Supreme Court

• The Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that Fred Phelps and his band of anti-gay bigots have the right to protest military funerals.
• Apparently Newt Gingrich won't be announcing the formation of a presidential exploratory committee.
• On a related note, Bryan Fischer says he won't be supporting Gingrich if he does run because "it is imperative that the next standard bearer of the conservative movement be a man who has demonstrated a lifelong commitment to family values in deed as well as in words, a man who does not just talk the talk but has walked the walk."
• Ken Hutcherson says President Obama's DOMA decision is "delusional."
• Finally, Pat Robertson tells Newsmax that God is not going to "turn this world lose to the crazies" but He may destroy it with a meteor.  So that is reassuring.

Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-NC) today sat down with Kaiser Health News to discuss her proposal to repeal and replace the health care reform law. However, Ellmers was unable to name a single policy alternative to the reform law.

The Tea Party-favorite recently defended her decision to take a taxpayer-subsidized health care plan because she said that her $174,000 annual salary is too little to live on in Washington DC, and also opposes mandatory coverage for maternity care and pre-existing conditions.

Ellmers, who chairs the House Subcommittee on Health and Technology, was unable to muster a single specific policy proposal when asked, even though she insists that Republicans have “plenty of solutions.” She also told Kaiser that she wants to reconsider the reform law’s change to allow young dependents to stay on their parent’s plan until they are 26 years old, and also falsely claims that the reform law represents a “government takeover of health care,” as the plan actually preserves the private health care insurance system:

Q. You voted to repeal the health care law in the House, but that effort has stalled in the Senate. Do you think the American people are going to get tired of continuing to debate health care, especially if they want to see more movement on jobs and the economy?

A. I am sure it will be going to the Supreme Court and will be shot down as unconstitutional. I don't think the American people are going to get tired of it because they see that this is a massive takeover of government in health care and every other aspect of their lives.

Q. If the health care law is repealed, do you think that people might get frustrated with not having some of the consumer protections such as children covered up until the age of 26 or help for seniors in the doughnut hole?

A. There again, we need to put in place patient-centered reforms. I don't know that children need to be covered all the way up until age 26. But it has to be in the free market. The problem is we are losing the ability to make choices. That is your choice and this is the problem. We are losing the ability to make choices.

Q. There has been some criticism that Republicans don't have a unified alternative. What is your strategy moving forward?

A. No. See, that is completely untrue. That is the rhetoric. We have plenty of solutions.

Q. Like what, specifically?

A. We have got to get the Obama plan out of the way. Again, we have already voted to repeal. We are working on the provision to get rid of the 1099 (reporting requirement for business purchases). There are plenty of other aspects of the health care bill that fall apart when one piece of the puzzle is taken out, so this is what we are doing. We are moving forward on this whether or not the Democrats and the Senate or the president are coming along.

I think we have made our message very clear. I think the American people hear that message. Overwhelmingly, the American people want this health care situation addressed. They want it addressed in the free market. The want it addressed where they can make their decisions for their own families and not have the president and the government make it for them.

Conservative activist Alan Caruba usually works as a shill for corporations and is the former communications director of the American Policy Committee, which staunchly opposes environmental protections and the United Nations. Instead of criticizing regulations on businesses, Caruba yesterday launched a tirade against the Obama administration’s decision to stop defending the unconstitutional Defense of Marriage Act, calling marriage equality “an act of societal suicide” and the administration’s decision “a stealth attack on the nation.” He also derided the Obama administration for bringing the “homosexual agenda” in schools, appointing Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court, and repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell:

I have always thought that "gay" was an odd choice of words to describe homosexuals because those whom I have known rarely evinced much happiness about being regarded by the rest of society as aberrations. They may have made their personal peace with it, but the notion that a society based on heterosexuality should regard them as "normal" defies logic.

Granting homosexuals the right to marry is an act of societal suicide. I will cite some examples below.

In late February, the White House and its Department of Justice announced that it would no longer defend the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) which defines marriage as the union of a man and a woman. It is a warning of moral decay that America has reached a point where it requires a law to assert this definition, recognized from the dawn of civilization, of mankind itself.

