SCOTUS

Bryan Fischer has not been reluctant to voice his hatred of  the Supreme Court's ruling upholding the constitutionality of health care reform, calling it "legal garbage" and total gibberish that signals the end of America.

On Friday's radio program, Fischer continued the assault, declaring that the decision written by Chief Justice John Roberts was so fundamentally illogical and irrational that there must be something was wrong with his brain, perhaps rooted in the fact that Roberts takes medication for epilepsy:

Fischer has spent three days absolutely tearing apart this ruling and blasting it as utterly incoherent and unconstitutional, and then began attacking Chief Justice Roberts for supposedly changing sides at the last minute ... just like Justice Anthony Kennedy did during Roe v Wade:

[Roberts] ruling was absolutely irrational, it's absolutely illogical, it is absolutely unconstitutional, and it is so bad it will make your eyes water trying to make sense of it. And it's my position that ruling doesn't even make sense; you couldn't even imagine a world, you couldn't even create a parallel universe in which this ruling could make any kind of sense.

Now Roberts apparently switched his vote very late in the game. This happened on Roe v Wade, by the way - Anthony Kennedy originally was going to be against Roe v Wade [but] somebody got to him. So the first vote on Roe v Wade was to uphold the pro-life position, sanctity of life was going to be protected by the Court. But over the course of the month between when the first vote was taken and when the opinions were written, Anthony Kennedy switched teams, he went over to the dark side of the force. So they had to change and so the majority opinion became the one that struck down Roe v Wade and made abortion legal in all nine months of pregnancy.

Hmmm, apparently Fischer is such a scholar that he knows that Roberts' opinion is incoherent nonsense and totally unconstitutional .... but doesn't realize that Roe v Wade was decided in 1973 on a vote of 7-2 and that Kennedy didn't join the Court until 1988 or that there as never been a "majority opinion ... that struck down Roe v Wade."

The Florida Baptist Witness reports that Richard Land spoke at the Jacksonville Baptist Association’s Leadership Institute last week and said that America was on the verge of revival that would reverse all of the horrors that President Obama has inflicted upon this nation ... provided that none of the conservatives on the Supreme Court die before Obama can be voted out of office. 

Oh yeah, and Americans will also come to realize just how good they had it under George W. Bush:

Addressing abortion, Land said the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision, which effectively legalized abortion on demand, likely will be overturned during his lifetime. One pro-choice justice being replaced by a pro-life justice would result in a majority willing to overturn Roe, he said.

“We just need one more vote,” Land said, “which means that we need to pray that none of the justices that are conservatives die until after we get a conservative president. And then one of the liberals has to change.”

Since abortion was legalized in 1973, more Americans have been aborted each year than have died cumulatively in all the wars the nation has fought, according to Land. Yet abortion is not merely a moral issue, but also an economic one, he said.

“How many people that are not working would be working if we hadn’t killed those babies?” he asked. Unemployed Americans could be “making goods and services for those people, building homes for those people, building schools for those people, teaching in the schools for those people.”

Recent healthcare legislation also threatens the sanctity of human life, Land said. If so- called “Obamacare” is not repealed, elderly Americans will be denied life-saving medical procedures because of the cost involved, he said.

“I personally think that the greatest threat to the sanctity of human life right now is Obamacare,” he said, adding, “I have no compunction about telling you that everybody in this room will live a shorter life, and it will be more filled with pain and suffering—if Obamacare is not rescinded—than you would otherwise. They are going to ration care.”

...

Land predicted that President George W. Bush will experience a similar fate as Harry Truman, who left office with a low approval rating but was appreciated decades later as one of the greatest presidents in American history.

Evangelicals likely will not see a president in the near future who identifies with them as much as Bush, he said, calling Bush’s two inaugural addresses “extraordinary” and “insightful.”

“I suspect too many Americans didn’t realize what they had when they had George W. Bush,” Land said.

