Constitutional Rights

Even after Republicans in the Senate and their conservative allies railed against filibusters of judicial nominees during the Bush administration and pushed to give even the most far-right nominees up-or-down votes, it appears that they have made an exception for President Obama’s nominees.

The Senate is expected to vote tomorrow on UC Berkley Law Professor Goodwin Liu, who is nominated to serve on the 9th Circuit Court. While many conservative legal scholars support Liu, many in the GOP “appear to be opposing his nomination because he is too qualified.” Republicans have worked for over a year to denounce Liu with discredited attacks, and now right-wing groups are pressuring Senators to filibuster his nomination.

Mario Diaz of Concerned Women for America claims that Liu is a “real danger to our freedoms” and Republicans must do everything possible to prevent his confirmation:

"To everything there is a season," says Ecclesiastes 3:1, and the time for Republican senators to fight on judicial nominations is now!

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) has filed cloture on the nomination of radical professor Goodwin Liu to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Simply put, Mr. Liu must never be confirmed to this lifetime appointment, and senators should use every tool available to make sure he is stopped.

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Those views help expose the real danger to our freedoms with this nomination: Mr. Liu's judicial philosophy. He believes those constitutional rights must be developed, because he believes the Constitution is a "living, breathing" document that the more enlightened judges (like him, presumably) should continue to mold.

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Liu's judicial philosophy cannot be more dangerous, since it could mean something different at any given point in time. Any senator who doesn't stand firmly against such a rogue nomination violates his oath to "support and defend the Constitution."

The Committee for Justice also demands Republicans have a no holds barred approach to Liu’s nomination after they failed to obstruct district court nominee John McConnell:

If all 53 Democratic senators follow the party line and vote for cloture, they will need to add seven Republican votes to prevail. The key to this vote are the 11 GOP senators who voted for cloture on Rhode Island district court nominee John McConnell earlier this month. They include Sens. Alexander, Brown, Chambliss, Collins, Graham, Isakson, Kirk, McCain, Murkowski, Snowe, and Thune.

Several of these GOP senators justified their vote for cloture by arguing that the President’s district court nominees deserve more deference or that McConnell did not quite meet the “extraordinary circumstances” threshold. The former argument is not available for appeals court nominee Liu. The latter argument, if applied to Liu, would logically require a GOP senator to answer the question “If Obama’s most radical nominee is not extreme enough to meet the extraordinary circumstances threshold, when would it ever be met?” If the answer is “never,” because the senator believes that judicial filibusters are never justified, that senator must then explain why Republicans are obliged to unilaterally disarm no matter how atrocious the nominee is.

Tom McClusky of the Family Research Council insisted that Republicans block an up-or-down vote:

Perhaps in Senator Reid’s fantasy world Goodwin Liu is a fantastic nominee. Most people agree that the nomination of Goodwin Liu is one of those rare instances constituting “extraordinary circumstances” where the U. S. Senate should reject this nominee as unsuitable for a lifetime appointment. “Extraordinary circumstances” is the standard agreed to by the bipartisan “Gang of 14” U.S. Senators in 2005 for opposing judicial nominations.

Even the Tea Party Nation is getting in the game with this alert from president Judson Phillips:

Goodwin Liu is a radical leftist. He is a professor at the University of California Berkeley. He maybe the most radical lawyer ever nominated for a federal appeals court.

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If the cloture vote fails, Liu’s nomination is dead again. This is why we need to take a few minutes today and call our senators to tell them to vote against cloture. Harry Reid needs to peel off seven Republicans in order for cloture to pass. That is of course, if all Democrats vote for cloture. Unfortunately, we are dealing with the GOP, so the possibility of losing seven votes is real.

After efforts to amend the Colorado constitution to give constitutional rights to embryos and fetuses badly failed in November, advocates of so-called “Personhood Amendments” are now hoping that Mississippi voters will back a similar amendment in 2011. The Colorado proposal, called Amendment 62, “would have banned abortion, many forms of birth control and embryonic stem cell research in the state.” Mississippi activists were able to put a similar measure on the ballot in 2011 to coincide with the gubernatorial election.