…

This is giving parents fits, but it was President Obama who installed Kevin Jennings as the White House "safe schools" czar in the Department of Education even though Jennings is a major homosexual activist who has pushed the homosexual agenda in the nation's schools. Jennings, prior to his appointment, was the founder and executive director of the nationwide Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network.

President Obama nominated Elena Kagan to a lifetime position as an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court despite her activism as Dean of the Harvard Law School during which she expelled military recruiters over the Armed Forces' ban on homosexuals. She called it a "moral injustice of the first order." She was known for recruiting homosexual activists to the school's faculty such as the former ACLU lawyer, William Rubenstein, to teach "queer" legal theory and elevated an outspoken lesbian professor, Janet Halley. She encouraged Harvard students to get involved in homosexual activist legal work.

These White House appointments are just one part of what millions of Americans have come to realize as measures taken to undermine the nation's moral authority, its legal system, its economy, its military strength and defense, and its energy security.

In 2012 Americans will clean house in the White House and the Congress, electing men and women who understand that homosexuality is an unfit condition for marriage, for service in the military, and that its justification in the states and the courts is a stealth attack on the nation.

It looks like Arizona’s draconian racial profiling law was only the beginning. Republicans in the State Senate Appropriations Committee just approved a flagrantly unconstitutional bill that would eliminate citizenship by birthright, a right protected by the Constitution’s 14th Amendment.

As recently as 1982 in Plyler v. Doe, the Supreme Court ruled that undocumented immigrants are protected by the 14th Amendment, which guarantees birthright citizenship. The debate over the citizenship bill may even show signs of splintering inside the Republican Party, with one leading anti-immigrant State Senator accusing the state’s Chamber of Commerce of supporting “‘open borders’ because you like cheap labor.”

In addition to the legislation that would directly challenge the 14th Amendment, the committee also passed a bill that would force public schools to report to law enforcement officials on children’s parents if they’re undocumented, make it a crime for undocumented immigrants to drive in the state, and ban undocumented immigrants from attending state colleges and universities.

“If we’re going to stop this invasion - and it is an invasion – you’re going to have to stop rewarding people for breaking those laws,” said State Senate President Russell Pearce, a champion of the two bills and the architect of SB 1070.

Now, the bills move to the full State Senate.

If there is one message to take away from CPAC’s panel on immigration, it’s that White America is in serious jeopardy and may soon succumb to immigration, multiculturalism, and socialism. The panel “Will Immigration Kill the GOP?” featured former congressmen Tom Tancredo (R-CO) and Virgil Goode (R-VA), Bay Buchanan of Team America PAC, and special guest Rep. Lou Barletta (R-PA). The group Youth for Western Civilization sponsored the panel, and its head Kevin DeAnna was also a panelist. Youth for Western Civilization is a far-right group that regularly criticizes affinity groups on college campuses, especially those that represent black, Hispanic, LGBT, Native American, and Muslim students.

Tancredo, a star among anti-immigrant activists, started the event by claiming that he wasn’t bigoted against Latinos and that the majority of Hispanic Americans support him and favor Arizona’s draconian SB-1070 law. “I have a lot of people who have Hispanic last names who support me,” Tancredo told the jam-packed room, “I speak for most Americans.” The former congressman, who in 2010 received just 37% of the vote in his bid for governor of Colorado, claimed that the GOP should embrace his nativist politics because immigration is the “ultimate economic issue,” and even claimed that Hispanics supported him over his Democratic opponent, Governor John Hickenlooper.

Responding to a questioner who believed that Democrats would drop their support of immigration reform if immigrants were stripped of their right to vote, Tancredo said that even immigrants without voting rights still pose a grave danger to the country.

“No more of this multiculturalism garbage,” Tancredo said, adding that “the cult of multiculturalism has captured the world” and is “the dagger in the heart” of civilization.