In day two of James Dobson's discussion with Richard Land on the state of America today that I mentioned earlier, Land let loose on the dangers of health care reform, guaranteeing that it'll fill the lives of everyone with pain and misery:

Land: I'm absolutely confident in saying this: ninety-nine percent of the people who are hearing me right now over the radio, if Obamacare is not rescinded, you will live a shorter life and it'll be more filled with pain and suffering before you die because they're not going to give you hip transplants, they're not going to give you knee transplants, and they're not going to give you other treatments as you go into old age.

Eventually, the topic turned to the vote in Iowa which removed three state Supreme Court justices, prompting Land to announce his desire to see constitutional amendment passed that would institute this process nationwide:

Land: In Iowa they have what seems to me to be a very sensible law and I'm ready to start a discussion that we ought to have it at the federal level.

I'm ready to put an amendment to the Constitution that says that every six years, on a rotating basis, we'll have three Supreme Court justices and they will be on the ballot nationwide, and you get to vote - I want to keep Justice Scalia or I don't want to keep Justice Scalia.

And the same thing with federal district court judges - in the district where they serve, you get to vote whether you're going to keep them or not.

Dobson: Well, to do that you'd have to have a constitutional amendment ...

Land: Yes sir , I'm ready to start ...

Dobson: I'll go with you ...

Land: Judges aren't all that popular. 

• George Zornick @ Think Progress: Oklahoma Voters May Have Accidentally Voted Against Ten Commandments, Too.
• Greg Sargent: Michele Bachmann and "real" conservatism.
• Joe.My.God: SCOTUS Rejects Lisa Miller Case.
• Andy Birkey @ Minnesota Independent: Pawlenty says his presidential aspirations include health care repeal.
• Alan Colmes: Judge Blocks Oklahoma’s Ban On Sharia Law.
• Towleroad: Michigan Asst AG Andrew Shirvell Fired for Anti-Gay Cyber-bullying of Chris Armstrong.

Following in the wake of Judge Vaughan Walker's ruling in the Prop 8 case, Chuck Colson declared that the Religious Right must prevent the Supreme Court from ever ruling in favor of gay marriage by building a groundswell of opposition in order to convince the Court that any ruling recognizing the right to marriage equality will not be accepted by the people.

Today, the National Organization for Marriage's Brian Brown was on "Wallbuilders Live" with David Barton and Rick Green and explained that the effort to unseat three judges in Iowa was part of an effort to send just that sort of signal to the Supreme Court:

Barton: I guarantee you, if these judges can be thrown off in Iowa, you watch as state after state after state as people start going and saying "time for accountability, time to get our government back." I'm loving it, it's going to be fun.

Green: It's great, this is really opening the flood gate in a very positive way.

Brown: Many people that have commented on what we're going through right now, especially with the Proposition 8 case in California, are looking at the Iowa judicial retention election - and even though there are many important elections about the country - they're actually saying this is the most important election because it will send a clear signal to the Supreme Court and other judges that they don't have the right to make up the law out of thin air. Their job is to interpret the law, it is not to be out robed masters and judicial activists imposing their will on the rest of us.

And so if the people of Iowa do what I think they'll do and stand up and remove these judges, there will be reverberations throughout the country all the way to the United States Supreme Court.

And just in case you were operating under the delusion that the Religious Right would actually accept any Supreme Court in favor of marriage equality, rest assured that they most certainly will not:

Brown: Ultimately if this Perry vs Schwarzenegger case out of California goes to the Supreme Court - and I'm confident that we will win at the Supreme Court - but if we were to lose and if the Supreme Court was to force same-sex marriage on, for example, Texas or Alabama or states that have voted by something like seventy-five percent to support marriage as a union of a man and woman and you have the US Supreme Court throwing out the vote of these states, I think you're going to have a strong movement for a federal marriage amendment. And that would also be a very clear sign to the courts that they are bound by the law and they don't have the right to simply put into law their own personal preferences.

You also have under Article III in the Constitution the idea that Congress could limit the appellate jurisdiction of some of these federal courts, so that's another way in which, that's already in our law, that Congress could limit the ability of the federal courts to force same-sex marriage on the rest of the country, or any other issue on which the court's overstepping its bounds.

