Politics

Unable to Find Votes, Right Looks to Court Stripping

Submitted by Anonymous on Thursday, 7/13/2006 1:48 pm

As the House is set to vote on a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage—even after the amendment failed to get a simple majority in the Senate, much less the required two-thirds majority—Rod Parsley’s Center for Moral Clarity reminds us that the point is politics and the upcoming elections.

“This important House vote will put every member of Congress on record as either supporting biblical marriage or siding with activist judges and others who would expand the definition of marriage," said Pastor Rod Parsley, founder and president of the Center for Moral Clarity. "Undoubtedly, many members of Congress would prefer not to cast this vote so close to an election – but it’s important that voters know where they stand on this critical issue."

But others are looking to unconstitutional tricks to get around the amendment process. The goal of “court-stripping” legislation is to simply declare that federal courts are no longer allowed to hear the claims of citizens that their rights are violated. Family Research Council President Tony Perkins--decrying the “judicial activism” behind the Supreme Court decision finding unconstitutional Bush's military commissions to try Guantanamo detainees--encourages court-stripping, along with right-wing judicial nominees, as a long-term strategy, citing two court-stripping bills in the works:

Congress needs to resist this judicial activism. One way to constitutionally check the courts is with measures like the Pledge Protection Act sponsored by Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO) and another way is Cong. John Hostettler's (R-IN) Public Expression of Religion Act (PERA). Finally, we can give a fair up or down vote to judicial nominees like William J. Haynes.

Now, even as the House vote on the anti-gay marriage amendment looks to fail, Human Events endorses a court-stripping bill to circumvent the Constitution on the issue of marriage:

Unfortunately, the [marriage] amendment failed in the Senate last month, receiving only 49 votes. It is also destined to fail in the House: In the last Congress, it received only 227 votes, more than 60 shy of the super-majority needed. But there is a way Congress can act this year to protect state marriage laws from activist liberal judges. Rep. John Hostettler (R.-Ind.) has proposed a bill that would strip all federal courts, including the Supreme Court, of jurisdiction to hear any challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). …

Hostettler’s Marriage Protection Act has practical and political advantages. For starters, unlike the constitutional amendment, if pushed by the Republican leadership, it has a real chance of becoming law. … Secondly, it is a tougher political test for Democratic congressmen trying to convince voters they are not out of touch with traditional American values. … Precisely because the Marriage Protection Act can become law, Democratic leaders are fretful of letting even Red State Members vote for it--if they can help it.

Perhaps soon the Right will come up with a bill to ban blogs, and declare that we can no longer defend our rights in court. It’s certainly a convenient strategy to avoid that pesky Constitution.

Norquist’s Coalition May Suffer from Abramoff and Ideological Split

Submitted by Anonymous on Monday, 7/10/2006 2:52 pm

Speaking at an American Prospect breakfast, Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform and the dean of D.C.’s right-wing coalition, offers his interpretation of the Republican Party’s problem appealing to gay and lesbian voters:

Ellen Ratner (Talk Radio News Service): The Republicans in Ohio are saying the gay marriage vote is essentially what won them the last election. The President has pushed this gay marriage amendment, the Senate has. Yet you say people have individual rights. They seem to have a very different view of gays.

Norquist: There’s a very interesting question on … I speak to the Log Cabin Republicans and work with them on a whole host of issues … the Human Rights Campaign on certain things … so I get trashed from time to time by some of my friends. I think it’s a mistake to write off any group. I was in Romania, they’re having elections in four weeks, and I was organizing the non-communists. And I had them write on a blackboard Who’s Voting for Us, Who’s Voting for Them. And they had to list … understand why everybody was. They had the gypsies voting for the communists, and I said, “OK, I get why the Communists are voting for the Communists, and the Army and the police and the guys with government jobs, but why the gypsies?” If I were a gypsy I’d want to live outside touchy-feely U.S. law, much less harsher communist law. And they said, “Well, the communists buy them liquor and then they vote for them.” And I said, “We can do this; George Washington did this, it’s OK.” And they said, “No, the gypsies are scum and we won’t talk to them.” And I said, “OK, I guess you’re not getting the gypsy vote then.” In politics you want to have as few gypsies as possible, as few groups and people who are not voting for you because you’re not talking to them.

He adds later that he has “never have seen numbers which suggest that speaking harshly about gays is a vote winner.”

