The Radical Moderate
Opposes: Censorship, Propaganda, Right Wing
Media and its SpinWits, Prohibition, Church-State Entanglement, Political Correctness
Supports: Concealed Carry, Death Penalty, Abortion Rights
Desires: Better Workplace Civil Rights Laws, A National Referendum on
Abortion Rights, Regulation of the Drug and Sex Industries (rather than prohibition)
GOOD NEWS for those who follow this blog.
Visit the NEW Radical Moderate blog site.
The NEW Radical Moderate site uses different software that allows Categorization of posts, and has a nice search feature, and is much more customizeable and controllable by me.
So click this link and
Visit the NEW Radical Moderate blog site.
Of course, you can stay here or Blogger if you want. All the old posts are still around. You just CAN'T FIND THEM CAUSE THERE ARE NO FREAKIN CATEGORIES ALLOWED. All the posts are organized only by DATE, not the very logical CATEGORY form of organization you will find at
The Radical Moderate.
Come on over.
Title of Post (if underlined, it's also a Link):
Transfer just about ready for prime time
FINALLY! I finally figured out how to get posts out of Blogger and into Wordpress.
I just need to tweak the default Wordpress template a little, and I'll have new blogging 4U.
Thanks for patience.
Title of Post (if underlined, it's also a Link):
Transfer Hell - Can't escape Blogger
I've been spending some time lately trying to transfer my blog out of Blogger and into another format with more flexibility. Failing miserably.
I'm working with WordPress, Movable Type and Blosxom.
So far, I can't get the posts OUT of Blogger and INTO the other programs.
And there are other setup issues with each of those other programs.
I WISH Blogger would integrate CATEGORIES --- then I would NOT want to be moving my blog.
Sorry for few posts lately.
I really am trying to make the blog BETTER, though. Be patient for a little longer.
When you read the details of Ratzinger's instructions about Catholics and pro-choice candidates, there is room for Catholics to vote Democratic.
There is not much room for politicians to be pro-choice and Catholic, but there is room to vote for a pro-choice candidate.
Bush was unafraid of a potential backlash from Catholics offended by Ratzingers instructions. Why would Bush be unafraid? I guess he had done enough polling (Rove and company of course) and knew the backlash would not be as strong as the vote among the faithful, or that liberal Catholics might just stay home rather than vote pro-choice.
Anyway, Bush and Rove called it right, and Ratzinger helped out a bit at Bush's request, it appears.
Salon.com | Holy warriors: "President Bush treated his final visit with Pope John Paul II in Vatican City on June 4, 2004, as a campaign stop. After enduring a public rebuke from the pope about the Iraq war, Bush lobbied Vatican officials to help him win the election. 'Not all the American bishops are with me,' he complained, according to the National Catholic Reporter. He pleaded with the Vatican to pressure the bishops to step up their activism against abortion and gay marriage in the states during the campaign season.
About a week later, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger sent a letter to the U.S. bishops, pronouncing that those Catholics who were pro-choice on abortion were committing a 'grave sin' and must be denied Communion."
An estate planner write over at DailyKOS (excerpted below) about how the repeal of the estate tax (the tax that only 2% of Americans ever had to pay), has morphed into a
middle class inheritance tax increase because inherited stocks and investments will now be taxable.
Welcome to the REALITY of where the Republican loyalty lies.
Daily Kos :: Confessions of a Former Dittohead: The Death of an Otherwise Good Tax:
[snip]
"What's worse is that under the new tax law everyone will face a new form of the estate tax. Please enjoy another hypothetical. Let's say mom and dad owned $100,000 worth of Ford stock that they originally paid $1,000 for 30 years ago. If they were to sell the stock while they were alive, they'd pay capital gains on the $99,000 of growth, so let's say mom and dad never sell it. Mom and dad bite the bullet and leave everything to their kids. Their total estate is less than the federal exemption amount, so they don't owe any estate taxes.
