Secret Service

David Barton was on "Today's Issues" on American Family Radio yesterday, which is a program hosted by American Family Association President Tim Wildmon and AFR General Manager Marvin Sanders, discussing a range of issues, including how he managed to get hooked up with Glenn Beck.

Barton explained that God brought them together, as Beck had been praying about who he should get to teach the faith aspect of his American history lessons when two different people approached him in church and told him to read Barton's books.  Barton also reveals that Glenn Beck has a massive security detail and has to wear a bulletproof vest when out in public:

Wildmon: How'd he get your name? How did you guys get hooked up?

Barton: He said that he had read books that I had written years ago and as he was at church, really the Sunday before he made the decision, that two people came up to him and both on that day gave him some of our books and said you really need to read this stuff. And he thought that was the Lord speaking to him, in the mouth of two or three witnesses He establishes it. So that was kind of the thing that was the spur; he was praying about who should I get to present the faith aspect of this and then two people walked up to him and made the same recommendation, not knowing he was praying about it and so that's how it kind of tied together.

Wildmon and Sanders: That guy is under siege. He has replaced Rush Limbaugh as the most hated man in America. Why do you think that is David?

Barton: Just to kind of affirm what you're saying before I get to why: he asked me to go over and do a Broadway event with him ... There we were on Broadway and I reached over, we prayed together, and I reached over to give him a hug and he's wearing a bulletproof vest. I find out that that is typical for him. He doesn't go anywhere without lots of security. I think that particular night the FBI had alerted him that they had a very credible threat than an attempt would be made on him and so it was much like being with the Secret Service and the President. I think there were like 15-17 bodyguards that night, there was one at every exit. As he was up on the stage speaking, there were guys down in the front of the stage doing nothing but watching the crowd, one from each side of the stage, I mean it looked exactly like a Presidential detail and that's the kind of he and his family have to live with.

12/14/09 UPDATE: We did it! Following our report on Friday, bloggers and activists spread the word about products on Zazzle.com that threatened President Obama and his supporters. Zazzle heard from many of us and got the message. As of today, the products are no longer available. Chalk one up for the good guys!

Let’s say that you’re a run-of-the-mill teabagger looking to set yourself apart from the mob. Nazi/Hitler signs tend to go over well, but that’s so not original. You could strap an assault rifle to your back – like this guy did outside an Obama speech – but that’s so not subtle.

Do not fret. Thanks to Zazzle.com, you can find just the right product to push you over the edge from workaday winger to racist extremist.

Want to encourage, or joke about, President Obama’s death? Check out this line of “Bullet holes anti Obama Bumper Stickers:”

Don’t forget to pick up a t-shirt for that special woman in your life:

Maybe you’re a little paranoid about the Secret Service and would rather joke about killing the president’s supporters rather than Obama himself, no problem:

Or maybe you’d prefer to have your dog joke about killing the president instead. What’s the Secret Service gonna do, arrest Fido?

If you’d prefer to be a little more oblique about threatening Obama, while no less offensive, these are for you:

The above designs are all the handiwork of a single user of Zazzle named NOBAMAMAN (thanks go to the Active Art blog for discovering them). Bad taste isn’t against the law, but many of these designs are clearly beyond the pale – especially in an environment of heightened threats against the president.

Last month Zazzle banned a line of products which called on people to pray for Obama’s death. The company said the so-called Psalm 109 products “may be interpreted in such a way as to suggest physical harm to the President of the United States.” In light of this, we should be sure to call Zazzle’s attention to some of the above products.

