Constitution Party

Only a few years ago Religious Right groups and Republicans were running as far as possible away from the Personhood Colorado campaign, the effort to pass an extreme anti-choice measure that was twice handily defeated by Colorado voters. Last year, the National Right to Life Committee, Americans United for Life, Colorado Citizens for Life all refused to back the Colorado personhood amendment, and the Colorado Eagle Forum called the personhood campaign a “disaster.”

But now, the Personhood Mississippi campaign –which is nearly identical to the Colorado effort – has received the support of prominent Republican leaders including Mike Huckabee and anti-choice groups such as the American Family Association, Liberty Counsel and the Family Research Council.

The campaign to pass the personhood amendment, called Amendment 26, is led by the head of the extreme Mississippi Constitution Party and a member of Christian Exodus, which wanted to have states secede from the U.S. in order to form a new theocratic system of government. Designed to challenge Roe v. Wade, the amendment would criminalize abortion in all cases and also ban the treatment of ectopic pregnancies, in vitro fertilization, stem cell research and certain forms of birth control.

Huckabee addressed a fundraiser for the personhood campaign and urged activists to give money because pro-choice activists only want to “make people rich” by keeping abortion legal. “This isn’t about elevating women,” Huckabee said, “this is about elevating wealth on behalf of those who profit from the sale of death.”

Watch:

But here’s what I don’t assume. I do not assume that you comprehend the battle you’re gonna face over the next couple of months in this fight for Amendment 26. You have no idea how many millions of dollars are likely to be poured into your state and it’s not stimulus money and economic development and job creation, it is hardcore political money that is designed to preserve the abortion industry which is a multimillion dollar industry specifically designed in order to terminate life and make people rich. Let’s not kid ourselves; this is not about elevating women this is about elevating wealth on behalf of those who profit from the sale of death.

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The reason that America is more pro-life than it ever has been is because the younger generation of Americans are more pro-life than their mothers and their grandmothers. And do you know why? Because science has affirmed what God has been trying to scream to us all along: that is a human life! Thank God for the science that’s affirmed it.

Justine Sharrock has a long article on The Oath Keepers in the latest issue of Mother Jones that notes the organization's ties to Tea Party and 9/12 activists and, by extension, figures like Ralph Reed, groups like the Eagle Forum, and members of Congress: 

Founded last April by Yale-educated lawyer and ex-Ron Paul aide Stewart Rhodes, the group has established itself as a hub in the sprawling anti-Obama movement that includes Tea Partiers, Birthers, and 912ers. Glenn Beck, Lou Dobbs, and Pat Buchanan have all sung its praises, and in December, a grassroots summit it helped organize drew such prominent guests as representatives Phil Gingrey and Paul Broun, both Georgia Republicans.

There are scores of patriot groups, but what makes Oath Keepers unique is that its core membership consists of men and women in uniform, including soldiers, police, and veterans. At regular ceremonies in every state, members reaffirm their official oaths of service, pledging to protect the Constitution—but then they go a step further, vowing to disobey "unconstitutional" orders from what they view as an increasingly tyrannical government.

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It was while volunteering for Ron Paul's doomed presidential bid that Rhodes decided to abandon electoral politics in favor of grassroots organizing. As an undergrad, he had been fascinated by the notion that if German soldiers and police had refused to follow orders, Hitler could have been stopped. Then, in early 2008, SWAT received a letter from a retired colonel declaring that "the Constitution and our Bill of Rights are gravely endangered" and that service members, veterans, and police "is where they will be saved, if they are to be saved at all!"

Rhodes responded with a breathless column starring a despotic president, "Hitlery" Clinton, in her "Chairman Mao signature pantsuit." Would readers, he asked, obey orders from this "dominatrix-in-chief" to hold militia members as enemy combatants, disarm citizens, and shoot all resisters? If "a police state comes to America, it will ultimately be by your hands," he warned. You had better "resolve to not let it happen on your watch." He set up an Oath Keepers blog, asking soldiers and veterans to post testimonials. Word spread. Military officers offered assistance. A Marine Corps veteran invited Rhodes to speak at a local Tea Party event. Paul campaigners provided strategic advice. And by the time Rhodes arrived in Lexington to speak at a rally staged by a pro-militia group, a movement was afoot.

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Rhodes has become a darling of right-wing pundits. In a column last October, Pat Buchanan predicted that "Brother Rhodes is headed for cable stardom." Glenn Beck has cited the group as a "phenomenal" example of the "patriot revival movement," while Lou Dobbs declared that its platform "should give solace and comfort to the left in this country." Conspiracy-radio king Alex Jones even put an Oath Keepers segment, including footage of the Lexington speech, on his hit DVD Fall of the Republic. "I can't stress enough how much your organization is scaring the globalists," he told Rhodes on his show.

