Justice Department

Sometimes all you can do it point and laugh:

Larry Klayman, founder of Freedom Watch and Judicial Watch, has announced new legal actions in the Elena Kagan scandal. "Prior to confirmation, Freedom Watch and Declaration Alliance filed a complaint before the Supreme Court, to have Elena Kagan disbarred for falsifying a report as Associate Counsel in the Clinton White House that resulted in the inhumane killing of very late term unborn infants. Her conspiracy to defraud the Supreme Court, in order to defy the expressed will of the American people banning partial birth abortion, made our nation needlessly complicit in these heinous acts. Kagan's actions rise to the level of criminality," Klayman said.

Freedom Watch and Declaration Alliance, with Kagan's reckless confirmation to the Supreme Court, will therefore also seek her impeachment. But this punishment is insufficient to right the wrongs of Justice Kagan's criminality.

...

[C]itizens have the unbridled right to empanel their own grand juries and present "True Bills" of indictment to a court, which is then required to commence a criminal proceeding. Our Founding Fathers presciently thereby created a "buffer" the people may rely upon for justice, when public officials, including judges, criminally violate the law.

"Here, Justice Elena Kagan not only falsified evidence, thereby obstructing justice, but her fraud resulted in the barbaric deaths of unborn late term infants, in a heinous manner the American people had properly legislated as unlawful. She should be indicted and tried in a court of law for her crimes. As the Obama Justice Department will not seek an indictment, it is left to ordinary Americans to seek justice. And, if after an indictment is obtained, the lower courts refuse to institute a criminal proceeding, then Freedom Watch and Declaration Alliance will appeal this case all the way to the same Supreme Court where Justice Kagan now sits.

The Declaration Alliance was founded by Alan Keyes in 1996.

Given the relatively recent rise of self-proclaimed prophets and apostles such as Cindy Jacobs and Lou Engle within the Religious Right movement, I've recently read several books by Engle, Peter Wagner, and Johnny Enlow to try and get a better understanding of the theology and agenda behind this movement. 

Yesterday, I finished reading Jacobs' "The Reformation Manifesto: Your Part in God's Plan to Change Nations Today" and just wanted to highlight a section that exemplifies the difference between the standard Religious Right leaders and this new breed of prophetic intercessors.

Whereas people like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell regularly made (and, in some cases, continue to make) news for claiming that specific natural disasters were the result of God signaling his displeasure with humanity, activists like Jacobs regularly take responsibility for unleashing these sorts of events. 

In her book, Jacobs recounts an incident in 2006 when she came to Washington, DC for a conference.  During her visit, God gave Jacobs a "prophetic word" that He was going to "wash Washington" and gave her a vision of "angels in chariots of fire encircling the area, waiting to be invited in." Jacobs delivered her prophecy to the conference, noting that "not only were we interceding for the upcoming mid-term elections in our nation, but for righteousness and justice to be released into the courts."

According to Jacobs, "there was tremendous warfare in the heavens that night" following her prophecy ... which was then followed by a rainstorm which flooded the nation's capital: 

That night after the meeting, the skies over the Capitol looked like the bombing of Baghdad. Lightning and thunder rocked the skies and the rain began to fall. Over the weekend, the rain increased. The skies looked like the heavens would, with the angelic host fighting the powers of darkness over the city. There was war in the heavenlies!

The news services on Monday June 26, 2006 reported in the natural what the prophets prophesied at Shift the Nation. One part of the city was flooded with a five feet deep mudslide covering the Capitol Beltway road for one mile. One of our prayers during the conference was for corruption to be exposed and for God to build a “highway of holiness” across the nation and the Lord has spoken to us quite a bit about an Isaiah 35 holiness movement in Washington, DC.

In addition, as intercessors have been praying about the Free Masonic designs in the original layout of the Federal district by L’Enfant Plaza, the L’Enfant portion of the metrorail subway system in DC was stopped because of water on the electrical lines.

I also saw a vision the first night of a huge old tree being pushed back and forth until the roots were loosened from the soil. Considerable time was spent asking the Lord to “uproot” one more Supreme Court justice to help give the votes needed to overturn Roe vs. Wade. God gave us two remarkable signs as the news reported on June 26 that “Not even the White House could escape the damage, as a 100-year-old American elm tree fell near the front door.”

Additionally, The Washington Post reported that the Justice Department located on Constitution Avenue was shut down for a whole day on June 26, 2006. We also prayed and spoke about Ezekiel 47:9-11 which speaks of the river that flows from the throne of God and brings life to where ever it flows. It is one of the most classic passages on revival. As the waters rose in the city, fish were found washed up from the flood for the first time in memory - and fish are a symbol of revival!