• Pam Spaulding reports that Family Research Council has launched a campaign against Kevin Jennings' nomination to serve in the Department of Education.
• TPM notes that, in it's rush to get out a statement using the Ricci decision against Sonia Sotomayor, the Judicial Confirmation Network couldn't even bother to spell her name correctly.
• Steve Benen reports that we just might be approaching the end of the on-going saga regarding Minnesota's senate race.
• Timothy Kincaid points out that John Hagee, of all people, met with Soulforce and Atticus Circle over the weekend.
• According to Dump Bachmann, Rep. Michelle Bachmann is scheduled to appear on Alex Jones' program later this week.
• As David Weigel says, there is a difference between being humored by Secret Service agent and being taken seriously, but the Birthers don’t seem to know the difference.
• And speaking of the Birthers, Think Progress reports that WorldNetDaily's latest efforts are being stymied by the Honolulu Star-Bulletin.

Over the last few days, we've written several posts about an upcoming meeting at the White House between Joshua DuBois, head of the Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, and representatives of Concerned Women for America, the Family Research Council, and other right-wing groups.

Now, in his daily video update, Faith and Action's Rob Schenck reveals that his organization is also trying to set up a meeting with DuBois.

Schenck explains that he has a busy day ahead of him, entailing a meeting with Tim Goeglein, the former Bush Administration aide who was forced to step down after admitting to plagiarism and was recently hired by Focus on the Family to be their chief lobbyist in DC and with whom Faith and Action shares office space. He then has a meeting with the Salvation Army and then another meeting with the leaders of a new Congressional Prayer Caucus and finally a reception with "Christian members of Congress."

Then, around the 2:50 mark, Schenck reveals that they will also be talking to the White House today about a meeting with the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives and Josh DuBois.  After a bit of rambling, Schenck says that Christian conservatives are losing credibility because when the opposition says or does the right thing, they are reluctant to commend them.

Schenck says he is "finding some stuff that is really good here and I've quoted President Obama recently on his statement that marriage is reserved for a man and a woman. Hey, I 've got to applaud that and I'm using it and I'm complementing him on it and, in fact, using it to reinforce our argument that the sanctity of marriage requires that it be reserved for a man and a woman, exclusively."

Interestingly, before the election the Obama campaign was supposed to participate in an event hosted by Schenck and his group but pulled out at the last minute, which turned out to be a smart move, as Sarah Posner explained:

The meaning of the Declaration of Independence was supposed to take center stage at a forum for religious outreach representatives from both presidential campaigns yesterday, but the lunchtime crowd of conservative activists and congressional staff at the Capitol Hill Club was instead treated to a lineup of speakers tossing out apocalyptic rhetoric about Barack Obama.

The event was sponsored by the Capitol Hill-based Faith and Action's Reese Roundtable, an annual luncheon about the moral meaning of the Declaration of Independence. Faith and Action's motto is "bringing the word of God to bear on the hearts and minds of those who make public policy in America." One of its goals is to "restore the moral foundations of our American culture" through placing Ten Commandments displays in public buildings.

Faith and Action's Rob Schenck, a perennial religious-right adviser and gadfly, moderated and wasted no time in lambasting the Rev. E. Terri LaVelle, the Obama campaign's senior religious adviser, who had committed to attend but cancelled at the last minute. "A snub!" protested Wendy Wright of Concerned Women for America.

With McCain's conservative-coalitions director Robert Heckman looking on, and at one point chiming in that Obama's recent faith and values outreach was a "colossal flop," Obama was portrayed by speakers as a figure of evil and doom. No one came right out and called him the Antichrist, but the apocalyptic message was clear.

Bernie Reese, the octogenarian founder of the Reese Roundtable, said, "I grew up during [the] days of Hitler; we've almost got a blueprint to what brought Hitler to power. He rode in on an economic crisis and promised the moon to the middle class. He was a man who had glittering rhetoric; he could sit in the room and have his audience in his hand." Alveda King, niece of the civil-rights icon and an adviser to Priests for Life, the militant anti-abortion group, said abortion in the African American community had been done "deliberately, by genocide." We're "beyond chastisement," she went on. "We're in judgment."

"Lord," prayed Johnny Hunter, an African American pastor who gave the benediction, don't let us elect someone who might "bring this nation down."

