Wallbuilders

Jay Sekulow runs the American Center for Law and Justice, the Religious Right organization founded by Pat Robertson to be a right-wing counterweight to the ACLU.  In that capacity, Sekulow has recently been leading the fight against the construction of the so-called "Ground Zero Mosque."

Today, Sekulow had Rep. Michele Bachmann on his radio program to discuss last night's State of the Union address and her response and during the conversation Sekulow asked her about the Tea Party classes on the Constution she is hosting for members of Congress featuring the likes of Justice Antonin Scalia and Wallbuilders' David Barton ... and apparently also Sekulow:

Bachmann: Our opening speaker was Justice Antonin Scalia. We had both Democrats and Republicans - we had four Democrat members of Congress. It was very civil, it was very open and we hope to invite all of the Supreme Court Justices to come and speak to us. But we also hope to have people like yourself, Jay - we've invited you to come and speak to members of Congress, to speak about the Constitution. The topic will be up to the speakers choice but the whole purpose and intent is to have members thinking about the Constitution and our limitations under the Constitution. That has not been a focus here in Congress in recent years. We intend to change that and this was a very good first meeting this week.

Sekulow: I look forward to participating [and] we appreciate you're not only representing the people of your district, you're representing all of use that share the concerns and the desire to see Constitutional Conservatism placed forward and Congresswoman, thanks for being with us and thanks for the bold stand you are taking in Washington.

Bachmann: Thank you. You're wonderful and thank you for your ministry.

As we have noted several times in recent weeks, John Stemberger, president of the Florida Family Policy Council, is facing the possibility of being disciplined by the Florida Supreme Court for misconduct during the Rifqa Bary saga as well as a $10 million lawsuit from the lawyer who represented Bary's Muslim parents.

Stemberger insists that the wild allegations he threw around when he was representing Bary in Florida are protected by the First Amendment and that the lawsuit and misconduct complaint are merely an "attempt to squelch any criticism, legitimate or not, of Islam and its tenets" and so he has now set up a legal defense fund with the support not only of Bary, but of several Religious Right leaders:

"Would you please help my friend and lawyer John Stemberger? He defended me at no cost and helped me gain my freedom and is now being attacked by the Muslim lawyer who opposed me in court. Thank you for supporting me.  Will you now also help and support John?" - Rifqa Bary

“America needs warriors who will stand on principle and fight for truth. John Stemberger is a true warrior who has defended American principles through his bold defense of Rifqa Bary. Now the Islamic elements in America want to destroy him. Keep fighting, John.” -General William G. Boykin (retired), United States Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence.

“John Stemberger was and is a true patriot for defending Rifqa Bary in court and so we should now all consider helping him defend against these attacks by the same lawyer who fought against Rifqa getting her freedom. The Founding Fathers created the First Amendment to protect exactly the type of political and religious speech involved in this case.”- Historian David Barton, Wallbuilders

“John Stemberger is a man of courage and principle. We need to stand by him now. I support John and would ask you to consider doing the same.” – Former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich

“In today’s politically correct culture few people are willing to stand up to the threats against our faith, our families and our freedoms. That is why I am grateful for John Stemberger who has stood up for those who are vulnerable and defenseless, including Rifqa Bary. Now join me in standing with John.” - Tony Perkins, Family Research Council, Washington, D.C.

“I was thrilled to see John Stemberger’s courageous defense of Rifqa Bary, our precious sister. He took a courageous stand and is paying the price because of it. We need people like this who are willing to lay their lives down for the cause of truth and justice on behalf of those who have no strength. Let’s stand with our brother.” - Lou Engle, Founder, TheCall Inc.

The zealous opposition to anti-bullying initiatives in schools from Religious Right groups is based on the premise that such programs are surreptitious ways to “promote homosexuality” or disseminate “homosexual propaganda” in schools. On WallBuildersLive, faux-historian David Barton and co-host Rick Green brought on Brian Camenker of the stringently anti-gay group MassResistance to discuss ways “homosexual activists” are the real bullies and manufactured the whole problem of bullying in the first place. With more scrutiny given to the problem of the pervasive harassment of LGBT students (including the case of one Minnesota teenager who committed suicide last week), right-wing groups and leaders have become even more fanatical in their hostility to anti-bullying programs.

