Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Schlafly Reminisces About The Days Of The Shotgun Wedding

Submitted by Brian Tashman on Tuesday, 6/14/2011 4:41 pm

Phyllis Schlafly is out with another article on the rise of single motherhood. According to Schlafly, the usual culprits are to blame: feminists, Barack Obama, ‘big government,’ and gay people who want the right to marry. Schlafly also says that single motherhood is increasing and marriage is declining because the legalization of abortion is “diminishing the custom of shotgun marriages, which in earlier years was often the response to surprise pregnancies.” Schlafly’s nostalgia for forced marriages shouldn’t be a surprise, as she is also a long-time apologist for marital rape.

Schlafly writes:

Prior to Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty, husbands and fathers provided for their families. The 1.7 million out-of-wedlock babies born last year and their unmarried moms now look to Big Brother as their financial provider.

The left is content to let this problem persist because 70 percent of unmarried women voted for Barack Obama for president. They vote for the party that offers the richer subsidies.

…

Among other unfortunate effects, the trends toward non-marriage and toward same-sex marriage are a direct attack on fathers. The bond between a child and his mother is an obvious fact of nature, but marriage is the relationship that establishes the link between a child and his father.

There are many causes for the dramatic reduction in marriage, starting with unilateral divorce, which spread across the United States in the 1960s and '70s, putting government on the side of marriage breakup. Then came the legalizing of abortion, diminishing the custom of shotgun marriages, which in earlier years was often the response to surprise pregnancies.

The feminist notion that women should be independent of men, followed by affirmative-action/female quotas in employment, tended to carry out the goal stated by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg that the concept of husband-breadwinner and wife-homemaker "must be eliminated." These feminist ideas and practices demean marriage by discriminating against men and also against fulltime homemakers.

Janet Porter Goes On The Attack Against The Group That Got Her Fired

Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Tuesday, 6/8/2010 10:29 am

Just yesterday I was wondering when, if ever, Janet Porter was going to return to action, having seemingly ceased operations since her radio program was dropped by VCY America due to her increasing involvement with Dominion Theology. 

Today, we got our answer.

As we noted shortly after Porter was dropped by VCY, VCY's flagship program "Crosstalk" dedicated its show to discussing the alarming rise of Dominionism among the Religious Right with guest Sarah Leslie, who is an an author, researcher, and member of the board of directors of Discernment Ministries.  It was Discernment Ministries' blog, Herescope, which had been chrolincing this rise of Dominionism and Porter's increasing ties to the movement ... and so today, Porter has used her WorldNetDaily column to attack them for getting her fired:

The "separation of church and state." I could be reading from the constitution of the former Soviet Union, a decision by Ruth Bader Ginsburg or a fundraising letter from the ACLU. But instead, I'm repeating a philosophy of "Christian" groups like Discernment Ministries and their website, "Herescope."

No kidding. There remains a very vocal group of self-proclaimed Christians who believe their "spiritual gift" is criticism and their role is to join the ranks of the ACLU and police the streets for Christians who dare step outside the four walls of the church into the light of day.

They insist Christians must stay within the church singing from the same page of the same hymnal, perfectly pious and free from those not legalistically aligned … all while our nation and our freedoms are burning to the ground. No, they're not involved, just like the Christians who "sang a little louder" from their hymnals so not to hear the screams from the trains headed for the concentration camps.

Porter has dedicated her entire column to attacking Discernment Ministries as a bunch of "cultural Nazi's" who want to see hymns "re-written to praise Barack Hussain Obama":

We now have two generations who are lost in the lies of humanism, evolution and homosexuality, facilitated into fornication and abortion, trapped in pornography and devastated by divorce. Congratulations.

If you're still having a hard time discerning what to do, here's a helpful hint: if you find yourself on the same side as the ACLU, homosexual activists, the baby killers and the enemies of God, chances are, you're on the wrong side.