The Obama campaign didn't want to be seen with Schenck and Faith and Action during the election—good choice—and let's hope that nothing has changed since then.

We have written about Schenck and his ties to a variety of different right wing groups a number of times, most recently when he, Pat Mahoney of the Christian Defense Coalition, and Rep. Paul Brown anointed the door at the Capitol before Barack Obama’s inauguration.  While far from a household name, Schenck has seemingly been becoming more influential over the last few years – he met privately with John McCain during the campaign and even received a VIP invitation to McCain’s announcement that Sarah Palin would be his running mate, where he had the opportunity to speak with both of them.  

He also has a history of harassing Democratic politicians, especially former President Bill Clinton, having been arrested back in 1992 for thrusting a fetus at him during the campaign and being stopped by the Secret Service after confronting him outside of the Washington Cathedral in 1996. He was also deeply involved in the early 1990’s in protesting women’s health clinics, including targeting one where a doctor was eventually assassinated.

Last week I wrote a post about Rep. Paul Broun, Rob Scheck, and Patrick Mahoney gathering in the Capitol in order to anoint the doorway that Barack Obama will pass through on his way to his swearing in that lead to a post this week vowing to start paying more attention to Broun.  

And so, following through on that pledge, I found this:

Republican Congressman Paul Broun of Georgia told the Associated Press that today's American leadership "needs to serve the Lord Jesus Christ."

But more interestingly, Max Blumenthal has written a good profile of these three men and their mission that contains several bits of interesting information about Broun:

While the Capitol prayer partners appeared earnest in the prayers for the president elect’s success, they have each distinguished themselves from their Christian right comrades by leveling some of the most paranoid imprecations Obama has faced since he arrived in the Senate. On November 10, 2008, a week after Obama’s election victory, Broun took umbrage at the President-elect’s call for a national civilian security force, a proposal also backed by George W. Bush. According to Broun, who acknowledged the possibility that he might be “crazy,” Obama had revealed himself as a radical Marxist Nazi socialist comparable to Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin.

"It may sound a bit crazy and off base,” Broun told an AP reporter, “but the thing is, he’s the one who proposed this national security force. I’m just trying to bring attention to the fact that we may—may not, I hope not—but we may have a problem with that type of philosophy of radical socialism or Marxism. That’s exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany and it’s exactly what the Soviet Union did. When he’s proposing to have a national security force that’s answering to him, that is as strong as the U.S. military, he’s showing me signs of being Marxist.”

After seeming to back away from his comments when he was heavily criticized, Broun announced that he was “not taking back anything [he] said.” “I firmly believe that we must not fall victim to the ‘it can't happen here’ mentality,” he declared in a press release. “I adhere to the adage ‘eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.’”

“Mr. Speaker,” Broun announced from the House floor in 2007, “if we take our dishes and try to wash ‘em in our clothes washers we’re going to have problems, and that’s what we’re doing in our society, Mr. Speaker. We’re trying to do things against God’s inerrant word… So I rise today to support the Bible as the basis of our nation.”

Though he campaigned for reelection in 2008 as “The #1 Congressman on Immigration,” Broun has introduced only one bill since arriving in Washington: a measure banning pornography in the military. “Our troops should not see their honor sullied so that the moguls behind magazines like Playboy and Penthouse can profit,” Broun proclaimed. His spokesman testified to his expertise as an “addictionologist” who is “familiar with the negative consequences associated with long-term exposure to pornography.” Despite such scientific and personal authority, Broun’s bill to protect the troops from pictures of unclad women has gone nowhere.

Given such views, Blumenthal explains, its not hard to understand why he hooked up with the likes of Schenck and Mahoney:

In the early 1990s, Schenck was arrested a dozen times during protests outside women's health clinics and abortion doctors' homes, and was momentarily detained by Secret Service after shoving an aborted fetus in front of Bill Clinton outside the 1992 Democratic National Convention. Four years later, Schenck grew so upset by President Clinton's veto of a bill banning partial abortion that he managed to creep behind him during a Christmas Eve service at the National Cathedral and whisper in his ear, "God will hold you to account, Mr. President.” He was immediately removed from the chapel and interrogated by Secret Service agents.