While Norquist helps to hold together the economic and social wings of the Right, The Washington Post reports on fractures developing in Norquist’s group over his involvement in the Jack Abramoff scandal. While he continues leading his Wednesday meetings, “where officials of conservative organizations, activists and lobbyists gather with Republican politicians to swap notes, make plans and coordinate messages,”

Some social conservatives who have jousted with him over his more libertarian views on the regulation of television and its depictions of violence and depravity are exploiting his weakness to press their positions on Capitol Hill. Security-minded defense hawks who for years have questioned his ties to Muslim activists are resurrecting charges that Norquist has turned a blind eye to terrorist sympathizers.

Despite his troubles, The Post reports, “apparatus he has created for conservatives -- with fundraisers, social dinners and weekly meetings not just in Washington but in 43 states and even Europe -- has become too important to destroy.”

 

O’Reilly: Superman Defeated by Soros' Anti-American Kryptonite

Submitted by Anonymous on Monday, 7/10/2006 2:47 pm

Fox News personality Bill O’Reilly, host of the “O’Reilly Factor,” has incorporated the latest cultural product into his theory of American politics. He writes:

In the new film "Superman Returns," Daily Planet editor Perry White responds this way after being told the Man of Steel has come back after a five-year absence: "Does he still stand for truth, justice and all that stuff?"

And all that stuff?

The original line in the television series and movie, of course, was "truth, justice and the American way." But no way the "American way" gets in the film.

Rather than hearing a scriptwriter’s expression of the character’s skepticism, O’Reilly explains that it’s “because Warner Brothers, the studio distributing the movie, doesn't want to tee off any foreign viewers with pro-U.S. sentiment.” He goes on to cite surveys showing a lack of support for U.S. foreign policy, and he implicates “the anti-American press” and “the rise of a well-funded and well-organized secular-progressive (S-P) movement in America.”

The S-P philosophy would rattle even Superman. Led by moneymen George Soros and Peter Lewis, who have bought enormous Internet access, the secular-progressives are selling the theory that the USA needs radical change, a complete overhaul. …

That's not the American way Superman used to uphold. This is a brave new world that threatens even super heroes. The old ways of respect for the basic nobility of America, the capitalistic free enterprise system, and the Judeo-Christian philosophy of personal responsibility are all under siege by stealth forces more powerful than a locomotive.

Religious Right’s Efforts to Influence Bush's Global AIDS Policy

Submitted by Anonymous on Friday, 7/7/2006 5:43 pm

The term “abstinence” has become a point of confusion—while educators in the U.S. incorporate an abstinence message, along with safer sex messages, into comprehensive sex[ ] education, many groups on the Right use the term to mean abstinence-only education, which excludes other messages they say would conflict with abstinence. And these abstinence-only programs often actively discourage other messages: Abstinence-only funding by the Bush administration has provided for teaching public-school students “that abortion can lead to sterility and suicide, that half the gay male teenagers in the United States have tested positive for the AIDS virus, and that touching a person's genitals ‘can result in pregnancy,’" according to a 2004 report by House Democrats. And an abstinence-only program in Louisiana told students that, “The condom's biggest flaw is that those using it to prevent the conception of another human being are offending God.”

Less visible is a similar effort by the Religious Right to change the way international aid is spent in preventing HIV/AIDS in Africa and elsewhere by emphasizing abstinence over condoms.

House Leaders Coordinate With Radical Right for Last-Minute "Values Agenda" Push

Submitted by Anonymous on Thursday, 7/6/2006 5:16 pm

Looking to maintain their majority, Republicans in the House of Representatives are pushing what they call the “American Values Agenda” – a series of bills, most of which will fail, aimed at energizing the right-wing base for the mid-term elections in November. The package consists of:

  • A bill to strip the courts of jurisdiction over hearing challenges to “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance;
  • A bill to deny court costs to successful litigants of church-state claims;
  • A constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage;
  • A bill requiring doctors performing an abortion to tell the woman that “she has the option of choosing anesthesia for the child, so that the unborn child's pain is less severe”;
  • A bill to ban human cloning and restrict stem-cell research;
  • One bill to weaken the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, and a second bill to prevent confiscation of guns during national emergencies;
  • A prohibition on Internet gambling;
  • Something called the “Freedom to Display the American Flag Act”;
  • And tax cuts.

