate.' ''

....

The rally at the bell tower begins at 10:30 a.m. Thursday.

Other speakers include Keith Fournier, deacon of the Catholic Diocese of Richmond and founder of the Catholic Way; David Bereit, national director of 40 Days for Life, a Christian pro-life organization; Shawn Carney, co-founder of 40 days for Life; John Seeds, a Richmond doctor; Andrea Pearson of Silent No More; Rita Dunaway, assistant director of the Valley Family Forum; Tom Glessner, founder and president of the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates; and Karen Zbinden of Concerned Women for America.

Alveda King, niece of Martin Luther King, will speak by audio hook-up. Maddy Curtis, a 16-year-old "American Idol" contestant from Virginia, will sing the national anthem.

Wendy Wright, the president of Concerned Women For America, in the conservative publication The American Thinker ridicules the Obama Administration’s claims that bigotry and inequality still exist in the U.S., but goes on to claim that the Religious Right represents the actual victim of discrimination at the hands of “homosexual activists.” Such fatuous allegations are nothing new from Wright, who participated in the “Green Dragon” series that believes the environmental movement is surreptitiously trying to destroy Christianity and dismissed a study which showed that the children of same-sex parents are as “well adjusted” as their peers because it didn’t conform to her anti-gay prejudice.

In her article, “What Obama Thinks of America,” Wright is incensed that the Obama Administration still believes that discrimination survives in the U.S. and facetiously asks “Which American laws or institutions enshrine discrimination?” However, she then blasts the Obama Administration for not confronting the “homosexual activists” who are leading “a campaign of harassment, threats, vandalism, and attacks on employment against people who support traditional marriage, with particular venom toward religious people.” Essentially, Wright and the CWA strongly endorse discriminatory laws and bigoted views that target gay and lesbian Americans, but in her opinion proponents of anti-gay bigotry like herself are the real victims of intolerance:

Sometimes the best way to find out what a person thinks about you is to find out what he tells others.

That's why the report on America's human rights record filed by the Obama administration with the U.N. is particularly interesting.

…

What comes through is that President Obama's crew thinks America is congenitally discriminatory, and his administration is bravely soldiering into this morass against the unwashed masses to create an equal society.

As the report states, "[w]ork remains to meet our goal of ensuring equality before the law for all." Which American laws or institutions enshrine discrimination? Not mentioned. No matter -- when you're convinced that Americans are bigots, there is no need to provide proof.

The administration crows in the report about passing the incredibly divisive and unconstitutional health care act. It devotes a section to the bill, with glowing aspirations of how it will end the discrimination of a racist medical system. (Remember, these people see everything through the filter of race or identity politics -- even health care.)

Yet religious freedom (in which the U.S. excels in contrast to other countries) gets a few measly paragraphs with boilerplate generalities. Whereas the health care bill earned details like how many Asian-American men suffer from stomach cancer, the examples of a defense of religious freedom were a Native American primary school student's right to wear his hair in a braid and a Muslim girl's right to wear a hijab.

Maybe this administration is not keen on religious freedom. The issue is so old-school...yesterday's news...Christian. And it inconveniently conflicts with one of President Obama's priorities highlighted in the report, a priority that threatens religious freedom -- privileges for those who engage in homosexual, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender behavior.

Homosexual activists conducted a campaign of harassment, threats, vandalism, and attacks on employment against people who support traditional marriage -- with particular venom toward religious people. The vile assaults on Carrie Prejean for merely expressing her views pulled away the curtain that had been hiding how homosexual activists routinely treat decent people who dissent. It raised the question: Who is the aggressor, and who is victim?

Did you get that? "In each era of our history" -- that is, America is historically and inherently bigoted. Makes you wonder why they'd want to live here.

LGBT advocates (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) claim that sexual orientation is an inborn identity, like skin color or ethnicity, and they excoriate people who use the term "gay lifestyle" because it implies choices and actions. Yet the report's first boast of tackling discrimination against this group was the striking down of a law criminalizing sodomy. Apparently, particular actions do define homosexuality.