Green and Camenker, who described gay-rights groups as “fascist,” agree that “homosexual activists” invented the problem of bullying and became the bullies themselves:

Camenker: It often takes parents standing up to the homosexual activists and it’s hard to do, but you’re right. This is a very aggressive, fascist type of movement and these guys define the term ‘bullies.’

Green: I think you’re right and the perception I guess and maybe a lot of teachers, principals, superintendents out there have bought into this perception is that they are only the ones being bullied, the homosexual lobby is, so they’re hypersensitive to the other side of it.

Barton later claims that “homosexual indoctrination” is found in the entire public school system and tells parents that they “better get on top of what’s being taught to your kids.”

Barton: There’s a whole lost of this that goes on that parents don’t even hear about but it is going on. All this bullying stuff, as Brian pointed out, it’s not the schools that are doing bullying, it’s the people from outside the schools coming in and saying “oh you got a bullying problem and we need to teach a course for you.” The people living there didn’t see any problem. But it’s these outside agenda-

Green: They’re the very thing they say they’re going in to stop is what they’re doing themselves.

Barton: They generate and start. It goes back to the question Jesus asks, “What’s it profit you to gain the whole world and lose your soul?” The question I gotta ask is, what’s it worth to you to gain everything you want and lose your kids?

Because unless you’re willing to monitor what’s going on in that classroom, I guarantee you they are getting homosexual indoctrination. I don’t care whether you’re in a rural area or not, because this is so much a part of textbooks, so much a part of curricular stuff, so much a part of what goes on with other kids. We see it too often in lawsuits, we hear of accounts like this, and we hear of dozens of other accounts where nothing’s ever done. You better get on top of what’s being taught to your kids.

• Gary Bauer says Sarah Palin's "blood libel" speech "very Reaganesque."
• Bryan Fischer praises Tim Pawlenty for vowing to reinstate DADT.
• John Thune is unmoved by the CPAC boycott and will still attend.
• Kay Bailey Hutchison will not seek re-election ... and based on no evidence whatsoever, I am going to predict that Rick Green of Wallbuilders decides to make a run for her Senate seat.
• I have to say that the people paying Harry Jackson to shill for energy interests are getting ripped off.
• Norm Coleman, Jeb Bush and other Republicans launch the Hispanic Action Network to try and woo Hispanics over to the GOP.
• Charisma offers a "Prophetic Look at the Tucson Tragedy" that you really need to read.
• Finally, the quote of the day from David Boaz of the Cato Institute: "Twenty years from now, conservatives will deny they were ever anti-gay, just as they now have no memory of ever supporting discrimination against African-Americans or women."

If Rep. Michele Bachmann believes that David Barton is qualified to teach members of Congress about the Constitution, I guess we shouldn't be surprised that the Arkansas Family Council is bringing Barton in for a two-day seminar to impart his wisdom to state legislators and government officials:

A political activist who claims America was founded on biblical principles has been invited to speak to elected officials at the state Capitol later this month.

The Christian conservative Family Council has asked David Barton to hold a seminar for state legislators and constitutional officers on Jan. 25 and 26 and has reserved the Old Supreme Court chamber on those dates, said Jerry Cox, the group's executive director.

Barton, of Aledo, Texas, is the founder of the group WallBuilders and the author of several books on American history. Cox said he has spoken with Barton and is 90 percent certain he will accept the invitation.

Barton has argued that the Founding Fathers intended for the United States to be a Christian nation and did not support the separation of church and state as the phrase is understood today. Cox said Barton will discuss his views on the proper role of government, including his belief that "helping the poor ... is primarily a function of the church," not government.

Cox said he agrees with Barton's views and wants to help educate lawmakers who will be sworn into office next week, the first week of the legislative session.

"I want to help our lawmakers understand what the role of government is and then try to keep the laws that we pass within the bounds of the proper role of government," he said.

Maybe Barton will use the seminar to encourage Arkansas legislators to regulate gay sex.