So the kids inherit the $100,000 of Ford stock tax free. But mom and dad bought all the kids xr4ti's when they turned 16, and since that car was such a piece of crap none of them want to keep the Ford stock. (Despite claims on the Internet to the contrary, the xr4ti was a complete piece of crap) They all sell the stock as soon as they can, and pocket the $100,000.
So how much do the kids owe in taxes? Their parents only paid $1,000 for it back in the day, so conventional wisdom says they'll have to pay taxes on the $99,000 of growth. But in this case conventional wisdom would be wrong. Under the old estate tax rules, people inherited property with a `stepped-up basis,' meaning the cost basis to the inheritor was the value of the property when mom and dad died. That may sound confusing, but it really isn't. The bottom line is if the stock was worth $100,000 when mom and dad died, you inherit it as though you paid $100,000 for the stock.
Great rule, right? Well, bad news. When the estate tax dies, so does this rule. Whatever your parents paid for the stock--that's your cost basis. If you sell that Ford stock for a hundred grand, you'll pay capital gains on the $99,000 in growth (figure between $15,000-$20,000 in taxes).
Under the old system this typical middle-class scenario would generate no revenue for the federal government. Under the new law, the government's gonna get $15,000-$20,000. Oh, and guess what? Under the old system only 2% of estates were susceptible to the tax. But under the new system, anyone who owns stock and tries to pass it on to their kids will be affected. And here's the finisher--over 50% of Americans currently own stock.
So instead of having a completely avoidable tax that affects only 2% of Americans, we'll have an unavoidable tax that will affect over 50% of Americans! And many middle-class families are clamoring for this tax to be repealed. Sometimes you just have to stand back and marvel at how good the right-wing is at convincing people to act counter to their own best interest! It's like an Orwellian wet dream. Winston Smith is begging to have that rat cage slapped on his face. "Come on! It'll be good for me! Do it!"
[snip]
Bloomberg interviews a couple of evangelical leaders, Wildmon and Bauer, who complain a little bit about how Bush is not making "Banning Gay Marriage" his number one priority.
And they are admitting that Bush's Social Security proposals are causing some concern among their working class flocks, and requesting that Bush place some benefit guarantees into his proposal.
I'm waiting to see what the religious leaders are going to say about the bankruptcy reform bill just passed, when their working class flock finds that it's much harder to get debt relief now.
Evangelicals Cool to Bush's Focus on Social Security Accounts
"Voters who identify themselves as conservative Christians were a crucial part of the coalition that gave Bush a second term and Republicans a bigger majority in Congress. Some evangelical leaders, though not all, now express dismay with both Bush's priorities and his Social Security proposal, which they say could hurt their predominantly working class constituency.
``We're wising up to the fact that we're very important nine months before an election and we're not very important nine days after that election,'' said Don Wildmon, 67, an ordained minister who is chairman of the American Family Association in Tupelo, Mississippi.
There is ``a lot of disappointment'' among those who voted for Bush expecting him to make his primary focus in a second term a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage and other social values issues, Wildmon said."
Here's a pice of fearmongering from the left, about the theocracy movement. I think it's overblown (I hope it is anyway), but I present it to show the fear that has developed in some quarters.
It would be nice if the all-powerful Republicans would at least
try to appear more mainstream and respectful of our history of pluralism and tolerance.
But instead, the most vocal Republicans continue to harangue and preach in such a way that the scenario outlined in the excerpted piece does not seem so far fetched.
You would think we'd learn something from the experience of the Muslim nations, so that we'd be careful to
avoid even the appearance of religious dominance of government.
t r u t h o u t - William Rivers Pitt on The Theocrats and the Fillibuster Rule:
"If Frist and the Theocrats are able to do away with this last lingering firebreak, the Theocrats will have a wide-open highway on which to drive through the most terrifying aspects of their agenda. The despicable invasion of privacy that was the Schiavo mess will be a forgotten footnote compared to what will come if Frist and the Theocrats have their way with the filibuster.
Imagine this scenario: A bill is introduced in the House to require children to say the Lord's Prayer each morning in every American public school. Arguments in favor of American pluralism and freedom of (and from) religion fall on deaf ears. Thanks to the massive GOP majority in the House, the bill is passed and reaches the Senate, where outraged Democrats are powerless to stop it without the filibuster. It passes there, and is placed on the desk of Mr. Bush, who happily signs away yet another barrier separating the church and the state.