Wright goes on to argue that the Justice Department intentionally lost the Massachusetts cases challenging the constitutionality of the Defense Of Marriage Act, a charge which Focus on the Family thinks deserves a congressional investigation by Darrell Issa, and that any move towards equality for gays and lesbians actually represents prejudice:

Remember, since he ran for president, Obama has claimed that he does not upport same-sex "marriage." Yet he opposes the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), the clearest federal statute that protects marriage as the union of a man and a woman.

Obama's Justice Department sabotaged its defense of DOMA in a legal challenge, making such weak arguments that it guaranteed a loss. And he opposed California's Proposition 8, a constitutional amendment to define marriage as between a man and a woman. So Obama opposes federal and state measures that define and enforce traditional marriage.

That's where the report to the U.N. really gets interesting. It states, "Debate continues over equal rights to marriage for LGBT Americans at the federal and state levels, and several states have reformed their laws to provide for same-sex marriages, civil unions, or domestic partnerships."

…

President Obama is, as he said in his inaugural address, remaking America. Too bad his image of America -- and what he wants to turn us into -- is so prejudiced.

Writing for the American Spectator, Jeff Walton of the Institute on Religion and Democracy condemned the State Department for advancing the rights of gays and lesbians abroad. The IRD is a far-right group with a two-pronged strategy to advance its opposition to gay rights: dividing and decrying churches, particularly Mainline Protestant denominations, which favor LGBT equality, while at the same time aiding and promoting groups in Africa and the U.S. that attack gays and even support the criminalization of homosexuality. Most recently, the IRD vilified a North Carolina church group for electing an openly gay layman as the President. In addition to the group’s militant stance on gay rights, the IRD also works against the rights of women and immigrants, and criticizes the environmental movement, and the IRD has ties to major right wing organizations like the Heritage Foundation, Concerned Women For America, Numbers USA, and the American Enterprise Institute.

Walton, the Communications Manager for the IRD who previously alleged that the Episcopal Church could be held responsible for the deaths of Christians abroad because it allows gays and lesbians to serve as Bishops, now is taking to the ultraconservative Spectator to reproach the State Department for “promoting homosexuality overseas.” He blasts Secretary Hillary Clinton for allegedly wanting to “legitimize homosexual practices in those socially traditional countries,” like those in Africa, and maintains that efforts to protect gays from discrimination are affronts to “religious freedom.” Walton denounces the State Department’s work to document anti-gay laws and violence, and the pressure it puts on countries like Uganda to improve the rights of gays:

Although the language of some U.S. officials begins with the legitimate concern for personal safety and freedom from the threat of violence, it often ends by demanding acceptance of homosexual acts as a human right.

"We've come such a far distance in our own country, but there are still so many who need the outreach, need the mentoring, need the support, to stand up and be who they are, and then think about people in so many countries where it just seems impossible," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said during a speech in June as part of "Pride Month" celebrations at the U.S. State Department.

At the event, which was organized by the group "Gays and Lesbians in Foreign Affairs Agencies," Clinton said the State Department is supporting efforts to advance homosexual rights around the world. "We celebrate the progress of advancing the rights of LGBT [Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender] in our country, as we continue to advance the rights of all people around the world," Clinton gushed before the receptive audience, adding that the "struggle for equality is never, ever finished."

…

During her June address, Clinton stated that her department has formalized reporting on homosexual rights for the first time in the 2009 annual human rights report that was issued in February on every country in the world. But the top U.S. diplomat quickly honed in on Africa, saying that U.S. embassies there had been directed to ask their host government about the status of LGBT rights. A special panel discussion on LGBT rights in Africa was also held later in the day.