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On the conference's final day, National 912 Project chairman Patrick Jenkins stepped up to talk about the National Liberty Unity Summits his group was organizing in cooperation with Oath Keepers. They would provide a chance, he said, for patriots to forge a common agenda and a plan to carry it out. At the first summit, in December, attendees included representatives of groups from FairTax Nation to the Constitution Party to Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Forum. On hand were Ralph Reed Jr. (former director of Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition and recent founder of the Faith and Freedom Coalition), Larry Pratt (head of Gun Owners of America), and Tim Cox (founder of Get Out of Our House, an organization praised on Fox News for its goal of replacing business-as-usual incumbents with "ordinary folks"). Most notable were representatives Broun and Gingrey, who according to summit organizer Nighta Davis have expressed willingness to introduce legislation crafted by summit attendees. (So, Davis says, have Steve King [R-Iowa] and Michele Bachmann [R-Minn.]. None of the representatives agreed to comment for this story.)

As they say, read the whole thing.

It seems as if a gaggle of D-list right-wing activists are now demanding the head of “Human Events” editor Jed Babbin:

Radio host and bestselling author Gregg Jackson and a growing list of other conservative leaders, lawyers and activists are calling on Eagle Publishing to dismiss editor Jed Babbin and take immediate and decisive steps to restore the credibility of Human Events. Among the names widely known in social conservative and pro-life circles are Dr. Ted Baehr, President of Movieguide; Ambassador Alan Keyes, former Reagan appointee and presidential candidate; Dr. William Greene of RightMarch.com; Coach Dave Daubenmire, talk show host and author; and Brian Rohrbough, President of American Right to Life.

The editor of what was Ronald Reagan's favorite conservative weekly, Human Events, Babbin only recently admitted in an explosive radio interview that Mitt Romney illegally instituted same-sex "marriage" and $50 government-funded abortions. He now claims that Human Events faithfully reported these facts to their readers, but when asked to support that erroneous claim by citing specific articles in the four years since Romney's illegal orders went into effect, Babbin angrily professed not to remember and abruptly hung up, ending the interview.

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On numerous occasions, Jackson and others had gone to great lengths to share Romney's far left wing record with Babbin and other writers at Human Events such as Ann Coulter, David Limbaugh and John Gizzi, but they all chose to suppress Romney's radical record in Massachusetts and in doing so deceived countless conservative readers.

Here is the current list of those demanding Babbin’s firing – how many names do you recognize?  If you said “more than 5,” … well, you did better than me.  If this group of nobodies is the best they can come up with, I don’t think Babbin has much to worry about :

The still growing list of conservative leaders, attorneys, radio talk show hosts and pundits calling for Human Events to dismiss Jed Babbin and chart an authentic conservative course for the future includes the following:

Dr. Ted Baehr, President, Movieguide.org
Dr. Alan Keyes, former Reagan ambassador and presidential candidate
Bob Enyart, radio host KLTT-AM, www.kgov.com author, former national TV host
Brian Rohrbough, President of American Right to Life
Rev. Earle Fox, Ph.D (Oxford), author, philosopher, president, Road to Emmaus School of Judeo-Christian Apologetics (www.theRoadToEmmaus.org)
Dr. William Greene, President, RightMarch.com
"Coach" Dave Daubenmire, founder, Pass The Salt Ministries, talk show host and author
Steve Deace, radio talk show host and author
Tom Hoefling, Chairman, America's Independent Party, www.AIPNEWS.com
Dr. Scott Lively, President, Abiding Truth Ministries
Dr. Paul Cameron, Chairman, Family Research Institute
Ray Neary, Director, Pro-Life Massachusetts (former President, Massachusetts Citizens for Life)
John O'Gorman, Massachusetts Citizen for Life, Member, Board of Directors 2002-2008
Atty. 'Robert Paine,' author: The Governor's New Clothes: How Mitt Romney Brought Same-Sex Marriage to America
Tricia Erickson, President Angel Pictures, LLC
Dewey L. Crepeau, Esq, Executive Director, A Gift of Hope Adoptions
Bob Denny, Founder, Guardians of the Inheritance
Gregg Jackson, radio talk show host and author of Conservative Comebacks to Liberal Lies
David Jeffers, author of Understanding Evangelicals: A Guide to Jesusland
Kenny Bolton, pastor and radio talk show host of "The Black Conservative"
Joseph L. Langlois, Attorney at Law
Tom Blumer, owner, BizzyBlog.com and Monetary Matters
Kerry Lee Morgan, Esq., ReviveTheRepublic.com
John Haskins, editor, www.UndergroundJournal.net
Patrick Flynn, Chairman, America's Independent Party of Michigan
Steve Schulin, founder, Maryland Independent Party
Richard Selfridge, Chairman, Constitution Party of Massachusetts
Rev. Michael Carl, Publisher/Editor-in-Chief, CentrePoint News
Ryan Sorba, author, "The Born Gay Hoax" (upcoming)
Dr. Gregory Thompson, Founder, Asleep kNOw More Ministry www.asleepknowmore.com
Michael Walsh, Chairman, America's Independent Party of Iowa
Judy Zabik, Treasurer, Alan Keyes for President/America's Independent Party