Considering that Leslie was the head of Iowa Right to Life in the 1980s, Porter's attacks ring hollow, as does her claim that neither she nor her allies "support a 'dominion theology' that seeks to establish a theocracy," especially given that the 7 Mountains Theology under which she organized her May Day 2010 rally has this as its goal: 

A government can potentially function as a virtual theocracy, but only as the individuals in power allow themselves to be puppets (i.e. servants) of the theocracy (God’s rule and reign). The goal is to bring the influence of heaven to bear on whatever political machinery that exists ... One of the primary roles of future government leaders will be to instruct in righteousness. The more God’s judgments are poured out on earth, the more explicitly will they be able to give that instruction.

CWA Pre-Emptively Declares They Cannot Support Obama's SCOTUS Nomination

Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Tuesday, 5/4/2010 3:26 pm

Concerned Women for America has produced a memo explaining that, as much as they hope President Obama will nominate a Supreme Court justice whom "all Americans can support," they don't think he will and therefore they'll be obligated to oppose that nominee ... whomever it is:

Concerned Women for America (CWA) would love for President Obama to go beyond politics — as he promised during his campaign — and nominate a Supreme Court candidate that all Americans can support. After the health care debacle, with zero bipartisan support helping to further expand the chasm between citizens, nothing would be more welcome than for the President to nominate someone who could make us all feel proud. CWA wants a judge with an excellent record of judicial restraint, a commitment to following the Constitution as written, and an awareness of the fact that they are not supposed to substitute their own personal feelings or ideology for the law.

CWA says all of the names floated as possible nominees so far are unacceptable and has even sent President Obama a letter [PDF] asking him to "put aside partisanship and choose a nominee that makes all Americans feel proud": 

At a time when the political chasm between citizens seems to be expanding at an alarming rate, such an admirable move would certainly do a lot to bring us back together and rally for the common purpose of doing what is best for America.

But CWA wants to make clear that it is not holding its breath:

However, based on President Obama’s actions thus far, and on his statements back-to-back that he wouldn’t use a litmus test but wants his nominee to support a “woman’s right to choose,” CWA isn’t hopeful that he will choose a good nominee.

“I don’t see the President picking a nominee that is good for America,” said Penny Nance, CEO of Concerned Women for America. “The President has shown a keen disregard for any notion of honoring the Constitution, but we are clinging to any last hope that he may break from the mold and nominate a worthy Justice.”

All very interesting.  But I wonder what CWA was saying just a few years ago when, for instance, President Bush was considering nominees for the Supreme Court:

“The President has the historic opportunity to keep faith with the promise he has repeated numerous times, which is to name justices who are like Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas,” said Jan LaRue, CWA’s Chief Counsel. “The Democrats have shown that their filibusters and condemnations of the President’s circuit court nominees were baseless. They will threaten more of the same unless he names a clone of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, for example.”

The President should not yield to the left’s demands to consult with the Senate before making a nomination. The Constitution is clear that it’s his right alone to make nominations and the Supreme Court agrees.

So CWA urged President Bush to ignore any requests that he consult with anyone before making any nomination, because they were just going to oppose the nominee anyway and the president has the constitutional power to name any candidate he chooses ... and now CWA is writing to President Obama, demanding that he listen to them and put forth a nominee that they can support, threatening that if he doesn't, they will be left with no option but to oppose his choice?

Funny how that works. 

Good Riddance to the Filibuster

Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Wednesday, 11/12/2008 3:36 pm

I had been on vacation for the last several days, so I missed this little nugget when it first surfaced last week:

Jon Kyl, the second-ranking Republican in the U.S. Senate, warned president-elect Barack Obama that he would filibuster U.S. Supreme Court appointments if those nominees were too liberal.

Kyl, Arizona’s junior senator, expects Obama to appoint judges in the mold of U.S Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David Souter and Stephen Breyer. Those justices take a liberal view on cases related to social, law and order and business issues, Kyl said.

“He believes in justices that have empathy,” said Kyl, speaking at a Federalist Society meeting in Phoenix. The attorneys group promotes conservative legal principles.