Back in 2008, the American Life League began pushing “Personhood Amendments” to become an integral part of the anti-choice movement; however, many Religious Right groups traditionally resisted “Personhood Amendments” because of their radical nature and tremendous unpopularity. Anti-choice groups in Colorado such as National Right to Life, Americans United for Life, Colorado Citizens for Life, and the Colorado Eagle Forum refused to support the “Personhood Amendment.”

Personhood USA, the leading organization behind such measures, likened President Obama to the “Angel of Death,” and activists in Colorado compared pro-choice laws with Nazism.

Now, “Personhood Amendment” proponents will try their luck in Mississippi, which already has strict anti-choice laws, and they are receiving significant publicity and support from a leading Religious Right group: the American Family Association, which is based in Mississippi.

Matt Friedeman of the AFA’s American Family Radio said that if the proposal succeeds in 2011, he hopes it would lead the way to the criminalization of abortion across the country:

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So what we’re hoping for here is that one of these initiatives will be taken all the way to the Supreme Court and they’ll have to decide at that point what to do with it. And hopefully at that juncture we have a pro-life majority, and you never know from year to year to year what’s gonna happen there, but we hope we have a pro-life majority and we hope the day comes when Roe v. Wade is wiped off the books and we can go back to the states. Maybe even, if God would allow, to get a pro-life amendment for the whole country.

Not to be outdone, AFA Director of Issue Analysis Bryan Fischer said that Mississippi’s “Personhood Amendment” will advance his objective of “aligning” the country’s laws with “the word of God:”

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One of the things we look for from our political leaders is we want to see them work to align the public policy of our country with the standards of the word of God, that’s what we want, we want an alignment. We’re not talking about a theocracy where the clergy rules this country; we’re talking about statesmen, both men and women, who are committed as a matter of moral conviction to align the public policy of the United States with the word of God.

As “Personhood Amendment” advocates hope to find a more favorable electorate in Mississippi in 2011, will more Religious Right groups join the AFA in embracing their radical proposals?

As GOP delay-tactics in the US Senate continue to cause and aggravate judicial emergencies in the nation’s courtrooms, right wing activists demand that Senate Republicans persist in preventing members from voting to confirm Obama’s judicial nominees, even those who won significant bipartisan support. Even former Republican judges have condemned Republican games in the Senate as the number of judicial vacancies and emergencies rapidly grow.

But right wing activists are calling on the Senate GOP to stand firm and further weaken the judicial system. In the effort to paint President Obama as the second coming of who else but Jimmy Carter, Eagle Forum’s Phyllis Schlafly blasted Obama’s purportedly “radical” nominees:

One of the greatest risks of the current lame-duck Congress is the possibility of Senate confirmation of President Obama's radical appointments to federal courts, boards and agencies.

Nominees hoping for confirmation include the radical redistributionist Goodwin Liu, who is seeking a spot on the Ninth Circuit; Louis Butler Jr., who was removed from the Wisconsin Supreme Court by the voters in 2008, and Chai Feldblum, an advocate of same-sex marriage and polygamy who is now enjoying a recess appointment to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Appointees to federal circuit and district courts can be almost as important as Supreme Court justices because the Supreme Court takes only about 1% of the cases that seek to reach the high court. Lower federal court judges have been making final rulings on dozens of controversial issues that should be legislative decisions, including marriage, parents' rights in public schools and immigration.

Some have lamented that Jimmy Carter, who served only one term as president, didn't get a chance to make any Supreme Court appointments. But don't cry for Carter — he had plenty of influence on the judiciary.

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The historic election of 2010 delivered a clear "shellacking" to President Obama's policies, one of which was his choice of federal judges, including the extremely left-wing Elena Kagan, now on the Supreme Court. The Senate should refuse to confirm any of Obama's judicial or agency nominees in the lame-duck session.

Of course, Goodwin Liu is seen as one of the country’s top legal and constitutional scholars; Louis Butler did lose his 2008 race, but only after a vicious smear-campaign by corporate interest groups, and Chai Feldblum is a prominent law professor and disability-rights activist.

Rick Manning of the pro-corporate Astroturf group Americans for Limited Government is also calling on the Senate to reject Liu, by propagating the false charge that Liu believes health care is a constitutional right.

His views that health and welfare issues are constitutional rights are outside-the-mainstream, pitting those who believe in limited government power against those who would give unfettered power to the federal government.