He goes on to rebuke Assistant Secretary of State Michael H. Posner, openly gay Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson, and Bishop Christopher Senyonjo, an Anglican Bishop who worked in Ugana to improve the livelihoods of marginalized gay Ugandans and diligently opposed a bill in Uganda’s Parliament that “would make homosexuality illegal, in some cases punishable by death.” Walton says:

In March, Posner introduced the State Department human rights report to Congress, emphasizing what was termed a growing crisis in abuse directed against LGBT people worldwide, and urging the use of diplomacy to counter the alleged trend.

In introducing the report, Posner singled out the case of Uganda, where he alleged that introduction of anti-homosexuality legislation has resulted in abuse. The report further documents LGBT-related incidents in almost every country in the world.

Posner's report met agreement with Robinson and Senyonjo during their conversation at CAP.

“[The] time is coming when we should not work on just one bill, but towards decriminalization," Senyonjo said, adding that he was "very grateful for voices all over the world that work against oppression."

"It is wrong to say, 'Don't interfere, it's a domestic thing,'" the former Anglican bishop said. He compared foreigners working for decriminalization of homosexuality in Africa to aid workers providing earthquake relief in Haiti.

…

In that commissioning, Senyonjo seems to have found a partner in the U.S. State Department. For them, seemingly sexual freedom is more important than religious freedom. Look for more developments in 2011.

Walton never explains how defending gays from violence and discrimination undermines “religious freedom,” and dismisses Bishop Senyonjo’s religiously-grounded defense of LGBT equality. Just as the IRD demonized many US churches who worked in social justice and anti-apartheid activism in South Africa because they also supported rights for gays and lesbians, Walton and the IRD are criticizing the State Department for working to document and prevent the persecution and oppression of gays outside of the U.S.

When the North Carolina Council of Churches, a coalition composed of mainline Protestant and Catholic churches, selected an openly gay man as the body’s new president, right-wing activists jumped on the story in their efforts to foster divisions and anti-gay sentiment among church groups. Seventeen denominations, including Episcopal, Lutheran, AME, Roman Catholic, Baptist, Reformed, and Methodist churches, are members of the North Carolina Council of Churches, and President-Elect Stan Kimer promised to make outreach, environmental stewardship, and social justice key parts of his agenda.

“I have a strong belief that as a Christian I'm called to make the world a better place,” Kimer told the Charlotte Observer, “I like to spend my time with groups where I can see an impact.”

Now, the far-right Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD) is using Kimer’s election to advance its agenda of splitting Protestant churches by opposing any denomination’s support for LGBT equality.

IRD’s Vice President Alan Wisdom condemned the coalition’s decision to OneNewsNow, saying, “All major branches of the Christian church -- the Roman Catholics, the Eastern Orthodox, the evangelicals, the African-Americans, the historic Protestant denominations for the most part -- agree that God's standard of sexual morality is the marriage of man and woman and that homosexual relationships are not in accord with Christian teaching.” Wisdom also condemned the Metropolitan Community Church, of which Kimer is a member, for its foundational support of gay equality.

The New York Times reports that the IRD opposes women’s and gay rights, and leads “traditionalist insurrections against the liberal politics of the denomination's leaders.” The IRD has ties to ultraconservative organizations including Concerned Women For America’s Beverly LaHaye Institute, the anti-immigrant group Numbers USA, the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, Patrick Henry College and The Weekly Standard, and receives its funding from the right wing Scaife, Bradley, Olin, and Ahmanson Foundations.

Reverend Kapya Kaoma of Political Research Associates reported on how IRD mobilizes church groups in Africa to viciously oppose rights for gays and lesbians and to resist mainline Protestant denominations. In “Globalizing the Culture Wars: U.S. Conservatives, African Churches, and Homophobia,” Rev. Kaoma writes that the IRD encourages anti-gay congregations based in Africa to launch missions in North America as “part of a long-term, deliberate, and successful strategy to weaken and split U.S. mainline denominations, block their powerful progressive social witness promoting social and economic justice, and promote social and economic conservatism in the United States.”

