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March 24, 2008
For Anti-Immigrant Activists, Subtlety Not Strong Point
While the debate over federal immigration reform has been on hold, anti-immigrant activists continue to push for legislation on the state and local levels. At a recent hearing of the Maryland state House Judiciary Committee regarding several bills seeking to crack down on undocumented immigrants, one activist found her testimony that day cut short after she tried to distribute fliers to the committee depicting the chairman in a gaudy sombrero under the phrase “Wanted for Aiding & Abetting.”
The activist, Susan Payne, announced herself as the executive director of the new Maryland Coalition for Immigration Reform, but we remember her as the co-founder of Citizens Above Party, which had at least one other member. Last year, Payne was testifying to the state legislature over REAL ID, warning that her hometown of Gaithersburg—a wealthy suburb of D.C. best known for its New Urbanist planned villages—was “becoming the first authentic barrio in the county.” Payne is one of a few anti-immigrant activists in the state who seem to be quoted in the media again and again.
But Payne doesn’t seem to have trouble finding allies among legislators: Del. Warren Miller is calling on his colleague Joe Vallario, the committee chairman depicted in the sombrero, to resign for interrupting Payne. “I would suggest he move to another country and run for office there,” said Miller.
(Susan Payne with flier. Photo from Maryland Thursday Meeting.)
Posted by Ezra at 5:04 PM | Permalink
February 15, 2008
Economic and Religious Right Team up Against GOP Moderate
This week, the Club for Growth declared victory as incumbent Rep. Wayne Gilchrest lost the Republican primary to the Club’s handpicked candidate. The Club’s PAC, which has carved out a niche for itself with right-wing primary challenges, spent more than $600,000 on the race, mostly with TV ads calling Gilchrest a “liberal.”
But the Club for Growth, known for its hard-line supply-side economics, wasn’t the only outside group giving a boost to challenger Andy Harris. “It is imperative that Dr. Harris win this contest!” declared Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, who trumpeted right-wing complaints about Gilchrist.
“He voted against the constitutional amendment (on) marriage; he voted to allow homosexuals to adopt children; he had been pro-abortion," Maryland state Sen. Alex Mooney told Family News in Focus.
This isn’t the first time the Club for Growth and Dobson have joined forces: the duo also backed a right-wing primary challenge in 2006 that ousted incumbent Rep. Joe Schwarz—who, like Gilchrest, had the backing of President Bush. Dobson crowed that the upset would “send a mighty signal that the days of anti-family, liberal Republicans are finally over.” Former Sen. Lincoln Chafee, another Club for Growth target, accused the economic group of having a hidden social agenda in its choice of candidates and targets.
If so, it would only mirror the Religious Right, whose definition of “values voter” expands as needed to fit the GOP’s platform. In a recent appearance on MSNBC together, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins and Club for Growth President Pat Toomey were in full agreement on the importance of the “three-legged stool.” “For [the] Republican Party to win they must have a conservative candidate who brings together the conservative coalition: fiscal conservatives, defense conservatives, and social conservatives,” said Perkins.
Indeed, while Dobson recently endorsed Mike Huckabee—the Club for Growth’s enemy number one—Perkins has maintained his ambivalence, always making note of the stool.
Posted by Ezra at 5:47 PM | Permalink
September 14, 2007
GOP Candidates Ignoring Minorities
So says Tavis Smiley because John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney have declined to participate in the debate he is moderating: "No one should be elected president of this country in 2008 if they think that along the way they can ignore people of color. If you want to be president of all America, you need to speak to all Americans."
Posted by Kyle at 2:50 PM | Permalink
June 4, 2007
First Amendment Protection Only For Those Who Believe
After a lengthy legal battle, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last year that the Montgomery County (MD) Public Schools’ “policy for distributing fliers by community groups [via a "backpack mail" program] is unconstitutional because it gives school officials unlimited power to approve or reject materials.”
The ruling stemmed from a lawsuit filed by Child Evangelism Fellowship of Maryland, with the backing of the Alliance Defense Fund and the Christian Legal Society, after its request to distribute fliers regarding its Good News Club - which is designed to “evangelize boys and girls with the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and establish (disciple) them in the Word of God and in a local church for Christian living” – was rejected.
The Circuit Court sided with Child Evangelism Fellowship, ruling [PDF] that the school district’s policy granted it “unbridled discretion to deny access to the oft-used forum — for any reason at all, including antipathy to a particular viewpoint — [and] does not ensure the requisite viewpoint neutrality.”