Jacobs, Engle, and the like believe that they have supernatural powers of the exact same sort possessed by Jesus Christ, given to them by the Holy Spirit, thus allowing them to know the will of God, perform miracles, and cause events to happen. 

I've been studying the Religious Right for more than a decade and have never seen anything like this among the groups and people that we monitor.  But now not only are "prophets" and "apostles" like Jacobs and Engle being welcomed into the more "traditional" movement, they appear to be rapidly changing the nature of the movement itself, with Engle leading the FRC "prayercast" and leading more "mainstream" leaders in Call-like prayer sessions while Jacobs played in key role in orchestrating Janet Porter's upcoming "May Day 2010" prayer rally which is organized entirely around "7 Mountains" dominionist theology and is scheduled to feature several GOP members of Congress.

• Think Progress: Indiana’s ‘sovereign citizens’ renounce their U.S. citizenship, claim to secede from the Union.
• TPM: Louisiana sheriff forming a citizen militia to defend the parish in the event of a terrorist attack.
• Adam Serwer: How a smearing of Justice Department lawyers as "terrorist sympathizers" traveled from the conservative media to the United States Senate.
• Alvin McEwen: Attacks on gay students no big deal to the religious right.
• Media Matters: Glenn Beck repeatedly likens himself to historical figures of note, including Socrates, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Benjamin Franklin.
• Finally, if this was satire, it would be absolutely brilliant.  It is not satire:

I have been diligently following the developments in the shooting death of anti-abortion activist James Pouillon in Michigan since the news broke this morning and based on the little information and few details that are available, it is impossible to know why Pouilon was killed.

Reports indicated that Pouilon was gunned down from a moving car early this morning.  A witness got the car's license plate and police arrested someone an hour later.  At that point, the suspect reportedly informed the police that he had committed another murder earlier in the morning and police were soon informed that the body of Mike Fouss, the owner of a local gravel pit, had been discovered, shot multiple times in his office:

Fuoss knew the suspected shooter, according to Shiawassee County Sheriff George Braidwood. Braidwood said it appeared he was shot at close range.

Subsequent reports indicate that the suspect in custody had some sort of personal connection to Fuoss:

Fuoss’ brother-in-law, Glen Merkel, told the Free Press that Fuoss was found shot dead in his office around 7:30 a.m. by an employee. He said Fuoss was seen alive perhaps 20 minutes earlier when another truck driver for his company came to pick up a load of gravel.

Merkel said the suspect in the shootings is the son of a former Fuoss Gravel employee, but said he did not know any reason for Fuoss’ slaying.

In short, at this point, it’s far, far too soon to say what the motive in either of these crimes actually was.

But none of that seems to matter to right-wing groups and individuals like Randall Terry, all of whom are releasing statements and holding press conferences demanding political action.

From Concerned Women for America:

Wendy Wright, President of Concerned Women for America (CWA), stated, "We are shocked at this senseless violence against a peaceful man. Jim Pouillon sincerely lived out his belief that babies have the right to be born. He dedicated his life to convincing others to reject the violence of abortion. It is a tragedy upon tragedy that a peaceful man who tried to end violence was himself violently killed.

"We hope Attorney General Holder will as vigorously denounce the murder of Jim Pouillon, who tried to save babies from violence, as he did the murder of George Tiller, the late-term abortionist."

CWA President Wendy Wright will speak at a press conference today, September 11, along with pro-life leaders Troy Newman, Patrick Mahoney and Rob Schenck. The press conference will be held at 2:30 outside the Department of Justice (950 Pennsylvania Ave, NW, Washington, D.C.).

From the Pro-Life Action League:

"We are shocked to learn of the killing of pro-life activist Jim Pouillon, a man who day after day stood as a witness to the violence of abortion. Now he himself is a victim of violence," said Joseph M. Scheidler, national director of the Chicago-based Pro-Life Action League, "Just last month at a clinic on the north side of Chicago a man shouted to one of our counselors, 'I'll get my gun and shoot you through the head.' On a number of occasions, our 'Face the Truth Tour' was threatened with deadly weapons."

"When the late term abortionist, Dr. George Tiller, was murdered, the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division and the U.S. Attorney's Office launched a federal investigation into federal crimes in connection with the murder, and the Civil Rights Division convened a meeting of the National Task Force on Violence Against Reproductive Health Care Providers," commented Scheidler. "Now the Pro-Life Action League is calling on those government agencies to investigate this murder and established a task force to protect pro-life advocates."