Crazy, right? Wrong. This is a benign hypothetical compared to the draconian legislation the Theocrats would like to see passed. Should they get their way, you will not be safe in person, thought or deed if any of these cut against the fundamentalist grain. America won't become a land of bourkas and beheadings, probably, but if you don't have a Bible in your hand at all times, you'll probably lose your job and credit rating. For starters.
Frist and the Theocrats do not have the destruction of the filibuster sewn up quite yet, however. The GOP has a 55-44 majority in the Senate, with Jeffords the Independent caucusing with the Democrats. 51 Senators are needed to kill the filibuster. The Democrats can count on all 44 of their Senators to oppose, and can likewise count on Jeffords to do the same. At this point, GOP Senators McCain and Chafee have also stated they will oppose the action.
Seven GOP Senators are on the fence: Collins and Snowe of Maine, Hagel of Nebraska, Lugar of Indiana, Murkowski of Alaska, Specter of Pennsylvania, and Warner of Virginia. Whoever convinces a majority of these undecided Senators will win the filibuster fight.
We have seen how ugly, bloody and dangerous things can get in other countries when religious extremists gain complete political supremacy. It can happen here. Unless it is stopped, right now, it will happen here."
American Conservative Magazine reports the views of a conservative student who attended the 32nd annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).
It's an interesting read, and shows a little more of the backlash developing against the narrow-minded crusaders who control the Republican Party.
He suggests that he is dismayed that so-called conservatives think you commit treason if you disagree with Bush.
He suggests that he is dismayed that so-called conservatives think you are Communist if you advocate peace.
He suggests that the modern "conservative movement" is actually a failure, because the movement seems only to be passionate about supporting Bush and his foreign policy, and in getting "Republicans" elected. Meanwhile, not much change occurs that could be called "conservative".
Party Crashing:
...
Neoconservative Marshall Wittmann derisively calls it the Star Trek convention for conservatives. While I have never been to a Star Trek convention (really!), from my second-hand impressions, this description is apt.
...
I walked into Miss Coulter’s speech halfway through and within 15 seconds I heard her utter “there’s a difference between free speech and treason” and promptly exited.
...
"Sam Francis, who died a few days before the conference, spent the last 15 years explaining why the conservative movement has been a failure. From the mood of most of the attendees at CPAC, you would not get that impression. Rather, they were exuberant, triumphalist. Republicans control both houses of Congress, the presidency, and the majority of the governorships across the country. Fox News and the Internet give the Right a voice alongside the traditionally liberal print and television media. But what very few would admit, or even care about, is that government is still getting bigger, abortion is no closer to being banned than it was 20 years ago, homosexual marriage seems to be inevitable, and immigration is inundating our country at unprecedented rates. If electing Republicans and waging wars is the gauge, then the movement has been a gleaming success. But if that becomes conservatism’s raison d’etre, we can pray for nothing more than its failure."
Republicans and their spinwits denied that Schiavo was a political issue, but then a staffer for Republican Senator Martinez admitted to circulating the infamous Schiavo Memo caliming that Schiavo was a
great political issue.
Then when the general public backlashed against the Republilcans over Schiavo, the Republicans are running for cover.
Howard Dean is not pulling any punches, calling the Republicans Theocrats.
Republicans seem to know that the moderate voters do not like theocrats, yet they keep acting like theocrats as they exert their awesome power while in control of Congress and the White House.
Go get 'em Howie!
The excerpt below is from a DailyKOS thread, referencing an LaTimes article about Howie attacking over the Schiavo case, using the T-word.
Daily Kos :: When Democrats attack:
"Dean, a practicing physician until he became governor of Vermont in 1991, added: 'The issue is: Are we going to live in a theocracy where the highest powers tell us what to do? Or are we going to be allowed to consult our own high powers when we make very difficult decisions?'