Liberty University Law School Dean and Liberty Counsel Chairman Mat Staver joined David Barton and Rick Green on WallBuilders Live to denounce Obama and the Justice Department for failing to win cases on Defense Of Marriage Act (DOMA), which a federal judge in Boston ruled unconstitutional in July. Staver believes that Obama’s record of supporting gay rights undermined government action to effectively defend DOMA, and Staver went on to attack Obama for extending a number of health benefits to same-sex partners of eligible federal employees. According to Staver, Obama’s support for such benefits displays his “radical, liberal policies” that he believes voters overwhelmingly oppose and rejected in the midterm election:

He’s writing these executive orders as though that is able to change law, it’s not able to change law. What Obama’s trying to do is use a sleight of hand, an under the table kind of approach, to in fact change the law through these executive orders. He’s acting as though the law’s on his side, that it would include benefits for homosexuality and transsexuals and others. So he is forcing that through the system even though the laws are to the contrary. This is exactly what ultimately resulted in this tidal wave against him on Tuesday during the midterm elections, his radicalism and his forced agenda on the American people despite the fact that the people of America reject those radical, liberal policies.

However, Staver would have difficulties reconciling his argument with polling: a September poll conducted by the Associated Press shows that 58% of Americans agree that “couples of the same sex [should] be entitled to the same government benefits as married couples of the opposite sex,” and 52% even support federal recognition of same-sex marriages. Staver may be using Barton’s tremendously flawed reading on how opposition to same-sex marriage impacted the midterm election, while in reality “only 1%” of voters said “same-sex marriage was the single most important issue.”

Barton’s co-host Rick Green goes on to laud Staver for his role in training Religious Right activists at the Law School of Liberty University, which was founded by the late Jerry Falwell, to use the “right Biblical worldview” to shape government, politics, and the courts:

What they’re doing in terms of raising up this next generation. Not only the lawyers graduating from Liberty Law School but think of how many more people with the right Biblical worldview coming through a school like that will want to go be the bureaucrats, and we always think of that word as a negative word but the Justice Department and all these places and all these folks that work there in the past mostly did not have that Biblical worldview because we discouraged young people from going into those arenas. But because of what Mat’s doing and other schools out there doing that kind of thing I think we’re gonna have a lot more people coming into government for good reasons.

Perhaps Green wants more appointees like Monica Goodling, the graduate of Rev. Pat Robertson’s Regent University Law School, who drew attention for her Religious Right activism in the Bush Administration’s Justice Department. Goodling was implicated in the Bush White House’s drive to politicize the Justice Department and replace US Attorneys with partisan appointees. The Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General “concluded that the evidence showed that Goodling violated both federal law and Department policy, and therefore committed misconduct, when she considered political or ideological affiliations in hiring decisions for candidates for career positions within the Department.” For example, Goodling fired a US Attorney as a result of rumors that she was a lesbian and denied a promotion to a prosecutor because his wife was a Democratic activist. While Goodling was not a graduate of Liberty, Regent University has the same goals of training young right wing activists for government roles to advance the Religious Right’s agenda.

Today's eipsode of WallBuilders Live radio program was dedicated to lamenting the tragedy of Tom DeLay's conviction for money laundering with DeLay's BFF Rick Scarobough, who says that he takes solace in knowing that this nation will one day be called to judgment by God: 

Scarborough: Tom DeLay is a very close personal friend of mine. I got to know Congressman DeLay when I was pastoring for twelve years in his district. I found him to be a genuine, Godly man and consequently when this indictment came down and subsequent trial began back on November the first I determined that I was going to sit at his side, minister to her and his wife. And consequently I made trips every week for three straight weeks to Austin to monitor the trial and prayed with the family. And I must confess, at least from my perspective, we've had a grave injustice carried forth that I pray God will intervene and correct.

Rick Green: You know I ask you first, Pastor, before we get into the details, you're someone who loves this country like we do - when you see this sort of travesty of justice and abuse of the judicial system, how do you maintain hope?

Scarborough: Well, I keep my eyes focused on Jesus. I know biblically there comes a day when a nation that tramples under foot the word of God finally is called to judgment.

Later, David Barton rails against the fact that DeLay was not allowed to choose his own jury so that he could be judged by a bunch of consevative Christians who could have then ignored the law and found him not guilty, just as the Founding Fathers intended:

Green: I'll ask you the same question I asked Rick: how do you get peace when you look at these kinds of abuses of what should be the best system in the world.

Barton: Well, it's a problem and one of the things that has happened is there is a check and balance here that did not get used, and that check and balance was the jury system.