Yesterday, Kyle pointed out Bryan Fischer’s appearance on Morning Edition, where he was billed simply as a representative of the American Family Association. If a respected media outlet like NPR is going to give a platform to someone like Fischer, it needs to make clear the long record of hate speech he brings with him. PFAW President Michael B. Keegan reached out to Alicia Shepard, the NPR Ombudsman with this note:

Dear Ms. Shepard:

I was surprised yesterday to hear the voice of Bryan Fischer, Director of Issue Analysis at the American Family Association, on Morning Edition. I wonder if the show's producers knew of Mr. Fischer's record of extremism and hate speech against Muslim Americans and gays and lesbians.

People For the American Way's RightWingWatch.org blog tracks Fischer in his roll as a blogger and radio host for the AFA, where he makes no attempt to disguise his extremism. Just in the past year, Fischer has:

• Demanded that no new mosques be built anywhere in America. (8/10/2010)
• Argued that inbreeding has caused Muslims to be stupid and violent. (9/10/2010)
• Says that Muslims should be banned from serving in the U.S. military. (11/9/2009)
• Insisted that all Muslims are traitors, called for the deportation of all Muslims from the U.S. (4/10/2010)
• Claimed that U.S. service members died in vain because the U.S. failed to make Iraq a Christian nation. (8/19/2010)
• Said that "homosexuals should be disqualified from public office." (8/5/2010)
• Insisted that gays are biased, sexually deviant felons, not to mention pedophiles, and should never serve on the Supreme Court. (4/15/2010, 4/16/2010)
• Called gay adoption "a terrible, terrible, inexcusable, inhumane thing to do to children." (8/10/2010)
• Argued that we should "impose the same sanctions on those who engage in homosexual behavior as we do on those who engage in intravenous drug abuse." (2/3/2010)
• Wrote: "The inescapable conclusion is that gay sex is a form of domestic terrorism." (6/10/2010)
• Said: "Hitler discovered that he could not get straight soldiers to be savage and brutal and vicious enough to carry out his orders, but that homosexual solders basically had no limits and the savagery and brutality they were willing to inflict on whomever Hitler sent them after. So he surrounded himself, virtually all of the Stormtroopers, the Brownshirts, were male homosexuals." (5/25/2010)
• Disparaged family values in the Hispanic community: "Also, the illegitimacy rate among Hispanic women is over 50%. I'm not sure pro-family values are as strong in the Hispanic community as Dr. Land wants to believe." (7/23/2010)

Yesterday, in response to People For's call that GOP leaders distance themselves from Mr. Fischer, he repeated his comparison of gay men to domestic terrorists. On Tuesday, Mr. Fischer defended his call for deporting Muslim Americans, saying "we are doing them a favor by repatriating them to their homeland where an entire nation shares their values."

Of course, Mr. Fischer has the right to air his opinions, no matter how hurtful. However, he should not be given air time by a nonpartisan news organization without some disclosure of his record of hate speech.

I also hope that Mr. Fischer is not, as Morning Edition implied, representative of the Tea Party movement as a whole.

This weekend, he will be appearing this weekend alongside leaders of the Republican Party, including Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint, and 2012 presidential hopefuls Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, Newt Gingrich, and Mike Pence. We have alerted these public figures to Mr. Fischer's record and urged them to denounce Fischer's remarks lest they lend credibility to his extremism.

Similarly, I urge NPR to resist lending credibility to an extremist like Fischer by providing him with a national platform without alerting audiences to his record of vocal bigotry.

Thank you for your time,

Michael B. Keegan

President, People For the American Way

 We’ll keep you posted on the response.

Today, NPR ran a story on the tension between Tea Party activists who want to focus on economic and spending issues, and social conservatives who want the movement to take a stand on things like abortion and gay marriage. 

And, for some reason, NPR thought that a anti-gay, anti-Muslim bigot like the American Family Association's Bryan Fischer was the best person to make the case for the social conservatives:

Morning Edition is taking a closer look at the groups that make up the Tea Party. Steve Inskeep talks to Toby Marie Walker, lead facilitator for the Waco Tea Party, and Bryan Fischer, of the American Family Association. Walker says the Tea Party's issues need to remain strictly fiscal. Fischer says that if the Tea Party doesn't incorporate social issues into its agenda, it runs the risk of dividing the conservative movement.