Let me say this again: at this point, nobody knows why Pouillon was killed.  He may have been targeted for his activism, or it may have just been random, but nobody knows.  Perhaps it would behoove these right wing groups to hold off until some facts are actually known about this case before they start issuing statements and making all sorts of demands.

And maybe media outlets like the New York Times ought to hold off on running articles carrying headlines like "Man Killed Over Anti-Abortion Stance" until that has actually been established:

We have known for some time now that the Right was targeting Dawn Johnsen, President Obama's nominee to head the Office of Legal Counsel, for defeat.  But what we weren't aware of, until reading this post from the Family Research Council's Tom McClusky, was that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid doesn't have the votes to get her confirmed:

Senator Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is now telling reporters he does not have the votes to confirm Dawn Johnsen for Assistant Attorney General at the Justice Department. Ms. Johnsen has been a long time advocate for abortion rights groups, comparing pregnancy to slavery. She has also been outspoken on counterterrorism measures.

Of course, if you read the article he links to, you find out that Reid didn't say he doesn't have the votes to confirm Johnsen - what he actually said was that he doesn't have the votes to prevent a Republican-led filibuster of her nomination:

As Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) moves to ease a backlog of executive branch nominations, he suggested on Tuesday that he does not have the votes to bring up President Barack Obama’s pick to run the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel.

“Right now we’re finding out when to do that,” Reid said, responding to a question about the status of Indiana University law professor Dawn Johnsen’s nomination to the Justice post. “We need a couple Republican votes until we can get to 60.”

As Reid explained elsewhere:

“We need a couple Republican votes until we can get to 60," Reid added. And it's just a small number, maybe two or three. But at this stage, I don't have all the Democrats. I have virtually all, but not all. And remember, we have 59 Democrats, and that's not enough to do it."

Reid has more than enough votes to confirm Johnsen if she can get an up-or-down vote on the Senate floor, which is exactly what Republicans are trying to prevent with a filibuster. 

According to his bio, McClusky has a long history of working in politics, including a stint as a political analyst for the Republican National Committee, so presumably he knows about Senate procedure and the difference between a confirmation vote and a cloture vote.

In fact, I 'm pretty sure that he does, because just a few years ago, he signed onto a letter calling on Senators to ensure that Bush administration nominees received an up-or-down vote on the floor:

If you cannot support a particular nominee, vote him or her out of committee without a positive recommendation, or vote against confirmation. But please do not deny the nominee a fair up-or-down vote on the Senate floor. In other words, we ask only that you do your job by putting statesmanship above politics and special interests.

Is it too much to ask that the Vice President for Government Affairs at the Family Research Council not hypocritically and purposely mischaracterize what is going on regarding Johnsen's nomination and the GOP's obstruction efforts?

Apparently it is.

• Did you know there is a sports complex in one of Israel's biggest settlements in the West Bank named for John Hagee?
• For some reason, Richard Viguerie seems to think that the Justice Department's prosecution of the Ted Stevens case under the Bush administration is evidence of a "alliance between leftwing Democratic politicians and corrupt bureaucrats and special interests."
• Alan Keyes will reportedly be speaking at Washington, DC's "Tea Party" rally next week ... and Fox News has been aggressively promoting them.
• Phyllis Schlafly declares that her gay son is fully supportive of her right-wing agenda and likewise opposes gay marriage.
• Because WorldNetDaily apparently doesn't have enough nutcases writing columns for them, they've decided to bring Michael Savage on board as well.
• Gary Glenn, president of the American Family Association in Michigan, was greeted by hundreds of protesters when he arrived to speak at Central Michigan University last night.
• More than 250,000 people have reportedly signed a petition sponsored by the Cardinal Newman Society calling on Notre Dame to withdraw its invitation to President Obama to speak at the May 17 commencement.
• The Vatican has reportedly rejected at least three of President Obama's candidates to serve as U.S. ambassador because they support abortion.
• Finally,  Franklin Graham is beginning to sound more and more like Pat Robertson:

America was once a nation that honored and trusted God, albeit imperfectly. Many of today’s prestigious institutions of higher learning were founded by Christians, and precepts from Scripture were foundational for instruction. Presidents and national leaders embraced Christianity’s influence on civil matters, and God’s moral laws were encoded into our judicial system.

That godly heritage has been abandoned and rejected, and I believe we are paying the price today. Greed isn’t good. The lack of personal integrity has massive consequences. We’ve built a culture of our own making that is on the verge of destruction.