Kyl said if Obama goes with empathetic judges who do not base their decisions on the rule of law and legal precedents but instead the factors in each case, he would try to block those picks via filibuster.

That would be the same Jon Kyl who, as Steve Benen pointed out, supported the "nuclear option” back in 2005 to do away with the filibuster regarding judicial nominees.  It would also be the same Jon Kyl who explicitly argued that junking the filibuster would in no way ever hamstring Republicans because they would be too principled [PDF] to ever even try to use it down the road:

My friends argue that Republicans may want to filibuster a future Democratic President’s nominees. To that I say, I don’t think so, and even if true, I’m willing to give up that tool. It was never a power we thought we had in the past, and it is not one likely to be used in the future. I know some insist that we will someday want to block Democrat judges by filibuster. But I know my colleagues. I have heard them speak passionately, publicly and privately, about the injustice done to filibustered nominees. I think it highly unlikely that they will shift their views simply because the political worm has turned. So I say to my friends: what you say we Republicans are losing is, in fact, no loss at all.

And while we are on the subject of right-wingers suddenly changing their tune regarding judicial nominations, I found this rather amusing:

But Manuel Miranda, chairman of the Third Branch Conference, a coalition of conservative activists who have weighed in on Supreme Court appointments, warned that judicial nominees similar to Marshall and Brennan would face strong opposition.

“Outside groups will always push to the extremes to get people who would be turning back the clock to Brennan or Marshall,” said Miranda.

That would be the same Manuel Miranda who has been a one-man right-wing judicial confirmation army ever since he lost his job on the Hill after accessing internal Democratic memos.  Miranda was the primary force behind just about every right-wing “grassroots” effort to force the confirmation of President Bush’s judicial nominees, as well as their effort to compel Harriet Miers to withdraw her Supreme Court nomination.  So it’s pretty interesting that he’s suddenly concerned about “outside groups” pushing “extreme” nominees … and even more interesting that he’s now quite concerned that Obama’s nominees will “turn back the clock.”

Disgruntled Republicans Work to Undermine McCain's Pledge on Judges

Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Friday, 7/18/2008 3:31 pm
As John McCain continues to work to win over right-wing leaders, activists, and voters, the one constant theme he has been hammering is his pledge to nominate judges like John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court; a promise that has lately been paying dividends. But now it looks like some disgruntled Republicans are starting to push back against the idea McCain can be trusted to uphold his promise. For instance, Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr recently published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal less-than-subtly entitled "Judges Are No Reason to Vote for McCain":
The judiciary is becoming an important election issue. John McCain is warning conservatives that control of today's finely balanced Supreme Court depends on his election. Unfortunately, his jurisprudence is likely to be anything but conservative. ... Mr. McCain is a convenient convert to the cause of sound judicial appointments. He has never paid much attention to judicial philosophy, backing both Clinton Supreme Court nominees – Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. He also participated in the so-called "Gang of 14," which favored centrist over conservative nominees as part of a compromise between President George W. Bush and Senate Democrats. ... [E]ven if a President McCain were to influence the court, it would not likely be in a genuinely conservative direction. His jurisprudence is not conservative.
Barr obviously has his own electoral agenda in mind by seeking to undermine McCain's appeal to conservative voters on the issue of judges in hopes of winning their support himself, he is not alone in making the case that McCain's promises on judges cannot be trusted, with Bruce Bartlett making the same point in an op-ed in Politico:

[McCain] has already repudiated the best hope Republicans had for circumventing Democratic opposition: the so-called nuclear option, which would have forced the Senate to give all federal court nominees an up-or-down vote. McCain basically destroyed any hope of getting a parliamentary ruling on this scheme by putting together the Gang of 14, a bipartisan group of senators that agreed to allow all qualified nominees to have a vote before the full Senate.

Conservatives have to ask themselves whether the man who torpedoed the nuclear option is really likely to fight to the bitter end for the kinds of justices they want to see on the court.