As the Religious Right’s boycott of the American Conservative Union’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) builds momentum, Joseph Farah of WorldNetDaily has called for exclusion of the ACU from the “conservative movement” as a result of their connections with GOProud, a conservative gay-rights group that is a sponsor of CPAC. Organizations including the American Principles Project, American Values, Capital Research Center, the Center for Military Readiness, Concerned Women For America, Liberty Counsel, Liberty University, the National Organization for Marriage, and the Family Research Council have decided to boycott CPAC over GOProud’s participation. GOProud wants to shrink the clout of the Religious Right in the Republican Party and referred to such groups “dinosaurs headed to political extinction.”

Farah, who previously compared GOProud to the Ku Klux Klan, joins other right wing activists in believing that GOProud is an assault on the wider conservative movement. He likens the Religious Right’s opposition to GOProud to the Biblical story of Gideon: When Giden raised up an army to free the Israelites from the Midianites and end idol-worshipping, God ultimately ordered Gideon to reduce his army from thirty-two thousand to just three hundred or otherwise “Israel would boast against me, ‘My own strength has saved me’” (Judges 7:2). Farah writes that conservatives, like Gideon, should “purge” their ranks of those who embrace “enemies of moral values” like GOProud:

If the U.S. "conservative movement" is to survive, prosper and be a force for reclaiming everything that made America unique and great in the days ahead, it is going to need a purge.

"Purge" is not a bad word. It simply means, according to the dictionary definition, "to rid of whatever is impure or undesirable; cleanse; purify."

Conservatives need to purge from their movement anything that is not conservative.

They shouldn't be attempting to broaden the definition of "conservative." They shouldn't be trying to build a bigger tent in the failed model of the Republican Party. They shouldn't be revising or lowering their standards. And they absolutely shouldn't be embracing enemies of the moral values that have defined the movement from the beginning.

…

That's why it's time for true conservatives to get their act together as America faces its greatest challenges ever in the next two years.

God cut Gideon's army up, slicing and dicing it until it represented only a tiny fraction of its numbers. God didn't want a big army to win victory. He wanted a miracle performed by a tiny army listening carefully and being in obedience to His commands.

God purged thousands from Gideon's army.

Conservatives need God's help, not GOProud's.

Purges can make an organization or a movement stronger.

Purges can help to refine, rather than redefine, what an ideology is all about.

Purges can sharpen and strengthen a movement – bringing it back to the core convictions and principles that made it successful.

And that's why the purge of the conservative movement should begin with David Keene and his administrative team at ACU.

The Senate battle over the confirmation of judicial nominees reflected the epitome of Republican obstructionism, with nominees who won significant if not unanimous support from the Judiciary Committee failing to receive up-or-down votes on their confirmation. Of the 38 pending judicial nominees the Senate was only able to confirm 19 of them before adjourning for the year, exacerbating the country’s judicial vacancy crisis that is growing so badly that even GOP-appointed judges have called on Senate Republicans to end the blockade.

Mario Diaz, the Policy Director for Legal Issues at Concerned Women for America, believes though that Republicans should oppose Obama’s judicial nominees just like starving children should avoid eating “poisoned apples.” He resurrects the same tired arguments used to oppose the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan when he takes direct aim at Goodwin Liu, suggesting that he should not be appointed to the Ninth Circuit Court because he views the Constitution as a living document and “has no judicial experience and almost no legal experience.” Diaz writes:

The liberal cry for more judges has reached an all-time high. Their media cohorts have been banging the drums with the numbers game and the judicial emergency cry in perfect sync. They have become masters of smokescreens and shadows while ignoring the essence.

The nomination of judges is about substance.

If children are starving and you give them poisoned apples, have you really helped them? Hardly! Oh sure, you can say they have more than they had before, but they can’t eat it. It would kill them.

In the same way, assuming you can successfully argue that the country is “starving” for judges (others might argue that what we need are fewer lawsuits, not more judges), President Obama seems to think that by nominating extreme liberal political operatives like Goodwin Liu he is somehow meeting that need. But like the poisoned apples, such nominees would pervert justice, not promote it. And we must be willing to go to great lengths to oppose them.