According to CNN, “House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Missouri) told CNN's Deirdre Walsh that Republican leaders decided on the 10 legislative items after meeting with about two dozen outside groups in February as well as receiving input from the House GOP's ‘Values Action Team’ headed by Rep. Joe Pitts (R-Pennsylvania).” Right-wing stalwart Paul Weyrich – co-founder of the Heritage Foundation and founder of the Free Congress Foundation – described this “Values Summit” as effective coordination between the Right and Congress:

Earlier this year the GOP leadership began what it terms a “Values Summit.” I have been privileged to attend every one thus far. At a values summit each of us is given a few minutes to tell the leadership what we think is important. The leadership, tilted more toward the House of Representatives than the Senate, primarily listens. Questions are asked about timing. If, for example, an organization wants to do a huge grassroots mailing then it is very helpful for that group to know how much time it has to get the mail out the door.

The net result of our summit was announced by the House Leadership last week. Even House Majority Leader John A. Boehner (R-OH), never thought to be sympathetic to the religious right, pronounced himself absolutely in favor of what the leadership is calling “the American Values agenda”.

Already, the constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage failed by a large margin in the Senate, and the court-stripping bill on the Pledge did not make it out of a House committee with six more Republicans than Democrats. (Rep. Todd Akin (R-Kansas) told the audience at a “War on Christians and Values Voters” conference earlier this year that the Pledge bill is part of an effort to incrementally disable the ability of Americans to file suit in federal courts on a number of issues, culminating in a future bill to impeach judges for “making decisions not based on the U.S. Constitution.”)

But, as Weyrich acknowledges, many of these bills are bound to fail, but the idea is to make political ammunition. “Let’s get these Members on record. Let us see who supports a pro-family agenda and who does not.”

That Sounds Familiar

Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Wednesday, 6/28/2006 4:05 pm
The Associated Press reports
House Republicans intend to hold votes this summer and fall touching on abortion, guns, religion and other priority issues for social conservatives, part of an attempt to improve the party's prospects in the midterm election. … One would to strip the Supreme Court and other federal courts of jurisdiction over cases challenging the constitutionality of the Pledge of Allegiance. The legislation is a response to a 2002 Appeals Court ruling that held the pledge is unconstitutional because of the presence of the words "under God." A federal judge made a similar ruling last fall, citing the appeals court precedent. Another measure would block the payment of attorney fees in challenges to the display of the Ten Commandments in public areas and other, similar church-state lawsuits. An abortion-related proposal would require that some women seeking to end their pregnancies be informed the procedure "will cause the unborn child pain" and they have the option of receiving drugs to reduce or eliminate it. A separate measure would ban human cloning, a prohibition that cleared the House in the previous Congress.
It looks as if House Republicans have taken a page directly out of the Right’s “Values Voters’ Contract With Congress,” a document launched at Vision America’s “War on Christian and Values Voters Conference” and supported by right-wing stalwarts such as Phyllis Schlafly, Alan Keyes, Lou Sheldon, Janet Folger, Andrea Lafferty, and others. The Values Voter’s Contract seeks, among other things
1. TO AFFIRM the national relationship with God in our places of worship, schools, mottos, and public spaces, we call for the passage of – * The Pledge Protection Act to prohibit activist judges from taking "under God" out of the Pledge (H.R. 2389, S.1046); … *The Public Expression of Religion Act to prohibit activist judges from ordering taxpayers to pay lawyers who seek to erode our national relationship with God (H.R. 2679); and 4. TO SECURE our God-bestowed right to life, we call for the passage of – * The Human Cloning Protection Act to prohibit human cloning (S.658, H.R. 1357); … * The Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act to raise awareness of the pain experienced by children before birth (S.51, H.R. 356)
Notice any similarities?

Texas “Patriot Pastors

Submitted by Anonymous on Tuesday, 6/27/2006 2:40 pm

Rick Scarborough, an influential Religious Right advocate whose Vision America has been trying to organize “Patriot Pastors” in Texas to mobilize their congregations at the ballot box, is now setting his sights on Missouri. In an e-mail to supporters, Scarborough writes that “God has chosen to bless and anoint our efforts” to build up “Patriot Pastors” – who were critical in the passage of an anti-gay marriage amendment last year and are poised to play a similar role in Gov. Rick Perry’s re-election campaign.

Much of what we have been able to do so quickly can be attributed to a small number of large donors who have been gracious to assist our efforts.  But what Vision America needs now more than ever, are hundreds of small, but faithful Patriot Partners, who will invest a minimum of $1 a day, to help solidify our base operations so we can function without facing the ups and downs of one time large gifts.

“During the next five months we will be focusing most of our efforts on the state of Missouri,” he writes, “where the next major battle for the soul of America is being waged” in the form of a referendum on stem-cell research, which Scarborough describes as “allowing human cloning for the first time in American history,” a characterization disputed by supporters of the bill. Writes Scarborough:

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