Liu’s extremism is particularly disturbing because the court system is likely to be confronted by a variety of cases related to health care. Liu’s belief that health care is a right would put him firmly in the position of supporting an even broader expansion of the ObamaCare legislation to eliminate the private provision of health care services.

But as the Alliance for Justice points out, Liu in his legal writings made almost the opposite case about welfare rights such as health care:

[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.”

Richard Painter, a former lawyer for the Bush White House, made clear in the Los Angeles times what activists like Phyllis Schlafly and Rick Manning are really up to. He argued that right wing groups are playing political games with the judiciary in their opposition to a renowned scholar like Liu:

A noisy argument has persisted for weeks in the Senate, on blog sites and in newspaper columns over President Obama's nomination of Liu to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. This political spat over a single appellate judge makes no sense if one looks at Liu's academic writings and speeches, which reflect a moderate outlook. Indeed, much of this may have nothing to do with Liu but rather with politicians and interest groups jostling for position in the impending battle over the president's next nominee to the Supreme Court.

Today, Justice John Paul Stevens announced that he will retire from the Supreme Court after nearly 35 years of service ... and the Right has been quick to issue warnings to President Obama that they are ready to fight.

American Center for Law and Justice:

"The announcement of Justice Stevens' retirement underscores the reality that President Obama will make a second appointment to the nation's highest court that will impact generations to come," said Jay Sekulow, Chief Counsel of the ACLJ.

"While there's certain to be much debate about Justice Stevens' replacement, there is one thing that is clear - President Obama is likely to name a nominee who will embrace an extremely liberal judicial philosophy. Make no mistake about it - this appointment really represents more than just replacing one vote on the court. With a replacement who is likely to serve for 30 or 40 years, it's clear this replacement will have a long-term impact on judicial philosophy and likely play a determining factor in decisions for decades to come.

"Once a nominee is named and the confirmation process begins, it's important that the nominee face full and detailed hearings – with specific focus on the nominee's judicial philosophy including how the nominee views the Constitution, the role of judges, and the rule of law. That is what the American people expect and deserve."

Liberty Counsel:

Mathew D. Staver, Founder of Liberty Counsel and Dean of Liberty University School of Law, commented: “The Supreme Court should be about law, not politics. Beginning in the 1950s, the Supreme Court morphed into a political machine. When judges impose their political will rather than the rule of law, the rule of law is undermined and the people lose confidence in the system. As Chief Justice John Roberts said during his confirmation hearings, judges ought to be umpires who simply call the balls and strikes. They ought not play in the game or change the rules. The American people deserve a Supreme Court nominee who respects the rule of law and who will set aside personal bias in order to be faithful to the Constitution.”

Concerned Women for America:

Penny Nance, CEO of Concerned Women for America (CWA), said, “The news is no shock for those of us who follow the issue. Justice Stevens has been sending all the signals for the White House to be prepared. Our hope is that President Obama has had time to reflect on the issue and will make a change in the way he has looked at nominations. Will he nominate a justice who will show respect for our laws and the Constitution or will he continue to put ideology over the will of the majority of Americans?

“All three of the nominees in the short list are not encouraging. Elena Kagan’s apparent willingness to look at international law when deciding domestic cases, Judge Merrick Garland’s support of granting constitutional rights to enemy combatants, and Diane Wood’s extremely radical pro-abortion activism should bring chills to every American. We know the President can do better than that.”

CWA President Wendy Wright said, “Coming off of a debate over health care that has deeply divided the country against Pres. Obama, in which he ignored the Constitution and foisted his contentious beliefs onto millions of Americans, President Obama desperately needs to choose a qualified and Constitutionally-sound nominee. It would be healing for the country for President Obama to change course and select a nominee that respects the Constitution more than their own –or foreign countries’ – ideology.

Mario Diaz, Esq., CWA’s Policy Director for Legal Issues, said, “The President has the opportunity to change the radically divisive image he has created in the minds of many Americans. If he decides to nominate someone who respects the Constitution as written, instead of someone who believes in a living Constitution that they can mold to say whatever they want, he can do a lot to repair his image.

“Last time, even his own nominee, Justice Sotomayor, rejected the President’s idea of the role of a judge, even though her own record lined right up with the President’s radical view. That is how radical the President’s view is in this area. So if experience tells us anything, it tells us he will go with ideology instead of what is best for the country, but we hope and pray that we can finally see a ‘change,’ like he promised us.”