Aside from the fact that Liu has no judicial experience and almost no legal experience, his view of the role of a judge and the Constitution cannot be more warped. He has made clear he sees the Constitution as a living, breathing document that changes with the times and that judges get to decide what those changes are.

In a 2008 Stanford Law Review article, he argued that judges should use “socially situated modes of reasoning that appeal ... to the culturally and historically contingent meanings of particular social goods in our own society” and that they should “determine, at the moment of decision, whether our collective values on a given issue have converged to a degree that they can be persuasively crystallized and credibly absorbed into legal doctrine.” He was apparently arguing for a new constitutional right to welfare.

Liu is such a political operative that he actually testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee against the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, attacking him viciously. He was also an outspoken opponent of Chief Justice Roberts’ nomination. They were, of course, too far to the right for him. Can you imagine, they actually said they will take the Constitution only for what it says?

…

And he is not alone. President Obama has been consistent in nominating radicals (see David Hamilton, Louis Butler, Edward Chen, and Robert Chatigny).

So the liberal elite and their media can keep playing their sad tune about judges. It doesn’t really matter how hungry you are if a person keeps giving you poisoned apples. In fact, can you even trust when they offer one that looks okay?

According to Diaz, Justices Roberts and Alito are model justices who “take the Constitution only for what it says.” Of course, Roberts and Alito have been exposed for their pro-corporate agenda, as Jeffrey Toobin of The New Yorker writes, “the rule in the current Supreme Court” is that if “there is a human being on one side of the ‘v.’ and a corporation on the other, the corporation wins.” A New York Times analysis found that the Roberts Court is far more sympathetic to corporations than even the conservative Rehnquist Court. As Arlen Specter recently claimed, “Chief Roberts promised to just ‘call balls and strikes,’ and then he moved the bases.”

Diaz’s misguided praise for Roberts and Alito is only matched in its absurdity to his opposing Liu, the Associate Dean of the Berkeley School of Law, on the grounds that he “has no judicial experience.” If Diaz believes that Republicans should block Liu’s confirmation to the Ninth Circuit because Liu is not a judge, then by the same logic he should have opposed confirming Roberts to the DC Circuit since he never served as a judge prior to his nomination.

He also badly misconstrues Goodwin Liu’s legal experience. Liu served as a clerk for Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg and a DC Circuit court judge, in addition to working as an appellate litigator. As Associate Dean of the Berkeley School of Law, Liu has received wide praise from both progressive and conservative legal scholars, and conservatives John Yoo and Ken Starr said “Goodwin is an outstanding nominee.” While Diaz believes that Liu’s criticism of Roberts and Alito disqualifies him from serving, The New York Times notes that “Liu’s warnings that the two men would be extremely conservative justices have turned out to be completely on target,” while Liu’s “views fall within the mainstream of legal scholarship and American politics.”

Diaz goes on to distort Liu’s legal writings, maintaining that he argued “for a new constitutional right to welfare.” The Alliance for Justice makes clear that Liu has ardently opposed an expansive role for the judicial branch:

[Liu] has argued for a model of judicial restraint, concluding that courts should not interpret the Constitution to create affirmative welfare rights, whether to education, health care, or minimal levels of subsistence. Liu has explained that “such rights cannot be reasoned into existence by courts on their own” and has explained that his understanding of the judicial role “does not license courts to declare rights to entirely new benefits or programs not yet in existence.”

Only a right wing hypocrite like Diaz could falsely represent Justices Roberts and Alito as archetypes of judicial restraint and claim that Obama’s urgently-needed judicial nominees as “radicals.” Diaz is forced to levy ridiculous and bogus arguments against Liu in order to backup his wildly inaccurate case opposing Obama’s nominees, however, Senate Republicans have largely followed his lead in their willingness “to go to great lengths to oppose them.”