McCain needs all the help he can get right now winning over right-wing leaders and having former high-profile Republicans out there undermining his key selling point and reminding them of his role in the "Gang of 14" certainly isn't helping his cause.

Attacks on Judiciary Down But Not Out

Submitted by Anonymous on Friday, 10/12/2007 5:42 pm

The Right’s rhetorical war on the judiciary reached its fever pitch in 2005, when Congress broke a vacation to intervene in the Terri Schiavo case. To take one example from many, Rep. Tom DeLay, then House Majority Leader, declared that the judiciary had “run amok,” warned, “The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior.” He later added, “Our next step, whatever it is, must be more than rhetoric.”

Since then, Congress has changed parties, and DeLay, tied to a corrupt lobbyist and indicted in Texas for laundering campaign money, is out of office, and so it feels like the pressure has been dialed down a notch. At least, that’s how it seems to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg:

"Particularly since the 2006 election, I am pleased to relate, rapport between Congress and the federal courts has markedly improved," Ginsburg said at a meeting of American and Canadian judges in Vancouver.

No bills limiting judges' independence have been introduced in the current Congress and "one sees far fewer broadsides against 'activist judges' reported in the press," Ginsburg said. … She recounted with distaste comments about judges made in 2005 by two Texas Republicans, then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and Sen. John Cornyn.

Cornyn had expressed his “concern” that there might be “some connection” between “unaccountable” judges and violent attacks against members of the judiciary.

While far-right members of Congress like Todd Akin continue to introduce legislation to tamper with the courts—such as his bill to impeach judges when Congress disagrees with their opinions—Justice Ginsburg is right that, without right-wing leadership in Congress, such efforts will lead nowhere.

Unfortunately, while the days of the “nuclear option” and Tom DeLay are behind us, the current status may be the calm before the storm, when a future Supreme Court nominee or even just the politics of the presidential debate will likely cause tensions to flare again. GOP candidates have pledged to appoint Supreme Court justices in the Scalia-Thomas mold, and at the recent Values Voter Debate, second-tier candidates--including religious-right favorite Mike Huckabee--pledged support to a court-stripping measure.

“In ’08, it’s all about the judges,” as Rick Scarborough stated recently.

Praise For Janice Rogers Brown’s Radical Rhetoric

Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Thursday, 4/5/2007 2:15 pm

As we noted last week, Federal Judge Janice Rogers Brown warned students at Harding University in Arkansas that Christianity is under attack in America from “narrow positivism, moral relativism and the totalitarian reign of the radical multiculturalist.”

Not surprisingly, this sort of rhetoric was music to the ears of Vision America’s Rick Scarborough: 

Judge Janice Rogers Brown, of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, recently gave a speech at Harding University that deserves an enthusiastic amen from every Christian in the land.

…

An African-American from California, who came from an impoverished background, Janice Rogers Brown has thrown down the gauntlet to the ACLU, Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the rest of their ilk.

…

God willing, someday I’ll write about Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown. Whether or not that day ever comes will depend on what Christians do between now and Election Day 2008. If Hillary Clinton takes the oath of office in 2009, if the Senate remains in liberal hands, the next nominee for the high court will be another Ruth Bader Ginsburg or David Souter, rather than a true judge of Brown’s caliber.

So impressed was Vision America with Brown’s speech that they are encouraging activists to “send a note of encouragement and thanks to Judge Brown.”

Facts Optional When It Come to Judges

Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Wednesday, 11/29/2006 11:47 am

As we have noted before, there appears to be something about the issue of judicial nominations that makes the Right take leave of their senses.  

For example, Vision America’s Rick Scarborough frets about the Democratic take-over of the Senate in January but insists that, despite the election results, “the American people elected George W. Bush in 2004 with the expectation that he would keep his campaign promise to nominate judges” who share the Right’s agenda regardless of which party controlled the Senate and is urging him to ignore calls to nominate any sort of “compromise” candidates.