Around the same time, the Liberty Counsel, which is directly tied to the late Jerry Falwell and his Liberty University, sent a letter to Albemarle County School Board in Virginia, warning it that its refusal to distribute fliers about a church-sponsored vacation bible school via its own "backpack mail" program was unconstitutional.
The school district quickly changed its policy and the Liberty Counsel’s Mat Staver was quite pleased:
"We're pleased the school changed its policy so quickly and correctly," says Mat Staver, Liberty Counsel founder and chairman. "The law is clear-- when schools allow the distribution of secular material, they must accommodate religious material."
Staver refers to a recent 4th Circuit Court of Appeals decision upholding a Good News Club's right to distribute fliers in Montgomery County schools in Maryland.
…
"They're not required to accept everything," he says, citing exemptions for libelous, obscene or pornographic material. Nor does he object if Muslim or Jewish groups want to distribute information about their events in schools. "The First Amendment is not just for the Liberty Counsel," he says. "You can't just pick and choose."
But one year later, it seems as if some on the Right are not so happy about Albemarle’s new policy now that students are bringing home fliers for a summer camp for atheists and freethinkers.
As Vision America’s Rick Scarborough fumes:
Teachers in the Albemarle, Virginia School District are rebelling at being required to distribute flyers for an atheist summer camp. According to the left, while the First Amendment forbids an "establishment of religion," an establishment of disbelief is apparently quite acceptable.
The flyers advertise Camp Quest, billed as "the first residential summer camp in the history of the United States for the children of atheists, freethinkers, humanists, 'brights,' or whatever other terms might be applied to those who hold to a naturalistic, not a supernatural, lifestance."
…
[I]t’s outrageous to force teachers to distribute these flyers
Who thinks Scarborough would have responded similarly to a non-Christian teacher who resisted sending home flyers proselytizing for an evangelical Christian group?
For its part, the school board claims that it is required to distribute the fliers because of the 4th Circuit’s ruling regarding the Good News Club in Maryland, which Scarborough isn’t buying:
The district claims an appellate court decision gives it no alternative. Nonsense! In ruling on a ban on promotional material from the Christian Evangelism Fellowship, the court held that school officials lack "unbridled discretion to deny access" to material for non-school functions. The operative words here are "unbridled discretion."
Of course, Scarborough either misunderstands or is intentionally misrepresenting the 4th Circuit’s ruling. As noted above, the court did not rule that that school officials lacked "’unbridled discretion to deny access’ to material for non-school functions,” but rather that its policy granted it “unbridled discretion to deny access” to its “backpack mail” program for any reason it saw fit and thus was unconstitutional.
It appears as if the Albemarle County School Board attempted to comply with the court’s “viewpoint neutral” requirement for such programs, just as it was reportedly instructed to do by The Liberty Counsel. So if Scarborough is upset that students are now bringing home fliers for an atheist summer camp, he ought to take it up with Liberty Counsel, Child Evangelism Fellowship, the Alliance Defense Fund, and the Christian Legal Society.
This isn’t the first time that Religious Right leaders have resisted others’ use of legal rights they demand for themselves. The federal Equal Access Act was passed by Congress in 1984 at the urging of Religious Right groups that said schools were violating the rights of students who wanted to form Bible clubs. But when students who want to form gay-straight alliances have asserted the same legal right (first affirmed by federal courts in Colin v. Orange Unified School District), Religious Right leaders and their political allies frequently resist or try to erect barriers to those clubs.
- via AU’s Wall of Separation
Posted by Kyle at 5:08 PM | Permalink
May 14, 2007
Anti-Immigrant Politics Alive and Kicking in Suburban Texas
“This sends a message loud and clear that illegal aliens are not welcome in Farmers Branch, Texas,” declared Tim O’Hare, city councilman in the Dallas suburb, after voters approved a ban on undocumented immigrants renting housing there. “We are fed up with the federal government's inaction on immigration," he said. "We are not going to wait. We are going to take care of it." O’Hare began his crusade last summer against the “less desirable people” who he said “get to come over here and live like kings and queens,” and who were driving down property values and causing shopkeepers to speak Spanish, leaving "no place for people with a good income to shop."
Farmers Branch’s ordinance is modeled on measures passed last year in Hazleton, Pennsylvania, which is waiting for a court ruling on their constitutionality.
