Judiciary

• PFAW: Poll: Americans Fear Romney Would Further Shift Supreme Court Toward Big Business.
• Chris Geidner @ BuzzFeed: 12 Reasons To Pay Attention To The Supreme Court This Year.
• Jim Burroway @ Box Turtle Bulletin: Martin Ssempa, Five Others Convicted by Ugandan Court Over False Sodomy Charges.
• Steve Benen @ The Maddow Blog: The right's desperate display.
• Annie-Rose Strasser @ Think Progress: In 2008, Akin Claimed Women ‘Who Are Not Actually Pregnant’ Get Abortions.
• Warren Throckmorton: Confirmed: David Barton’s Founders’ Bible Cites Pro-Slavery James Hammond as Proponent of America as Christian Nation.

• Paul @ PFAW Blog: Judicial Obstruction in Graphic Form.
• Aviva Shen @ Think Progress: GOP Senate Candidate Akin: ‘Free Enterprise’ Means Being Allowed To Deny Equal Pay To Women.
• Michelle Goldberg @ The Daily Beast: With ‘Dreams From My Real Father,’ Have Obama Haters Hit Rock Bottom?
• Eric Kleefeld @ TPM: Allen West Attacks Dem Opponent For 2003 Bar-Fight, ‘Verbal Assault’ Of Policeman.
• Jeremy Hooper: FRC lies about the SPLC; also, grass is green and water is wet.
• Rosie Gray @ BuzzFeed: Inside The Planning Of A James O'Keefe “Sting.”

Last week, we unveiled a campaign featuring a website, web ad, and report exposing Mitt Romney’s dangerous agenda for America’s courts, as demonstrated by the fact that Robert Bork has been tapped to lead Romney's constitutional and judicial advisory team.

As the report noted, Romney's choice of judicial advisors "spells serious trouble for the American people" ...  and it is no surprise that it is also music to the ear of the Religious Right.

On today's episode of "WallBuilders Live," David Barton and Rick Green invited Jordan Sekulow, who worked for Romney back in 2008, to make the case as to why the Religious Right can and should support Romney.  While Green was skeptical at first, Barton needed no convincing because Jay Sekulow (Jordan's father) was going to be involved in picking Romney's judges and that was all he needed to hear:

This has not been a hard thing for evangelicals to get over and support Romney and it shouldn't be a hard thing. When Romney ran four years ago, he wasn't my first choice but the reason I never got really worried about Romney was Jay Sekulow. And I tell you he has been very intimately involved in helping get folks like Alito and Roberts on the court. And four years ago, I heard that Sekulow is the guy that Romney has tapped to choose his judges and I said "that's it." I don't have any trouble with Romney because Isaiah 1:26 tells me the righteousness of nation is determined, not by the legislature, but by its judges. And if Romney's got folks like Sekulow picking his judges, I can live with that in a heartbeat.

When Jordan Sekulow joined the program, he made the case that conservatives should support Romney because he has pledged to nominate judges like Samuel Alito and John Roberts and has filled his campaign with people who are going to keep his feet to the fire:

Green: How important is it for us to recognize that if Romney is president, who has his ear? Who are the people that will consider those judges versus another four years of Obama if he gets another quarter of the judiciary appointed?

Sekulow: You've already got people who are long-time Romney supporters like my dad, who has argued thirteen cases before the Supreme Court and was very involved with President Bush - he was one of four people that were involved in the nomination process in the Bush White House - and so if you like Alito and Roberts, these are the kind of people. You have Judge Bork, who was filibustered by the Senate, voted down by the Senate actually, and he is on the Romney committee.

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You want Kagan and Sotomayor, and I was at the Supreme Court during the 'Obamacare' oral arguments, you probably don't want more of that, or do you want more Alito and Roberts? And he's made those pledges; I think we need to come to the campaign say "alright, you made these pledges, we're going to keep you honest to them and keep your feet to the fire."