To this end, Scarborough claims

 

When Clinton was president, there was no talk of compromise candidates. Our 42nd President put hard leftists like Ruth Bader Ginsberg on the bench.

 

The only thing that can be taken from this ridiculous claim is that Scarborough either doesn’t know or doesn’t care about the facts because, as Senator Orrin Hatch recounted in his autobiography, at a time when Democrats controlled the Senate and he was merely the ranking minority member of the Judiciary Committee, President Clinton still conferred with him when it came to potential nominees for the Supreme Court

Our conversation moved to other potential candidates. I asked whether he had considered Judge Stephen Breyer of the First Circuit Court of Appeals or Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. President Clinton indicated he had heard Breyer’s name but had not thought about Judge Ginsberg.

I indicated I thought they would be confirmed easily. I knew them both and believed that, while liberal, they were highly honest and capable jurists and their confirmation would not embarrass the President. From my perspective, they were far better than the other likely candidates from a liberal Democrat administration.

In the end … he nominated Judge Ginsburg and Judge Breyer a year later, when Harry Blackmun retired from the Court. Both were confirmed with relative ease.

Scarborough is not the only one who seems oblivious to history, no matter how recent. In Human Events, Judicial Watch’s Tom Fitton writes that

 

Liberals in the Senate have turned the judicial confirmation process on its head, obstructing the President’s judicial nominees for political reasons. They even resorted to launching judicial filibusters, ignoring the constitutional directive to provide up-or-down votes on all judicial nominees. Why? Not because the nominees were unqualified. But rather because they didn’t like the nominees’ philosophy of judicial restraint.

 

As we have noted repeatedly, if folks on the Right are really concerned about judicial nominees being denied a vote because one or more senators don’t “like the nominees’ philosophy,” perhaps they can start hounding Sen. Sam Brownback to lift his hold on the nomination of Janet Neff -  a hold that Brownback says is going to continue indefinitely

“I’m still looking at the Neff situation, and I will in the future,” Brownback said.

Neff has said she attended [a same-sex commitment ceremony] as a friend of one of the two women, a longtime neighbor.

Neff has declined to answer Brownback’s queries on whether the Constitution guarantees a right to same-sex marriage or civil unions, saying it would be improper to address questions that might come before her as a federal judge.

Brownback called gay marriage a developing area of the law best not left to the judiciary anyway.

“To me these issues should be decided by the legislative bodies, not by the judicial bodies, and it seems to me this may indicate some view of hers on the legal issue. And that’s what I’m concerned about here, is her view of the legal issue involving same-sex marriage,” Brownback said.

One has to marvel at Scarborough’s willingness to claim that there is no need for consultation or compromise on Supreme Court nominees despite the standard set by Hatch and Clinton - and Fitton’s willingness to blast Democrats for opposing nominees based on philosophy at a time when Brownback is doing exactly that.   

Never let it be said that the Right will let pesky things like facts get in the way of their partisan polemics.

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Ruth Bader Ginsburg Posts Archive