And then there's this bonus zinger:
Tracey Schmitt, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, said Dean's 'outrageous remarks help underscore why Dean is the leader of the minority party.'
'Terri Schiavo was never about partisan politicking, but instead about a woman's life,' she said.
The legal counsel to Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Florida) resigned this month after acknowledging he had written a memo calling the Schiavo case 'a great political issue' for Republicans.'
New find in Therapod-type of dinosaur shows bird-like egg production features, not purely reptilian egg production features.
This is yet another clue that evolution occurs on the macro scale (species transformation).
And this is yet another challenge for the religious-science forces to have to deal with.
Remember that real science modified its theories to conform to real factual evidence.
Religious-science starts with a set of faith principles that are unalterable regardless of what real factual evidence is discovered. And religious-science then either disregards real factual evidence, or interprets those real facts so that those facts appear to fit within the unalterable religious principles.
Real scientists do not accept the scholarship of the religious scientists, generally speaking. Real scientists make progress in science by accepting the peer-reviewed and verifiable scholarship of other real scientists.
We advance real science by applying real scientific principles. We do not advance real science by subjecting facts to a religious test to see how those facts appear to fit within faith doctrines.
You are reading this text because of real science, including hundreds of years of mathematical advances. Those mathematical advances were anti-religion in the sense that the math suggested things about the universe that were a threat to faith, like the age of the universe, etc.
But the real mathematical scientists plodded ahead, despite the religious controversies, leading to the development of theories about electrons etc, leading to micro-circuitry and computers and television monitors and much more, and as a result you are reading this text.
CNN.com - Scientists find eggs in dinosaur mom - Apr 15, 2005: "Theropods, (which means 'fierce footed') were carnivorous, bipedal reptiles believed to be the ancestors of modern birds. The clues provided by the Chinese discovery suggest that the dinosaur had a reproductive system with some similarities to ancient reptiles and some to modern birds.
Like crocodiles and some other modern reptiles, this dinosaur had two ovaries and oviducts. But unlike crocodiles, which lay an average of 50 eggs at a time, the dinosaur had the birdlike characteristic of producing one larger, shelled egg at a time."
I offer you today the chance to get down and dirty with a little legal theory for the masses. The NyTimes has a nine page magazine piece explaining in pretty good detail the Economic Libertarian movement, and its connections to the Republican Party, and its efforts to get sympathetic judges appointed. It's a great read, and will make you feel better informed, I promise.
Do you like Social Security?
Do you like the fact that there exists a set of labor laws that require at least a minimum wage, and mandate overtime pay?
Do you, in theory at least, accept that the Federal Government should have a Clean Water Act, and other environmental laws, and the power to enforce them?
Do you like it that we have a Securities and Exchange Commission to, in theory at least, keep an eye on the stockbrokers and stock markets?
Well, if you appreciate the value of those things (even if you disagree with some of their actions and specific policies), then you are not really on board yet with the "economic libertarian" wing of the Republican Party.
AND, you do not fully understand WHY the Republican Power Brokers are fighting so hard for the appointment of many controversial judges to the Federal courts.
A powerful wing of the Republican Party wants to revert our legal climate to where it was prior to the New Deal, and UNDO all the protective and regulatory legislation of the last 60 years, on constitutional theories.
If you were approaching the debate from a purely theoretical point of view, you might agree that our constitution does not REALLY give Congress the power to mandate clean water (for example).
BUT ----- Our environmental and social problems were SO SEVERE, and NOTHING was being done to fix them, so Congress stepped in under "Commerce Clause" of the US Constitution. The Commerce Clause give Congress the power to regulate Interstate Commerce. Huge legal battles were fought for 150 years over what "regulate" meant. The courts tended to forbid much regulation by Congress, until 1937.
In 1937 the Supreme Court kind of changed its tune (due to the massive social and economic problems that had developed due to no regulation), and permitted Congress to implement a lot of regulations in the name of "regulating interstate commerce".