Schenck spent several months in 1992 picketing the Buffalo, New York, home of Dr. Barnett Slepian, an obscure area abortion doctor that he personally targeted for scorn. Six years later, while cooking dinner for his wife and four children, Slepian was shot to death through his kitchen window by James Kopp, a volunteer at Operation Rescue's Binghamton, N.Y., office. Though Schenck denied knowing Kopp, the two had been arrested together at several clinic blockades.

When Schenck placed flowers at the doorstep of Slepian's office, his infuriated wife returned them with a letter that read, “It's your ‘passive’ following that incited the violence that killed Bart [Slepian] and took away both my and my children's future.”

Schenck attained a new prominence during the George W. Bush era, forging friendly ties with culture warriors like House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, Sen. Rick Santorum, and Sen. Joseph Lieberman, who allowed Schenck to hang a Ten Commandments plaque in his office. He even became a golfing buddy of Sen. Orrin Hatch. But DeLay and Santorum are gone from the Congress, victims of their own excesses, while Lieberman and Hatch have become marginalized by the Democratic majority.

Sensing his influence on the wane, Schenck targeted Obama. In January 2007, Schenck described the newly sworn-in senator’s Christian faith as “woefully deficient.” In a March 2008 videoblog, he accused Obama of crypto-Muslim religious sympathies.

Mahoney appeared at Obama’s Capitol Hill office in June 2008 to present his aides with a poster depicting the senator as Uncle Sam, declaring, “I Want YOU To Pay For Abortions.” Mahoney plans to hold an anti-abortion vigil along Obama’s parade route this January 20. “Sadly, President-elect Obama is on the wrong side of history and human rights by embracing the most radical abortion policies of any President in American history,” Mahoney said in announcing the vigil.

A founding member of the hardline anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, Schenck and his allies have engaged in what they call “direct action” to stop abortion by any means necessary. "There's going to be people wounded,” Mahoney, a fellow Operation Rescue leader, declared at a 1993 rally. “It's about whose will shall rule on this planet, God's or man's.”

Earlier this week, President Bush sat down for an interview with ABC’s Cynthia McFadden during which he was asked about his views regarding the Bible and evolution:

MCFADDEN: Is it literally true, the Bible?

BUSH: You know. Probably not ... No, I'm not a literalist, but I think you can learn a lot from it, but I do think that the New Testament, for example is ... has got ... You know, the important lesson is "God sent a son."

MCFADDEN: So, you can read the Bible...

BUSH: That God in the flesh, that mankind can understand there is a God who is full of grace and that nothing you can do to earn his love. His love is a gift and that in order to draw closer to God and in order to express your appreciation for that love is why you change your behavior.

MCFADDEN: So, you can read the Bible and not take it literally. I mean you can -- it's not inconsistent to love the Bible and believe in evolution, say.

BUSH: Yeah, I mean, I do. I mean, evolution is an interesting subject. I happen to believe that evolution doesn't fully explain the mystery of life and ...

MCFADDEN: But do you believe in it?

BUSH: That God created the world, I do, yeah.

MCFADDEN: But what about ...

BUSH: Well, I think you can have both. I think evolution can -- you're getting me way out of my lane here. I'm just a simple president. But it's, I think that God created the Earth, created the world; I think the creation of the world is so mysterious it requires something as large as an almighty, and I don't think it's incompatible with the scientific proof that there is evolution.

For Rob Schenck of Faith and Action, this just serves as final proof of what he has known all along – that President Bush is not a very good Christian:

To begin with, for me the President’s comments are not stunning. Early into his first term, I saw that Christians, particularly Evangelicals like me, had jumped to some conclusions about what Mr. Bush believed and how he lives his faith. I had E-mail corresponded with one of his pastors back in Texas, and through it learned that the Bushes lived out a fairly common Methodist, middle-of-the-road Protestant, but never-the-less meaningful Christianity.