Not to be out done, Goode maintained that immigration in general “will not only kill the GOP but will kill the United States of America.” He went on to say that Democratic politicians support undocumented immigration only in order to introduce “socialized medicine” and gain future voters. The Virginia firebrand maintained that the majority of Americans favor his fervently anti-immigrant views, and wanted every state to emulate Arizona’s SB-1070. He asked, “Who could really be against doing away with birthright citizenship?”

Both Tancredo and Goode agreed that U.S. citizens are now being treated unfairly as undocumented immigrants reap all the benefits of American society.

Tancredo claimed that undocumented immigrants “get better health care in detention centers than some of my constituents,” and Goode argued that “today, being a citizen means you’re second class.”

Later, Bay Buchanan said that Tancredo and his dogmatic Nativism represent a model increasingly followed by Republican politicians, including Sen. John McCain, once an advocate of reform, who she said became a “Tancredo disciple when he ran for reelection.” Buchanan also pointed to Arizona Governor Jan Brewer’s reelection to demonstrate that anti-immigrant politics can lead to Republican success at the polls, and said that every state should have a governor like Brewer.

DeAnna of Youth for Western Civilization gave a much darker outlook on the success of the Republican Party, and the country as a whole. He said that the “system is stacked against” the anti-immigrant movement, maintaining that an alliance of corporate and Republican elites is preventing the party from moving farther to the right on the issue of immigration. He warned of the rising tide of multiculturalism, especially among young people. “The Left gets power from multiculturalism,” DeAnna said, and “when you lose the culture you lose the policy too.”

He also argued that the GOP is “dead” in California because of the rising population of Latinos, and said that the Democratic Party and their allies in organized labor want further immigration to strengthen their electoral clout.

Rep. Lou Barletta was the final speaker before questions, and he discussed how he saved the city of Hazleton as mayor by cracking down on employers and landlords who do business with undocumented immigrants. “I stood up for the rule of law,” Barletta said, even though his anti-immigrant ordinance was declared unconstitutional. The congressman has a long history of partnering with Nativist groups, and he asked the audience to support him as he pledged to take his case to the Supreme Court.

But while many panelists like Tancredo and Buchanan began their speeches by saying that they were absolutely not bigoted or racist in any way, participants at the event asked many racially-tinged questions.

A questioner asked Goode how to “control immigration from the Islamic and Arab world,” and said that unless that happens there could be “more Keith Ellisons.” Ellison is a Democratic congressman from Minnesota who converted to Islam as an adult, and is not an immigrant, but Goode did write a letter to his constituents saying, “The Muslim Representative from Minnesota was elected by the voters of that district and if American citizens don't wake up and adopt the Virgil Goode position on immigration, there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Koran.”

Another questioner discussed how astounded he was that “in the northeast, majority-Caucasian communities” tend to back “support ‘amnesty,’” or at least pro-reform politicians. He asked the panelists how he could turn more “Caucasian communities” against amnesty, and Buchanan assured him that even voters in Massachusetts oppose reform efforts like the DREAM Act.

One member of the audience wondered if Congress could “defund the National Council of La Raza,” a Latino civil rights group, which he said was “just like the Ku Klux Klan.” Goode appeared to agree, and demanded that Congress end the organization’s funding. Asking if “it’s possible that [American] society devolves into South Africa,” one questioner discussed the declining population rate of “European Americans” and floated the idea of ethnic groups living separately. While he directed the question towards Barletta, the congressman ignored the question.

Evidently, while the panel’s speakers see unrepentant Nativism and immigrant-bashing as the way for the GOP’s electoral success, it mainly appealed to the CPAC attendees who feared the demise of White America and the emergence of a more diverse population. All four panelists agreed that unless the Republican Party embraces their hard line anti-immigrant stance, the GOP will become inextricably weakened and the country will dissolve into multicultural dystopia.

Although the panelists all said that it wasn’t about race, it’s easy to see why many audience members thought it was.

A group of right-wing legal advocates warned CPAC participants – or more accurately, a tiny subset of CPAC participants – about “The Left’s Campaign to Reshape the Judiciary.”