A theoretical utopian Republican movement exists today, speculating that we could DO AWAY WITH much or all of the commerce clause regulations, and still be alright and prosperous. I call this movement "utopian" in the sense that they are delusional if they think they could create an heaven on earth. As the excerpted article points out, when Congress deregulated the Savings and Loan industry, the tycoons bilked many many billions out of the public in bailouts, while the tycoons got super-rich (that's just one example).
Remember that nature abhors a vacuum ---- when regulations end, greed and corruption enter. Greed and corruption CAUSED the regulations in the first place. Massive social problems stemming from unregulated greed and pollution and unfairness CAUSED Congress to keep trying to pass regulations in the early 20th Century.
The utopians want to TRY IT AGAIN --- They want to have the courts once again make it illegal for Congress to regulate things, TRUSTING BLINDLY that the good hearted tycoons will act appropriately for the good of mankind while being good capitalists. As we have seen with the deregulation of certain industries, it's hard to change human nature - human nature in the economic realm is worst than the utopians imagine.
The above (and the excerpted article) explains a bit about why I can call myself a "social libertarian" rather than a "libertarian". IF someone is socially and economically lilbertarian, they are out of touch with reality and are utopian in outlook.
But a social libertarian stands for individual liberty, despite supporting limits on economic liberty.
When the Republican Congress attacks government regulation, the Congress is espousing some form of economic libertarianism. I wonder why economic libertarianism and social libertarianism are mutually exclusive among Republicans? That's right --- IT sure seems like the MORE economically libertarian the Republicans become, the more anti-libertarian they become on the social side.
Here's how I've heard the Republicans explain the seeming incocnsistency between their economic libertarianism and their social anti-libertariansism: "We must have standards in society" (referring to regulation of social behavior).
But what about business standards? Shouldn't we have minimum standards for business behavior as well as minimum standards for social behavior? Standards for businesses are established under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution.
And so, I think the mainstream American agrees that some level of regulation of business is necessary to set minimum standards for business behavior. But the economic libertarian movement disagrees, and they are trying to pack the courts with like-minded judges, who they hope will strike down Federal laws.
For a discussion thread about the NyTimes piece, see Daily Kos :: Understanding the "Constitution in Exile" movement.
For the actual NyTimes piece, see The Unregulated Offensive.
The following is from the DailyKOS discussion thread:
Imagine that the interpretation of the Constitution was frozen in 1937. Imagine a country in which Social Security, job-safety laws and environmental protections were unconstitutional. Imagine judges longing for that. Imagine one of them as the next Supreme Court nominee.
As I've said in the past, the true ultra radicals want to destroy Congress's power under the Interstate Commerce Clause. Should they ever realize such a dream, the consequences would be more dire than you could ever imagine. Rosen lays it out in full, chilling detail:
"Cass Sunstein, a law professor at the University of Chicago (and a longtime colleague of Epstein's), will soon publish a book on the Constitution in Exile movement called 'Fundamentally Wrong.' As Sunstein, who describes himself as a moderate, recently explained to me, success, as the movement defines it, would mean that 'many decisions of the Federal Communications Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and possibly the National Labor Relations Board would be unconstitutional. It would mean that the Social Security Act would not only be under political but also constitutional stress."
"Many of the Constitution in Exile people think there can't be independent regulatory commissions, so the Security and Exchange Commission and maybe even the Federal Reserve would be in trouble. Some applications of the Endangered Species Act and Clean Water Act would be struck down as beyond Congress's commerce power.' In what Sunstein described as the 'extreme nightmare scenario,' the right of individuals to freedom of contract would be so vigorously interpreted that minimum-wage and maximum-hour laws would also be jeopardized."
Read the piece.
Howard Dean was a good choice for chairman of the DNC - He's a Radical Moderate, just like yours truly (although he's more liberal on some issues - but that's acceptable to me).
Hees gonna come out swinging againt the theocrats, and yes - He isn't afraid to use the "T-word". See below.
I like it that the T-word is becoming mainstream. It truly highlights the key underlying difference between ordinary everyday Americans and the controlling force in the Republican Party.