The Bushes have never been the Sunday-morning-Wednesday-night, Gospel-tract-leaving, Praise-the-Lord-saying, Christian-radio-listening, Bible-bookstore-shopping, born-again-believers that a lot of Christians assumed them to be.

I also saw a gradual erosion of the President’s faith over the time he was in office. My first alarm bells went off when he and the First Lady decided not to continue attending the Lincoln Park United Methodist Church, near our ministry center. Lincoln Park UMC is a predominantly African-American congregation pastored by the very evangelical Reverend Dr. Harold D. Lewis. Pastor Lewis has been with us for a number of ministry events, including our delegation to the White House that presented a Ten Commandments sculpture for display there. Dr. Lewis has also been associated with our good friend of many years and fellow pro-life activist, Dr. Johnny Hunter, of the Life Education and Resource Center, America’s largest and fastest growing African-American pro-life and pro-family organization.

Instead of Lincoln Park UMC, President and Mrs. Bush chose the so-called “Presidents’ Church,” St. John’s Episcopal, just a block from the White House. While the congregation there has a venerable history as one of the oldest continuous churches in Washington, and one that has well-served presidents of the past, it has lately become a theologically moderate to left-leaning liberal church, and, is, of course, affiliated with the Washington Diocese of the Episcopal Church USA. It’s been known to sport a rainbow flag outside. I do know there was quite a debate within the parish on the question of same-sex “marriage.” I don’t know how it was resolved.

I did admonish the President about his choice of churches, respectfully calling his attention to the potentially deleterious effect that certain types of spiritual company can have on the state of one’s soul. He defensively dismissed it, saying it was a Secret Service decision. Odd, because the Secret Service is obligated to protect the president wherever he may decide to go, even to places like Iraq. I would think St. John’s would be an easier exercise.

All this to say that we must continue to pray for President Bush–and anyone who occupies this high office; the Bible commands it and our natural impulse should be to do it. Some have suggested Christians are to blame for the President’s eroded spiritual condition because we didn’t adequately pray for him. Well, I’m just Reformed enough in my theology to think that the President’s spiritual state lies securely in the hands of God, not in ours.

When John McCain named Sarah Palin as his running mate, it suddenly made the Republican National Coalition for Life's reception at the convention one of the hottest tickets in town:

Hosted by Phyllis Schlafly, the event was designed to honor Palin as "a devoted wife and mother who puts life first ... who not only talks-the-talk, but walks-the-walk." Needless to say, the hosts were thrilled to have the new VP nominee as their featured guest and, given that the Right has finally started embracing McCain's campaign, it probably wasn't a good first move for them to cancel Palin's appearance at the last minute:

ABC News' Teddy Davis Reports: Conservative icon Phyllis Schlafly is taking the McCain campaign to task for notifying her at the last-minute that Sarah Palin will be a no-show on Tuesday when the Republican National Coalition for Life holds an event honoring the Alaska governor.

"I think this is clearly somebody in the McCain campaign who doesn't understand where the votes are coming from," Schlafly told ABC News. "They only told me this at 10 o'clock last night and it was a call from somebody down-the-line in the McCain campaign."

"The pro-lifers who paid $95 to come to this event because of Sarah Palin are going to be very unhappy," she added.

Schlafly is expecting 800 people, most of whom are delegates to the Republican National Convention, to attend Tuesday's reception at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in St. Paul, Minn. The event runs from 4:00 - 6:00 pm CT.

...

Nevertheless, the McCain campaign did not notify Schlafly of the plan to back out of the event until Monday night and Schlafly claims that the Secret Service scoped out the event site earlier in the day on Monday.

...

Asked what she plans to say about the cancellation at the event, Schlafly said, "I am certainly going to say that it was McCain that canceled."