Priests for Life:

"The opening of a Supreme Court seat will again open the ongoing debate in our nation over abortion -- and it well should, not because Justices are supposed to shape public policy, but because the very purpose of government is the protection of human rights, starting with life. Anyone who fails to affirm that does not belong in any public office, much less the US Supreme Court."

Judicial Crisis Network:

This vacancy will open a new dialogue about the role of courts in our society. The American people are fed up with President Obama’s left-wing agenda and will make their frustration known at the polls. But he still has one ace up his sleeve: packing the Supreme Court with rubber stamps instead of judges. To an activist judge, the constitution represents an inconvenient truth that they will distort, ignore, or defy to push their radical liberal agenda.

President Obama painted Justice Sotomayor as the epitome of moderation, but her record on the court has been anything but. In her first term she has yet to meet a left-wing position she didn’t like. When President Obama speaks about maintaining balance on the court, don’t believe it. If Justice Thomas were the one retiring, the word “balance” would have been already banned from the White House.

 Traditional Values Coalition:

The retirement of Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens is good news and bad news. It’s good news that he will no longer be free to impose his liberal ideas on Americans through his Supreme Court edicts. But, the bad news is that President Obama will undoubtedly appoint someone equally liberal and far younger who will rewrite the Constitution according to his or her political purposes.

Ultimately, the retirement of Justice Stevens and appointment of a new Justice is an even trade.

If President Obama had any honor, he would pick a replacement for Stevens who respects the Constitution, but this is unlikely. He will choose a radical ideologue who will push the Court to the left for decades to come. Obama will replace an old judicial activist with a younger one.

• Think Progress: Vandals hit at least five Dem offices nationwide, threaten to ‘assassinate’ children of pro-reform lawmakers.
• Steve Benen: Someone Send Glenn Beck John Lewis' Bio.
• Texas Freedom Network: Don McLeroy Has Trouble Explaining Texas Social Studies Curriculum Standards.
• Americablog: School violated Constance McMillen’s constitutional rights, but won't require school to hold the prom.
• Pam's House Blend: Jesse Helms, gay rights advocate? That's what his estate says.
• Finally, do 24 percent of Republicans really believe that Barack Obama "may be the Antichrist"?

A few weeks ago in his column for WorldNetDaily, Ken Hutcherson penned this line:

I think Christians are the new Negro – but that's an issue for a follow-up column.

Well, that follow-up column is here:

Many reading this may not understand where I came up with this concept of calling Christians "the new Negro."

The reason is because there are undeniable similarities. Jim Crow laws were passed to keep me from having my constitutional rights and my rights under the Declaration of Independence of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Even though the Constitution gave me those freedoms, man was smart enough to be able to keep me from living those freedoms by saying I was "separate but equal."

Today, my constitutional right of freedom of religion is being eroded again by laws such as the Hate Crimes Bill and repeated attacks by the politically correct crowd. Threats that came along as a result of an African American wanting to get out from under Jim Crow laws were formidable and scary and designed to keep African Americans quiet. The same thing is happening to Christians today.

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Sarah Palin is another example.

The politically correct crowd has a very difficult time dealing with Sarah because of who she is. Mrs. Palin is a pro-life, pro-gun, pro-traditional marriage, pro-hunting, white, conservative, Christian male who happened to have been born a woman! The politically correct crowd knows exactly what to do with a white male with those attributes, but a woman?

She is the perfect picture of the politically correct woman – strong, beautiful, able to both buy and fry the bacon, take care of the family, run an entire state and still take care of her baby. But because of who she is, and because she does not subscribe to politically correct thinking, she has been attacked for no other reason than her Judeo-Christian values, just as African Americans were attacked for no other reason than their skin color.

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The only difference between Christians and African Americans is that Christians put up with this intolerance while standing behind the false disguise of humility and love. We are obsessed with showing the world our love when our primary job is to tell them the truth. The Bible does not say, "Sensitivity shall set you free." It says, "The truth shall set you free." Are we not the truth-tellers?

When are we as believers, like the African Americans that came before us, going to say, enough is enough? No more "separate but equal!" Our battle cry is "We are the salt of the earth, onward Christian soldiers and to God be the glory! For in unity we will stand and we will not be stopped!