Anyway, the upside of this meaningless posturing is that it gives me an opportunity to share an anecdote I came across a few years ago while reading Lou Canon’s biography of Reagan regarding the fact that “Human Events” was “Ronald Reagan's favorite conservative weekly”:

Reagan liked to clip stories from Human Events and aides waged a long and losing battle to keep the publication out of his hands. On the campaign plane [Mike] Deaver sometimes hid it from him, and Stu Spencer kidded Reagan by saying that if he made mistakes in his speech they wouldn’t let him have his next copy. After Reagan became president he sometimes complained that he couldn’t clip a story out of Human Events without ruining another story on the reverse side. According to one source, this led Dick Darman to jocularly suggest that Reagan be given two subscriptions. During his tenure as White House chief of staff, Ken Duberstein dealt with the problem by reading Human Events articles that Reagan had clipped and returning them to the president with memos that corrected any perceived misstatements.  

Finally, speaking of Reagan, Will Bunch has a new book out called "Tear Down This Myth: How The Reagan Legacy Has Distorted Our Politics and Haunts Our Future" that looks pretty interesting.

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

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

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

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

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

Fake news host Stephen Colbert couldn’t get his presidential campaign off the ground. Will real news host Lou Dobbs make the cut? In an online commentary last week, the populist CNN host, who has come to be the television voice of the anti-immigrant movement, wrote:

I believe that independent Americans will demand a far better choice than any of the candidates now seeking their party's nomination. I believe next November's surprise will be the election of a man or woman of great character, vision and accomplishment, a candidate who has not yet entered the race.

According to the Wall Street Journal’s John Fund, Dobbs is talking about himself as that candidate, on a third- or even fourth-party ticket. (Via Ross Douthat.)

Oregon-based religious-right groups are gathering signatures for a petition to rescind two laws passed by the legislature and signed by the governor: one that creates domestic partnerships for gay couples, and a second that bars discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity in employment, housing, and public accommodations. Led by David Crowe of Restore America, anti-gay activists are targeting pastors to reach the required signature count by the 25th of this month. “Look, you're offending God if you're not willing to take a stand for his fundamental creation institution, which is marriage,” pled Crowe.

When we last checked in, Crowe was calling the anti-discrimination bill “the most sweeping and culturally devastating law in Oregon history, establishing pagan morality under the guise of a 'civil right,' and imposing it upon all Oregonians under the cover of 'law.’” His ally at the state Constitution Party called the two bills “a recipe for civil war,” adding, “This legislation will lock religious people inside their church buildings and let perversion occupy the rest of the landscape!”

But with time running out to put anti-gay measures on the 2008 ballot, Crowe is trying to outdo himself. His latest e-mail claims that sexual predators “trolling for a good time” in women’s restrooms would somehow be protected under the anti-discrimination law:

Your daughter may pull her panties up to discover a man in the Women's Restroom!

Men's and Women's Restrooms, a thing of the past?

After January 1, 2008 anyone will have access to Men's and Women's Restrooms, no questions asked. Your daughter may pull her panties up to discover a man in the Women's Restroom. He can claim that he felt like a woman that day and be protected by a law passed by the Oregon legislature and signed by the Governor. He may not be homosexual, just out trolling for a good time. It's true! And after January 1, unless you sign the petition to stop this bill, the predator will be protected by Oregon law! …

On January 1, 2008 - unless we ACT - Benson, and others will be free to do the same thing in any public or business restroom or locker room in the State of Oregon! He can claim that he felt like a woman that day and according to Senate Bill 2 he will be protected should you protest!

Thanks to our enlightened legislature, if you protest, he can sue YOU and claim the protections of his behavior under SB 2. He may not be homosexual, just out trolling for a good time! And you and your daughter or son, or your wife, will no longer be protected by current law.