Gordon Klingenschmitt is asking activists to pay him big money to stop the Senate from confirming Jesse Furman to the Southern District Court of New York. Klingenschmitt is asking for upwards to $159 to send faxes to Senators to stop Furman and two other nominees from “forcing their anti-Jesus, pro-abortion, pro-homosexual views on the American people.” While Klingenschmitt’s attacks are completely over the top, there’s a more obvious sign that Klingenschmitt’s campaign is completely off base: Furman has already been confirmed. Earlier this month the Senate voted 62-34 to approve Furman’s nomination in the face of intense GOP obstructionism.

Activist Judge Jesse Furman once legislated from the bench to change the First Amendment to allow unprecedented erosion to freedom of religion and speech. Furman tried to ban a Christian organization from using public property. The Supreme Court emphatically shot him down, and not even the liberals on the bench supported him. The high court rebuked Furman's idea that "to extend the school day for elementary school children by offering religious worship, instruction and indoctrination on public school grounds would result in an unprecedented erosion of Establishment Clause values that would reverberate well beyond this particular case." Furman banned Christian kids!

Please select here to sign urgent petition, and we will fax all 100 Senators (saving you time!) to OPPOSE and FILIBUSTER three bad judges to stop forcing their anti-Jesus, pro-abortion, pro-homosexual views on the American people.

But the Supreme Court ruled kids are free to assemble for worship, firmly rebuking Furman's anti-Jesus views. Furman had ruled that First Amendment Rights of free speech do not extend to Christians, "because they do not promote cohesion among heterogeneous democratic people." He wrote in his official brief to the Supreme Court that all forms of traditional Christianity are intolerant because they label children as either unsaved or unsaved.

Michele Bachmann has made so-called “activist judges” a consistent target of her presidential campaign, dubbing them “black-robed masters” and in last night’s debate she called for Americans to “take the Constitution back” from the courts. Railing against the judiciary is a safe bet for Republicans trying to pander to social conservative voters, but Bachmann’s view of the legal system has come out of her experience as a Religious Right activist and student at Oral Roberts University Law School.

At Oral Roberts, Bachmann worked for Professor John Eidsmoe, and as reported by Ryan Lizza, Eidsmoe taught that when “Biblical law conflicted with American law, Eidsmoe said, O.R.U. students were generally taught that ‘the first thing you should try to do is work through legal means and political means to get it changed.’” Bachmann has consistently trumpeted her work with Eidsmoe, whose legal philosophy has been greatly influenced by Christian Reconstructionist RJ Rushdoony and has urged Christians to promote Biblical law in government.

Today on The Jan Mickelson Show, Bachmann said that her “biblical view of law” molded her view that America needs to disempower the judiciary:

Bachmann: I hold a biblical view of law. If you look at the original constitution and the founding documents of our country, it was clear that the founders wanted to separate power, they wanted to separate the presidency from the Supreme Court and from the Congress, because they thought that the Congress should be the most powerful of all the people’s voices because the people would have the ability to change out the members of the House every two years, originally the state legislatures would chose the Senators and they would have the state’s interest in mind, and the President was meant to execute the laws that Congress would put into place. The courts had a relatively minor function, it was to take current facts and apply it to the law that Congress had passed. So it was really a beautiful system that set up but it’s been distorted since then, and that’s what we need to do, get back to the original view of the Founders because it worked beautifully.

Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) appeared on WallBuilders Live today where he joined right-wing historian David Barton and his cohost Rick Green in attacking the judiciary, which Franks called “the biggest threat that we have.” The judiciary has always been a favorite target of conservatives, and recently Republican presidential candidates Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich have declared an all-out assault on the judicial branch. Franks, who is the Co-Chair of Michele Bachmann’s presidential campaign, argued that the courts are trying “inch by inch” to “take away our religious freedom,” and even argued that “if Mr. Obama appoints additional people to the Supreme Court that the Constitution itself will be fundamentally abrogated”:

Franks: I think there is very few things that are a greater threat than the court systems because they are not accountable to any sort of response by the people. It really is the biggest threat that we have. Ultimately, as a people, we only have two opportunities, we have to defend ourselves in courts and the public square vociferously, we have to be strong and not let them inch by inch take away our religious freedom. And secondly, we have to understand that this Constitutional republic that we’ve been given affords us the opportunity to decide what people we put in the White House that chooses the courts, the people in the courts, the judges. Right now I don’t want to sound political but I don’t have any choice. I am convinced that if Mr. Obama appoints additional people to the Supreme Court that the Constitution itself will be fundamentally abrogated, I mean it is that clear to me.

Yesterday Eagle Forum’s Court Watch released yet another attack on “Reconstructionist (i.e., ‘activist/liberal’) judges,” who, they claim, “are leading the assault on America's Judeo-Christian foundations in our nation's Culture War.” Eagle Forum put together a Sample Resolution for members which the group said can be used as a “weapon” in “an election and at other times when petition-type expressions of our views and values are appropriate.” The resolution begins:

WHEREAS, the Constitution of the United States is, and must be, the Supreme Law of the Land, superior to all court decisions;
WHEREAS, the Constitution must be interpreted in the light of its text, constitutional tradition, and its Judeo-Christian foundation;
WHEREAS, the Constitution contains nothing that requires a "wall of separation between church and state";
WHEREAS, a total separation of religion and law/government is impossible;
WHEREAS, the Framers of the Constitution did not intend that a total separation be attempted;
WHEREAS, the English Common Law in which American law is rooted was Christianized;
WHEREAS, the U.S. Supreme Court does not require a total separation between "church and state";
WHEREAS, Reconstructionist (activist/liberal) federal judges have blatantly assaulted these fundamental Constitutional principles and have re-written them under the guise of interpreting them;
AND WHEREAS, We, the people, still possess the ultimate human political power in this nation and have delegated to the President and Congress in the Constitution very broad powers to establish and empower national courts;
BE IT RESOLVED THAT ________ actively supports
1. the Congressional denial of jurisdiction to courts to hear challenges to either the verbal or non-verbal acknowledgement of God — i.e., "God" meaning the Deity central to the Ten Commandments - on public property and in official utterances such as (but not limited to) the Pledge of Allegiance and national motto.
2. Congressional refusal to recognize, fund, or otherwise enforce court decisions that prohibit either the verbal or non-verbal acknowledgement of God — i.e., "God" meaning the Deity central to the Ten Commandments — on public property and in official utterances such as (but not limited to) the Pledge of Allegiance and national motto.

Eagle Forum’s assertion that the Constitution has a “Judeo-Christian foundation” because “the English Common Law in which American law is rooted was Christianized,” appears to challenge the beliefs of Thomas Jefferson, whose “Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom” is widely considered the basis for the First Amendment.

Professor Warren Throckmorton of Grove City College on Tuesday pointed to a letter Thomas Jefferson wrote to Thomas Cooper, in which Jefferson dissects and debunks claims that British common law is based in Christianity. “But Christianity was not introduced till the seventh century; the conversion of the first christian king of the Heptarchy having taken place about the year 598, and that of the last about 686,” Jefferson writes, referring to the common law introduced by the Saxon settlers of England. “Here, then, was a space of two hundred years, during which the common law was in existence, and Christianity no part of it.” He goes on to say:

But none of these adopt Christianity as a part of the common law. If, therefore, from the settlement of the Saxons to the introduction of Christianity among them, that system of religion could not be a part of the common law, because they were not yet Christians, and if, having their laws from that period to the close of the common law, we are all able to find among them no such act of adoption, we may safely affirm (though contradicted by all the judges and writers on earth) that Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.