It is becoming increasingly clear that Alan Keyes has reached the outer limits of the right-wing fringe movement, which is saying something considering that he had always pretty resided on the fringes to begin with and has only been heading further out  since the election of Barack Obama.

But his latest WorldNetDaily column defending Rev. James David Manning, pastor of Atlah World Missionary Church, really is remarkable, even for him.

Normally, I'd post some of Manning's bizarre rantings here to give you a sense of who he is, but his account has been suspended from YouTube, so I'll simply point you to Wikipedia:

Manning came to public attention in the 2008 presidential election after ATLAH posted several sermons of his that were harshly critical of Democratic candidate Barack Obama on the website YouTube. Among other accusations, he called Obama a "good House Negro" in one sermon while in another he referred to Obama as "trash" due to circumstances surrounding his mixed race heritage and accused him of being a "pimp" (pimping "white women and black women") and "long-legged mack daddy," and an "emissary of the devil", citing the viral video "I Got a Crush... on Obama". He stated that Obama "has the cadence of an Islamic person,"and he called Obama's mother "trash" for becoming pregnant by a black man out of wedlock. Manning revisited this latter issue during a press conference at the National Press Club on 8 December 2008: "Generally the most noble of white society choose not to intercourse sexually with African men. So it's usually the trashier ones who make their determinations that they're going to have sex."

Manning defended his sermons in an interview on Fox News, saying that "we also have to talk about his character."He compared TV personality Oprah Winfrey, who supported Obama's campaign, to the Whore of Babylon, the "Queen of the Universe", and an Antichrist.

According to Manning, one of his recent video postings prompted a visit from the Department of Homeland Security ... and it is not hard to see why, considering that somewhere around the five minute mark, Manning begins screaming:

You gotta clean house. You got to take Obama to trial, put him in jail for the rest of his life, or hang him.  Shoot him on the Washington ... first try him, find him guilty, and the punishment for treason is a death sentence. And then clean the rest out, go get Hillary, go get John McCain, go get George Bush, got get Dick Cheney too, get 'em all.  And then we can start over again.

So what does Keyes' have to say about Manning, who is seemingly calling for the execution of several current and former high-ranking government officials? That he's right:

I have followed Rev. Manning's broadcasts and statements for some time. He is forthright and outspoken in his religious and political views. He speaks with a boldness that is surely offensive to people who believe that civility requires silence even in the face of the stratagems of deception now being perpetrated against the American people. But I see nothing that he has said or done that warrants interference with his freedom of speech. Both YouTube's actions and those of the federal and New York City officials who visited his church appear to be in clear violation of his constitutional rights and part of an effort to intimidate him and others who are outspoken critics of the coup d'état being perpetrated by the Obama faction and its fellow travelers among the elites, who are working to accomplish the overthrow of our constitutional republic.

The repression of Rev. Manning's views is an intolerable assault on the constitutional freedom of every American. However disagreeable his voice may be to others, including the present occupant of the White House, his right to voice his criticisms is clear and undeniable. So is his right to seek redress of grievances that threaten the sovereignty of the American people and of every American as a member of the sovereign body of the people. Respect for these rights is one of the bedrock prerequisites of government of, by and for the people. Efforts to thwart and repress their exercise constitute a clear and present danger to the liberty of all Americans. Like the darkening skies and rising winds that announce the landfall of a hurricane, this move to silence Rev. Manning ominously foreshadows the next phase of the elite assault against the Constitution and people of the United States.

Last week I mentioned that the National Taxpayer Protest is scheduled for September 12.  Hosted by a variety of right-wing and anti-tax groups like the National Taxpayers Union, Americans For Tax Reform, Young America’s Foundation, The Club for Growth and many others, the effort seeks to bring millions of Americans to Washington D.C. for an organized and centralized TEA party-like protest:

It’s time to take the tea party movement directly to Washington, D.C. Please join thousands of local organizers and grassroots Americans from across the country as we gather in our nation’s capital to deliver a message to the politicians: Enough!

We’ve had enough of the out of control spending, the bailouts, the growth of big government and the soaring deficits. And we reject the future tax increases to pay for all of this spending and debt down the road. We are gathering on 9-12-2009 to deliver our message in person that we’ve had enough!