Compared to last year’s heated immigration debate and its steady supply of headlines – ranging from the touring congressional hearings put on by Republican House members to the effects of anti-immigrant crackdowns like the one just passed in Farmers Branch – this year has been relatively calm. Supporters of comprehensive reform now control Congress, and political news has revolved around presidential candidates, with only one anti-immigrant hardliner among the many second-tier candidates. Meanwhile, both Chris Simcox’s Minuteman Civil Defense Corps and Jim Gilchrist’s Minuteman Project are facing charges of financial mismanagement.
But as the vote in Farmers Branch shows, anti-immigrant politics remain a live wire in various parts of the country.
Meanwhile, in the Washington, D.C. suburb of Gaithersburg, Maryland, a day-laborer center was the target of a recent arson attempt. In response, local anti-immigrant group Citizens Above Party – which, we noted previously, is hardly the simple concerned-citizens operation it portrays itself as – reopened their complaints against the facility:
‘‘Why is the county executive allowing hundreds of thousands of dollars to go to a facility that does not check the backgrounds of who is coming through the back door?” said Susan Payne, founder of Citizens Above Party, a vocal opponent of the county’s policy to pay for the day-laborer centers. ‘‘We have no idea who these people are.”
Posted by Ezra at 5:35 PM | Permalink
April 26, 2007
Alliance for Marriage Recruits in Maryland Legislature
“Marriage Protection Caucus (TM)” formed to ratify federal anti-gay marriage amendment.
Posted by Ezra at 11:59 PM | Permalink
April 9, 2007
'Ex-Gays' Push against Sex Ed in Maryland That Mentions Homosexuality
In suburban DC.
Posted by Ezra at 11:59 PM | Permalink
March 9, 2007
REAL ID Debate in Maryland Mixes 9/11, Day Laborers
Since Congress passed the REAL ID Act in 2005, which (among other things) mandates that all states require drivers prove their legal immigration status in order to get a license, several states have balked at the cost and myriad civil liberties issues stemming from the bill. Maine and Idaho have passed laws rejecting the new guidelines, and a number of other state legislatures are considering joining them, including Maryland. This week, however, the Maryland Senate debated a competing bill that would implement at least one part of the REAL ID rules – the proof of immigration status requirement. And although REAL ID was passed as part of emergency funding for the War on Terror, some are trying to refocus the debate away from civil liberties and on to anti-immigrant “quality of life” complaints. From The Washington Times:
Bill supporters told the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee they were concerned about public safety and potential terrorist attacks because one of the September 11 hijackers obtained a Maryland driver's license.
"I live in Gaithersburg, Maryland, which has been in [newspapers] quite recently, and is really on its way to becoming the first authentic barrio in the county," said Susan Payne of Citizens Above Party. "The poison that's coming out of this state, known as the Maryland driver's license, has to be stopped because it's infecting the entire country."
Payne was also quoted in the Annapolis Capital, warning “You are driving people like me out of our home state.” She co-founded Citizens Above Party in response to the building of a day-laborer center in Gaithersburg, a prosperous D.C. suburb known for its New Urbanist planned communities.
The other founder of the anti-day-laborer group was Demos Chrissos, a veteran producer of Republican political ads who, like Susan Payne, is frequently quoted in the local media. Chrissos is also a professional anti-immigration activist on a national scale: He produced a TV ad for WeNeedAFence.com that included a shot of the World Trade Center being hit, and more recently produced ads around a campaign to pardon border agents convicted in a shooting. According to the online bio from his video marketing firm, Chrissos co-founded Citizens Above Party to “investigat[e] the suspected link between illegal immigration and widespread voter fraud across the nation.”
Of course, there’s no sign of “widespread voter fraud” by illegal immigrants anywhere except in the press releases of anti-immigrant groups and the politicians who court them, or of a link between suburban day laborers and anti-American terrorists. But press coverage of Payne’s rhetoric does demonstrate how easily the anti-immigrant movement can “infect” the REAL ID debate in Maryland and elsewhere. And while Payne comes off in the media as a typical concerned citizen, her partner’s work as a professional media consultant suggests that this confusion is part of their strategy.
Posted by Ezra at 6:34 PM | Permalink
February 26, 2007
'Ex-Gay' Group Appeals Maryland Sexuality Ed Curriculum
That includes “respect” for gays.
Posted by Ezra at 11:59 PM | Permalink
January 11, 2007
FRC, 'Ex-Gays' Continue Attack on Maryland School Board
Over “pro-homosexual” sex ed.
Posted by Ezra at 11:59 PM | Permalink
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