Fischer said that he didn't expect the Tea Party to make social issues "front and center," but warned that if it "ever sends a signal that the gay agenda is okay with them, that same-sex marriage is okay with them, that abortion is okay with them, the energy is going to bleed out of the movement." 

Of course, if Fischer had his way, the Tea Party movement would be calling gays sexually deviant pedophiles who ought to be banned from serving in public office because they are savage and brutal terrorists.

So maybe the Tea Party movement shouldn't necessarily be listening to Fischer ... and maybe NPR ought to do a little background research on the people to whom it is giving airtime.

For the last few weeks, we've been chronicling Chuck Colson's plan to raise up a nationwide opposition to gay marriage in an attempt to sway the Supreme Court by demonstrating that Americans will not tolerate any decision that recognizes marriage equality.

And he is still at it, again making it the focus of his newest "Two Minute Warning" video. In this one, Colson says that Republicans have taken social conservatives for granted for too long and this year are trying to downplay social issues in order to focus on economic issues as a winning election strategy.  That is obviously unacceptable, so it is up to Christians to tell them "they are full of prunes, our consciences cannot sit on the back burner" (skip ahead to the 2:40 mark):

Colson also apparently intends to use the Dominionist/7 Mountains-themed Pray and ACT organization founded by Jim Garlow and intimately tied to Lou Engle and The Call as a means of mobilizing activists for his crusade, as his likeness is now featured all over the Pray and ACT website and he's even recorded a video touting its importance:

For all the flag-waving Tea Party placards accusing the Obama administration of unconstitutional acts and treason, it seems that threats of revolution against the constitutional republic of the United States are coming mostly from the right wing – and not just from fringe militia groups.

We recently noted that Religious Right activist Chuck Colson has launched an effort to bully the Supreme Court into opposing marriage equality by threatening that a pro-equality ruling would result in “cultural Armageddon.” And we have noted the American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer’s repeated warnings that the federal government’s “tyranny” will lead to “civil unrest.” Speakers at last year’s How To Take Back America conference suggested “Second Amendment” responses to health care reform and urged participants to buy more guns and ammunition. 

Now we see that the National Organization for Marriage, whose director Brian Brown has been claiming on his anti-equality road trip that it is an organization grounded in love, is picking up on the theme as NOM’s Maggie Gallagher writes in an op ed that "American politics are in a quasi-revolutionary phase": 

The people, symbolized first in the eruptions of Tea Parties, are rebelling against elites who believe they can ignore our voices and our values….

Rush Limbaugh had his finger on the truth. In the nearly half-hour speech he gave after the Proposition 8 ruling ("the American people are boiling over!"), Rush said that Walker "did not just slap down the will of 7 million voters. Those 7 million voters were put on trial -- a kangaroo court where everything was stacked against them. ... Those of you who voted for Prop 8 in California are guilty of hate crimes. You were thinking discrimination. That's what this judge has said! Truly unprecedented."

Yes, it is. We are entering into a new phase in the battle not only for marriage, but for self-government, for the legitimacy of the views and values of the Ameircan people.

This is a fight we cannot dodge, and must and will win.

Buckle down, it's going to be a ride!

Of course, this isn’t the first time a NOM leader has suggested possibly deploying a revolutionary response to judicial rulings recognizing marriage equality. When Mormon author Orson Scott Card joined NOM’s board last year, we and others drew attention to his own threats, which he made in writing in a Mormon newspaper:

How long before married people answer the dictators thus: Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down, so it can be replaced with a government that will respect and support marriage, and help me raise my children in a society where they will expect to marry in their turn….

American government cannot fight against marriage and hope to endure. If the Constitution is defined in such a way as to destroy the privileged position of marriage, it is that insane Constitution, not marriage, that will die.

We have our own question: why is it that the standard right-wing response to votes in Congress or court decisions that they don't like is to threaten revolution against the U.S.?