And the judges have so corrupted the jury system ... let me give you an example: we have all these cases from the Founding Era of jurors and you always here this thing, a "jury of your peers." Do you know what that literally meant? It meant that the guy who was on trial got to pick the people who sat on the jury ... But now we say "we've got to get somebody who doesn't know you personally, we've got to get somebody who has only read the news account story of you - what [George] Soros and Media Matters and everything else" - and so that's a corruption of the jury system.

We used to allow jurors, under the Constitution, they decided both law and fact and we don't allow them to decide law any more. And that used to be a check and balance upon judges but in 1895 the US Supreme Court said "oh, juries can't look at the law anymore, they can only look at the fact."

Green: Only our high and might judges can decide that ... so what we do is basically we give the juries, they're basically boxed in, you can answer yes or no to this question and that's it.

I mean, it never should have gone to trial in the first place and then on the other end you ended up with a jury that wasn't a jury of his peers and was only allowed to answer the one question.

Barton: That's right, so that's the abuse that happened. this is a pretty good example of what happens when you get away from that Constitutional guarantee of due process. The Constitutional guarantee would have made this really easy, but under that way the courts have reinterpreted the Fourth through the Eighth Amendments, all that Due Process stuff, this is where DeLay had so much trouble.

A who's who of Religious Right leaders have come together for a 12-part series called "Resisting the Green Dragon" which seeks to expose how the environmental movement is out to control the world and destroy Christianity:

Resisting the Green Dragon is therefore particularly timely because it not only refutes the scientific case for dangerous manmade warming and other "crises," but also exposes how environmental organizations use sophisticated media campaigns and even seek increased global governance to promote their agenda among policy makers, religious leaders, and youth.

"One of the greatest threats to society and the church today is the multifaceted environmentalist movement," says Cornwall Alliance founder and national spokesman Dr. E. Calvin Beisner. "There isn't an aspect of life that it doesn't seek to force into its own mold."

Many well-known Christian leaders agree. Focus on the Family's Tom Minnery joined Family Research Council's Tony Perkins, the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission's Richard Land, Concerned Women for America's Wendy Wright, Home School Legal Defense Association's Michael Farris, National Religious Broadcasters' Frank Wright, WallBuilders' David Barton, and radio talk-show host Janet Parshall in filming introductions and commentary for the 12-part DVD series, which started shipping last week.

A twelve minute preview is available here (password: RESIST) but I have edited it down because it is a marvel of delusional right-wing projection with Richard Land saying environmentalists have a long history of believing exaggerations and myths, David Barton saying environmentalists' claims are rooted in their own biases, Bryan Fischer claiming the movement relies on outright lies, and Janet Parshall warning that Christians must fight back against this false religion because God has called upon them to take dominion over the earth:

The slogan for the "Wallbuilders Live" radio program has always been "the intersection of faith and politics" ... but it looks like David Barton and Rick Green are expecting such a fundamental shift with tomorrow's election that they are considering changing that slogan:

Green: You picked a great day to tune it. It is the Monday before the big election ... boy, you talk about the intersection of faith and politics, there is going to be a collision tomorrow.

Barton: Well, hopefully there will be an alignment more than a collision, hopefully we see an alignment of faith and politics tomorrow because the faith has been there, it's the politics that has been contrary to the faith and tomorrow hopefully we'll get an alignment of faith and politics.

Green: Man, that would be a good new theme for us: the alignment of faith and politics instead of just the intersection. That's great, man. That was inspired. I think God just spoke through you today, David.

Barton: I'll take it. I'll take that as a prophetic thing for tomorrow, you bet.

And I also just want to post this other exchange just for the record in case a certain thrice-married conservative leader decides to runs for President and taps Barton to play a role in his campaign:

Green: What a citizen gives his vote to a man of known immorality, he abuses his trust. He sacrifices not only his known interest but that of his neighbor. He betrays the interest of his country.

So really, when we go in and vote tomorrow, we're voting for our country , we're voting on whether or not our children will get to enjoy the same things that we've enjoyed.

Barton: And you're really voting on character. That's what he said is look to the character. If you vote for someone of known immorality, if you vote for someone who has known character flaws, you're a traitor to your country.