...

This is a time of testing for our country. Will we acknowledge our sin and turn back to God? Will we call on God for help in our hour of distress, or will we continue to further distance ourselves from His aid?

God always leaves room for repentance. He is patient and long-suffering. But there comes a time when He finally allows us to reap what we’ve sown. That will be a bitter harvest, one that I pray we will not experience.

Anyone who paid even a minimal amount of attention to the battle over judicial nominations during the George W. Bush’s presidency knows that Senate Republicans were unified in their opposition to the Democrats’ use of the filibuster against a handful of his nominees, going so far as to threaten the “nuclear option” to do away with their ability to block his controversial nominees.

But those days are long gone, as the GOP made clear to President Obama when it pre-emptively threatened to filibuster all of his nominees before he had even made any. And true to form, it looks like they are contemplating using one right off the bat against his very first nominee, David Hamilton:

Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the Judiciary Committee’s ranking Republican, has complained that the Democrats are moving too quickly to consider Mr. Hamilton, a federal trial judge in Indiana since 1994. The committee has set for Wednesday the confirmation hearing on Judge Hamilton, who was nominated only in mid-March.

While that possibility is still a bit down the road, a filibuster of Obama’s nominee head the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department, Dawn Johnsen, looks like it might be coming soon:

Republicans senators and aides, granted anonymity to discuss their strategy, said they might consider a filibuster in an effort to block Ms. Johnsen’s confirmation. They will first gauge whether they can attract some support from conservative Democrats, they said, in order to help defeat any motion that would cut off debate.

Roll Call also reports that Republicans are considering filibustering Johnsen and that doing so would be a good way for Sen. Arlen Specter, who is likely facing a tough primary challenge from ultra-conservative Pat Toomey, to demonstrate his conservative bona fides:

Although Senate Judiciary ranking member Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) declined to comment on a possible filibuster until he meets with Johnsen again before leaving for recess at the end of the week, Republicans confirmed that the filibuster option has been discussed by members of the GOP Conference and that opposition to the nomination is mounting … Republicans said Johnsen’s record on a number of key issues has done something that has become increasingly rare in their fractured Conference — uniting social conservatives and security hard-liners.

“She’s got one of those résumés that unites the social conservatives and the war-on-terror conservatives,” a GOP leadership aide said. Johnsen has been a vocal critic of how the Bush administration conducted the war on terror and her views have rubbed hawkish conservatives in the GOP the wrong way.

…

Should Republicans ultimately decide to filibuster Johnsen’s nomination, it could be a boon to Specter’s re-election efforts. Specter is looking at a tough primary challenge from former Rep. Pat Toomey, who came within 17,000 votes of defeating him in the 2004 GOP primary. A recent poll showed Toomey with a double-digit lead over Specter in a hypothetical Republican primary, but with many voters still undecided and the primary more than one year away.

Specter also faces a dwindling base across the state as hundreds of thousands of moderate Republicans have changed their registrations to Democratic since 2004 in the Keystone State. Specter is at a disadvantage in the closed GOP primary without those moderate Republicans and will likely have to mount a voter registration drive to switch some of those Democrats back before 2010.

But a filibuster of Johnsen could help Specter significantly bolster his conservative credentials with the voters back home. One Republican said a filibuster “could be very good for him,” particularly because opposition to Johnsen’s nomination runs the spectrum of conservative constituencies.

That would be quite a change for Specter, who was no fan of the filibuster when Democrats used it against Bush judicial nominees like Miguel Estrada, according to his remarks on the Senate floor on April 2, 2003:

When you strip this argument down, it boils down to an effort by the other side of the aisle to rewrite the advice and consent clause of the Constitution. For more than 200 years, the President has had discretion in the nomination of Federal judges. And unless there is some reason not to confirm them, they then are confirmed … This is simply an effort, when 41 Members from the other side of the aisle decide to oppose cloture, to continue this filibuster … I do believe there is going to have to be some dramatic action taken so that Americans understand the travesty going on in the Senate Chamber today.

So the filibuster of a nominee to a life-time seat on the federal judiciary was a “travesty” to Specter, but a filibuster of an executive branch nominee to a political position might be perfectly acceptable to him?

The Senate is currently debating the nomination of David Ogden to be Obama’s Deputy Attorney General. That, in itself, is telling. Ogden was expected to sail through the confirmation process, but by last week there was talk of a full-on filibuster.

It’s not easy to disrupt the confirmation of a widely respected attorney with previous government experience and bipartisan backing. It takes big lies and a big megaphone. But the Religious Right and its Senate allies managed just fine.