Thomas Monaghan, the billionaire behind Dominos Pizza and a prolific donor to Religious Right and Republican causes, founded Ave Maria University of Florida to be one of the most conservative Catholic institutions in the country. Not only did Monaghan seek to establish a new Catholic university, but also wanted to build an entire city based around his ultraconservative ideology. Rick Santorum lauded Ave Maria’s students as God’s soldiers training for a spiritual war, and Justice Antonin Scalia even assisted the founding of the Ave Maria School of Law.

Now, another conservative Supreme Court Justice is aiding Ave Maria’s efforts. While speaking to students of Ave Maria University and Ave Maria School of Law, Thomas told students not to shy away from using their religious views in public life, defended “constitutional originalism,” and touted the stability of his marriage (which must be a very sore subject for Thomas). The Ave Herald reports:

"I was minding my own business and President Bush appointed me," he said. Now, 20 years later, he said he was surprised to look around the justices' conference table recently and realize that he was the third most senior jurist on the Supreme Court. His time on the court has given him much greater perspective, he said.

"You get more of a panoramic view."

Nonetheless, he said, "I get called an activist because I believe we should follow the constitution, not the stuff we made up about it."

He urged the students to respect the courts, even if they disagree with their decisions.

"You want to be constructive," he said. "You can feel strongly without acting emotionally and being bitter and angry."

Common themes in both appearances were the importance of faith and being guided by wanting to "just do the right thing."

"I tell my law clerks every year," Justice Thomas said, "that pragmatism is not a principle. It's giving yourself the excuse to go along to get along."

In the end, he said, people need to be able answer the question asked at the end of the movie Saving Private Ryan: Have I been a good man? Have I led a good life?

Catholics, he said, should not be afraid to live their faith openly.

"Many people choose to hide their lights under a bushel basket," he said in reference to a Gospel passage.

"Our deeds are our most effective homilies, our most effective speeches."

He advised students to seek a balance between their careers and family life, saying that his own marriage of 24 years to his wife, Virginia, who was with him at both appearances, "has been a hoot."

Keep sight of what is important, he told the students at AMU.

"Don't lose your faith, don't lose your family, don't lose your friends. Have the confidence that with God and your faith anything is possible."

In states like Wyoming and South Carolina, numerous state legislators are proposing measures to limit the application of “international” or “religious” laws in the court. An amendment that “forbids courts from considering or using international law” and “Sharia Law” passed easily in 2010, only to be blocked by a federal judge.

Now, it appears South Dakota is jumping on the bandwagon. The Republican-dominated State Legislature is considering House Joint Resolution 1004, which similar to the South Carolina resolution, uses broad language and does not explicitly mention Sharia law:

The judicial power of the state is vested in a unified judicial system consisting of a Supreme Court, circuit courts of general jurisdiction and courts of limited original jurisdiction as established by the Legislature. No such court may apply international law, the law of any foreign nation, or any foreign religious or moral code with the force of law in the adjudication of any case under its jurisdiction.

Twenty-eight members of the State House already signed on as cosponsors, along with five members of the State Senate.

In the early 1990s, Rob Schenck was a radical anti-abortion activist who worked alongside his twin brother Paul carrying out protests against Dr. Barnett Slepian in upstate New York ... until Slepian was murdered by another anti-abortion activist.

Instrumental in the founding of Operation Rescue with Randall Terry, Schenck was arrested in 1992 for thrusting a container containing a fetus at then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton and stopped by the Secret Service a few years later after aggressively confronting President Clinton as he headed to church.

Since then, Schenck has toned down his radical anti-choice activities and become an influential minister to members of Congress and created a network of overlapping right-wing organizations through which he carries out his work, 

In recent years, he has become best known for regularly annointing doorways and hearing rooms with oil before big events like Supreme Court hearings and presidential inaugurations and questioning the Christian faith of President Obama ... and, I guess, meeting with Tim Pawlenty:

I had the privilege of spending an evening with Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty during one of his visits to Washington. I found him genuine, a mature Christian and a very pleasant personality.