Schlafly Reminisces About The Days Of The Shotgun Wedding
SUBMITTED BY: Brian Tashman, Tuesday 06/14/2011, 4:41pm
Phyllis Schlafly is out with another article on the rise of single motherhood. According to Schlafly, the usual culprits are to blame: feminists, Barack Obama, ‘big government,’ and gay people who want the right to marry. Schlafly also says that single motherhood is increasing and marriage is declining because the legalization of abortion is “diminishing the custom of shotgun marriages, which in earlier years was often the response to surprise pregnancies.” Schlafly’s nostalgia for forced marriages shouldn’t be a surprise, as she is also a long-time... MORE >
Janet Porter Goes On The Attack Against The Group That Got Her Fired
SUBMITTED BY: Kyle Mantyla, Tuesday 06/08/2010, 10:29am
Just yesterday I was wondering when, if ever, Janet Porter was going to return to action, having seemingly ceased operations since her radio program was dropped by VCY America due to her increasing involvement with Dominion Theology.  Today, we got our answer. As we noted shortly after Porter was dropped by VCY, VCY's flagship program "Crosstalk" dedicated its show to discussing the alarming rise of Dominionism among the Religious Right with guest Sarah Leslie, who is an an author, researcher, and member of the board of directors of Discernment Ministries.  It was... MORE >
CWA Pre-Emptively Declares They Cannot Support Obama's SCOTUS Nomination
SUBMITTED BY: Kyle Mantyla, Tuesday 05/04/2010, 3:26pm
Concerned Women for America has produced a memo explaining that, as much as they hope President Obama will nominate a Supreme Court justice whom "all Americans can support," they don't think he will and therefore they'll be obligated to oppose that nominee ... whomever it is: Concerned Women for America (CWA) would love for President Obama to go beyond politics — as he promised during his campaign — and nominate a Supreme Court candidate that all Americans can support. After the health care debacle, with zero bipartisan support helping to further expand the chasm... MORE >
Good Riddance to the Filibuster
SUBMITTED BY: Kyle Mantyla, Wednesday 11/12/2008, 3:36pm
I had been on vacation for the last several days, so I missed this little nugget when it first surfaced last week: Jon Kyl, the second-ranking Republican in the U.S. Senate, warned president-elect Barack Obama that he would filibuster U.S. Supreme Court appointments if those nominees were too liberal. Kyl, Arizona’s junior senator, expects Obama to appoint judges in the mold of U.S Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David Souter and Stephen Breyer. Those justices take a liberal view on cases related to social, law and order and business issues, Kyl said. “He... MORE >
Disgruntled Republicans Work to Undermine McCain's Pledge on Judges
SUBMITTED BY: Kyle Mantyla, Friday 07/18/2008, 3:31pm
As John McCain continues to work to win over right-wing leaders, activists, and voters, the one constant theme he has been hammering is his pledge to nominate judges like John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court; a promise that has lately been paying dividends. But now it looks like some disgruntled Republicans are starting to push back against the idea McCain can be trusted to uphold his promise. For instance, Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr recently published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal less-than-subtly entitled "Judges Are No Reason to Vote for McCain":... MORE >
Attacks on Judiciary Down But Not Out
, Friday 10/12/2007, 5:42pm
The Right’s rhetorical war on the judiciary reached its fever pitch in 2005, when Congress broke a vacation to intervene in the Terri Schiavo case. To take one example from many, Rep. Tom DeLay, then House Majority Leader, declared that the judiciary had “run amok,” warned, “The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior.” He later added, “Our next step, whatever it is, must be more than rhetoric.” Since then, Congress has changed parties, and DeLay, tied to a corrupt lobbyist and indicted in Texas for... MORE >
Praise For Janice Rogers Brown’s Radical Rhetoric
SUBMITTED BY: Kyle Mantyla, Thursday 04/05/2007, 2:15pm
As we noted last week, Federal Judge Janice Rogers Brown warned students at Harding University in Arkansas that Christianity is under attack in America from “narrow positivism, moral relativism and the totalitarian reign of the radical multiculturalist.” Not surprisingly, this sort of rhetoric was music to the ears of Vision America’s Rick Scarborough:  Judge Janice Rogers Brown, of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, recently gave a speech at Harding University that deserves an enthusiastic amen from every Christian in... MORE >
Facts Optional When It Come to Judges
SUBMITTED BY: Kyle Mantyla, Wednesday 11/29/2006, 11:47am
As we have noted before, there appears to be something about the issue of judicial nominations that makes the Right take leave of their senses.   For example, Vision America’s Rick Scarborough frets about the Democratic take-over of the Senate in January but insists that, despite the election results, “the American people elected George W. Bush in 2004 with the expectation that he would keep his campaign promise to nominate judges” who share the Right’s agenda regardless of which party controlled the Senate and is urging him to ignore calls to nominate any sort of... MORE >