To hear Senator Orrin Hatch talk about it, you’d think that Obama had actually nominated Larry Flynt to be Eric Holder’s deputy: “The pornography industry is excited about Mr. Ogden’s nomination.”

But that’s nothing. Here’s how the executive director of the Traditional Values Coalition summed up Ogden: “He will be a great ally for advocates for death and homosexuality inside the Justice Department.”

Bear in mind, they’re talking about a man who enjoys the backing of the National District Attorneys Association, National Association of Police Officers, Fraternal Order of Police, National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and many others. He even won the support of Republican Senators Specter, Graham, and Kyl in committee.

Ogden’s right-wing antagonists don’t care about any of that. They’ve latched onto a handful of cases involving abortion and obscenity from his many years as a corporate lawyer and have distorted them beyond all recognition. Ogden, for instance, represented the American Library Association in its fight against overzealous internet filtering and the American Council for the Blind over whether the Library of Congress should make a Braille version of Playboy, as was the practice for other popular periodicals.

These cases had very real First Amendment implications. But never mind that. His old casework is enough for the Traditional Values Coalition to call him a “pro-pornography zealot.” Concerned Women for America has even speculated that his nomination might mean that the “United States will also fund the international production and distribution of pornography.”

These smears reached hundreds of thousands – perhaps millions – of Americans via right-wing cable news, talk radio, and blogs. Senate conservatives took notice, hence the five ‘no’ votes in the committee and the grumbling about a filibuster. In fact, Senator Majority Leader Reid was forced to file cloture on the vote.

Ogden will surely be confirmed when the Senate finally votes on his nomination today (around 2 pm). But the outlandish rhetoric from the far right and the willingness by conservative Senators to play along are sure signs of what’s to come.

Yesterday Greg Sargent reported that the Family Research Council had sent a letter to Republican Senators warning that it would be watching their votes on several of Barack Obama’s Justice Department nominees, especially that of David Ogden to be Deputy Attorney General, and using the vote in their annual “scorecard.”

Today, just to make sure that everyone got the message, FRC issued a press release containing the same warning:

"Clearly, David Ogden represents a profound threat to American families. So, for the first time ever, FRC Action will score a vote against a nomination. We will include the vote on David Ogden's nomination in our annual Vote Scorecard which tracks votes in Congress critical to the family. We will make every effort to inform the American people how each of their two Senators voted on this far left nomination.

"The American people deserve a Justice Department that will aggressively prosecute those who violate our laws, not someone who has sought to defend and justify some of the most despicable people in our country. I urge all senators to vote no on David Ogden as Deputy Attorney General of the United States."

As FRC says, it has never used a nomination vote on its scorecard before, but apparently Ogden is just so far beyond the pale that they simply must make opposing him a test of the GOP’s fealty to their right-wing agenda.

Just who were those “despicable people” that Odgen represented?  As we noted in a recent RWW In Focus:

To summarize, the Right says David Ogden is a hard-left pro-gay, pro-choice extremist bent on promoting pornography, enabling the exploitation of women and children, and subverting the Constitution to judges’ personal whims and to international law.

Many of those attacks are based on his record as a private attorney, where he represented such “extremist” organizations as the American Library Association, the American Booksellers Association, the American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and, yes, Playboy, which is what led a hyperventilating pundit to cry, “Has the Playboy flag really displaced the Stars and Stripes over Washington?”  As Ogden has explained, in those cases he was a lawyer representing his clients and their interests in preserving the First Amendment. He never, in spite of the Right’s claims, argued that obscene materials or child pornography should go unregulated or unpunished. In fact, Ogden served in the Justice Department as Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Division and Associate Deputy Attorney General and Chief of Staff and Counsel to Attorney General Janet Reno. While at Justice he led the government’s defense of anti-pornography laws whose constitutionality was being challenged in the courts. 

Among the hard-left radicals who have endorsed Ogden’s nomination:

    * National Center for Missing and Exploited Children
    * National District Attorneys Association
    * Fraternal Order of Police
    * National Association of Police Officers
    * National Sherriff’s Association
    * Federal Law Enforcement Officers’ Association
    * and at least 15 Justice Department and other legal officials from the Reagan, Bush, and Bush administration

I can see why he is such a danger.  Of course, as we pointed out, the Right’s threats and outrage over these DOJ nominees is less about actually stopping any of these nominees and more about getting right-wing activists, pundits, and lawmakers warmed up for similar attacks on eventual Obama nominees to the federal judiciary, and in particular to the U.S. Supreme Court.