And they have some pretty big plans:

"Our mission is to present a unified voice of concern over the current administration's policies regarding taxation, our economy, foreign and domestic policy, as well as our individual constitutional rights as American citizens," said Grassfire national coordinator Darla Dawald in an open invitation to the public to join the Sept. 12 taxpayer march in Washington, D.C. "America is in trouble, the problems and issues are broad and complex and it will take a monumental effort to stop, change and reverse the destructive course that this administration and Congress has put us on. Together, We the People can effect that change!"

On Sept. 10 and 11, the groups will host grassroots training seminars and Sept. 11 "We'll Never Forget" memorial. The taxpayer march is scheduled to begin at the Lincoln Memorial at 10 a.m. Sept. 12 and culminate with a rally at 1 p.m. in front of the Capitol.

The National Taxpayer Protest website offers detailed information on travel and hotel accommodations, including directions to the event. Tea party attendees may RSVP there as well.

More than 9,000 people have already registered through the protest website, and the number is growing rapidly.

"Obama managed to have 4 million show up at the Capitol grounds," Dawald told WND. "We need to do the same if not more. The financial situation is dire, but as one gentleman said, 'If I have to sell my belongings and crawl there, I will – because it's that important!'"

I assume that when Dawald says Obama had 4 million show up at the Capitol, she's referring to the crowd that attended his inauguration, although the estimated size for that event was actually only 1.8 million.

But heck, if they want to set 4 million attendees as their goal, who am I to complain?

And frankly, with a thrilling proposedl line-up like this, I can't see how they could possibly fail to reach that lofty goal:

Invited Speakers and Guests (for the 3 day event) Include:

Dick Armey - FreedomWorks (CONFIRMED)
C. Boyden Gray - FreedomWorks (CONFIRMED)
Steve Forbes - FreedomWorks Foundation
Yaron Brook - Ayn Rand Center for Individual Liberty
Chris Chocola - Club for Growth
Grover Norquist - Americans for Tax Reform
John Tate - Campaign for Liberty
Mike Tanner - Cato Institute
Dan Mitchell - Cato Institute

John Stossel
George Will
Tucker Carlson
Michael Barone
M. Stanton Evans
Thomas Sowell
Andrew Napolitano
Thomas Woods
Peter Schiff
Michelle Malkin
Glenn Reynolds
P.J. O’Rourke
Drew Carey
Andrew Breitbart
Jonah Goldberg
Penn & Teller
John Allison
John Mackey
Dennis Miller
Rick Scott

Sen. Jim DeMint
Rep. Ron Paul
Rep. Jeb Hensarling
Rep. Jeff Flake
Rep. Doug Lamborn
Rep. Virginia Foxx
Rep. Marsha Blackburn
Rep. Tom Price
Rep. Scott Garrett
Rep. Mike Pence
Rep. Michele Bachmann
Rep. Paul Broun
Rep. Todd Tiahrt
Rep. Tom McClintock

Glenn Beck - Fox News
Neil Cavuto - Fox News
Laura Ingraham
Mark Levin

• Truth Wins Out reports that the authors of a book on the health of gay men have accused Focus on the Family of distorting their research, making this the tenth time in two years that researchers have claimed that Focus on the Family misrepresented their work.
• TPM offers more information about anti-immigration zealot/accused murder Shawna Forde's history while Blue Texan reports that Forde shared the stage with Jim Gilchrist at a 2007 event at which several GOP presidential candidates or their representatives appeared.
• Cristina Page notes that if Troy Newman of Operation Rescue can be judged by his Facebook friends, he's got ties to some violent anti-choice activists.
• Sarah Posner points out that Rep. John McHugh, who was nominated to be secretary of the Army, has a voting record from his time in the House that "shows a disrespect for church-state separation generally, as well as a disregard for the ongoing infringement of service members' constitutional rights from aggressive proselytization in the armed forces."
• Spencer Ackerman catches Rep. Pete Hoekstra comparing House Republicans to Iranian protesters.
• Think Progress catches Rep. Michelle Bachmann vowing to break the law by refusing to answer questions on the US Census.
• Finally, Media Matters posted this video of Pat Robertson declaring that countries that embrace homosexuality go "down into ruin" and end up "in the garbage heap of history":