In fact, Jefferson skewers those in England who tried to implement biblical law, much like many on the Religious Right attempt to do today, arguing that the gospel was “intended by their benevolent author as obligatory only in foro concientiae” (obligations of conscience, not law), and that the Ten Commandments were never incorporated into common law:

In truth, the alliance between Church and State in England has ever made their judges accomplices in the frauds of the clergy; and even bolder than they are. For instead of being contented with these four surreptitious chapters of Exodus, they have taken the whole leap, and declared at once that the whole Bible and Testament in a lump, make a part of the common law; ante 873: the first judicial declaration of which was by this same Sir Matthew Hale. And thus they incorporate into the English code laws made for the Jews alone, and the precepts of the gospel, intended by their benevolent author as obligatory only in foro concientiae; and they arm the whole with the coercions of municipal law. In doing this, too, they have not even used the Connecticut caution of declaring, as is done in their blue laws, that the laws of God shall be the laws of their land, except where their own contradict them; but they swallow the yea and nay together. Finally, in answer to Fortescue Aland’s question why the ten commandments should not now be a part of the common law of England? we may say they are not because they never were made so by legislative authority, the document which has imposed that doubt on him being a manifest forgery.

Less than a month after his speech to the Values Voter Summit, in which he claimed that marriage equality was an “assault” by the left to destroy America’s foundations, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) equated legalizing marriage for same-sex couples to desecrating the Eucharist. Speaking with Bishop William Lori at a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing on “The State of Religious Liberty in the United States,” King said that marriage equality, like the desecration of the Eucharist, was a “direct affront to the Church” and “an active effort to desecrate a sacrament of the church.”

Watch:

When you listen to David Barton on a regular basis, you learn all sorts of interesting things - a lot of them happen to be false and/or terrifying, but interesting nonetheless. 

For instance, on "Wallbuilders Live" today he explained that federal judges are not appointed for life but simply "during good behavior,"  which means that any time any judge issues a ruling that Congress does not like, they simply have to convene a hearing, force the judge to defend the ruling, and then impeach them:

Rick Green: So where is the accountability if a judge is appointed for their whole life.

Barton: Well, the first part is they're not appointed for life. That's one of the things that people think today and this is one of the great judicial myths that's out there that's absolutely not accurate. If you go back and look at the Constitution, Article III deals with the judiciary; there's nothing in there about judges being appointed for life. They're not appointed for life.

What they did, and what they also did in the federal Constitution, when you read it it says federal judges are allowed to hold their appointments for the quote 'duration of good behavior.' That's not a lifetime appointment - that's as long as you act right you can stay there as a federal judge. But if you don't act right, we're going to take you out.

The best way to know is to go see the guys who wrote the clauses, see what they define as good behavior by who they throw off the court.

There was a federal judge thrown off the court because he cussed in the courtroom. Founding Fathers threw him off the court. Why'd they do that? Because the federal Constitution says "for the duration of good behavior," They said cussing in a courtroom is not good behavior for a judge, you're gone.

Another guy was thrown off the court because he got drunk in his private life. Whoa, it's his private life; had nothing to do with his job. No, it's not good behavior for a judge - you're gone.

Another guy got thrown off the court because he contradicted an act of Congress. Supreme Court does that all the time today. Congress pass something, ah we don't like that act, it's going to be unconstitutional. No, he did that - you're gone buddy.

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There have been 97 impeachment investigations across history with judges; you've had 13 impeachments taken off the court. And the more often you have an impeachment investigation, the less often you have to remove a judge because, what Thomas Jefferson says, impeachment is a scarecrow - you sit out there in the middle of the field and that will scare them off.

Green: Because all the other judges are watching that, going 'I don't want that to be me.'

Barton: You betcha. For example, take the judge in California that says, oh no, having 'under God' in the Pledge of Allegiance, completely unconstitutional.

What you do is you convene a hearing in Washington DC, Congress says we want you to come appear before the judiciary committee and explain to us exactly what your thinking is that says we can't acknowledge God when that's in the Declaration and in the Constitution. What are you thinking?

And other judges see him getting called before Congress to be accountable and they go 'oh my gosh, we're not going to touch that.' Exactly!