The theocrats have become dominant in government, but they are not dominant in the hearts and minds of the people, and the common people who only picked up snippets of the right wing stuff (because of their busy lives) are now going to start being forced to confront the truth about the radical Republicans running our government. Howard Dean and the Democrats are going to harp on it incessantly, at least I hope so.
USATODAY.com - Dean: Schiavo case to be used against GOP elections: "WASHINGTON (AP) — Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, who has accused congressional Republicans of 'grandstanding' in the Terri Schiavo case, said his party will use it against the GOP in coming elections.
'This is going to be an issue in 2006, and its going to be an issue in 2008 because we're going to have an ad with a picture of (House Majority Leader) Tom DeLay saying, 'Do you want this guy to decide whether you die or not? Or is that going to be up to your loved ones?'' Dean said in West Hollywood, Calif.
... 'The issue is: Are we going to live in a theocracy where the highest powers tell us what to do? Or are we going to be allowed to consult our own high powers when we make very difficult decisions?''"
I'm sorry to see that even the NyTimes is referring to the Republican US Senate as trying to impose theocracy in one form or another.
Usually the NyTime does not use extreme rhetoric, even though they espouse liberal views on their editorial pages.
So I guess the NyTimes no longer considers it extreme to refer to the Republican Party as supporting theocracy, at least as regards to appointing judges who (the Republicans think) might uphold theocratic principles and laws.
The "T" word is entering common discourse.
The New York Times > Opinion > Editorial: Bill Frist's Religious War: "EDITORIAL
Bill Frist's Religious War
Published: April 16, 2005
Right-wing Christian groups and the Republican politicians they bankroll have done much since the last election to impose their particular religious views on all Americans. But nothing comes close to the shameful declaration of religious war by Bill Frist, the Senate majority leader, over the selection of judges for federal courts.
Senator Frist is to appear on a telecast sponsored by the Family Research Council, which styles itself a religious organization but is really just another Washington lobbying concern. The message is that the Democrats who oppose a tiny handful of President Bush's judicial nominations are conducting an assault 'against people of faith.' By that, Senator Frist and his allies do not mean people of all faiths, only those of their faith.
It is one thing when private groups foment this kind of intolerance. It is another thing entirely when it's done by the highest-ranking member of the United States Senate ...
[snip]
Senator Frist is determined to get judges on the federal bench who are loyal to the Republican fringe and, he hopes, would accept a theocratic test on decisions."
Ah, there IS a Vast Left Wing Conspiracy (VLWC) - a new book says so!
Actually I saw the author interviewed on The Daily Show a few nights ago.
The excerpt below, from DailyKOS, makes fun of some of the left wing wackos who were at a conference of activists. Turns out that the Left likes it that the Right thinks there is a VLWC.
Liberals are having fun embracing the idea of the VLWC.
"Mr. Kos" himself attended the VLWC conference and writes the article excerpted below, poking fun at unrealistic peace-leftists.
Among the wacky liberal groups, I don't think any of them are violent, although some call for civil disobedience.
Among the right wing, things are quite different. Not only do you have the groups who would like to kill other groups, you also have US Senators and major religious leaders making veiled threats of violence against judges. And you have talk show spinwits spouting dangerous words about how liberals and Democrats are "evil".
In sum, some wacky leftists are just too full of peace and love to be taken seriously - they are not too numerous. But wacky rightists are a real threat to the social order and must be taken seriously, because they are so numerous and vocal. When US Senators and major activists speak in violent tones, the wacky rightist crowd must be pretty damn big - not a fringe element at all.
Daily Kos :: Half-baked observations of a VLWC conference: "Last week I spent three days at a conference of various leaders of the budding VLWC, and it was, well, interesting. As happens at any such gathering, the networking was the greatest benefit. Met lots of good people. The sessions were too touchy-feely for me. I'm not a liberal who likes to talk about 'feelings'.
At one session, one participant told me 'we can achieve world peace if we just visualize it'. What the fuck? I jumped down the guy's throat -- 'When people were shooting it out in my front lawn in El Salvador, they didn't give a flying fuck about what you were visualizing. Neither do the warlords in Somalia, or in Darfur, or the insurgents in Iraq, or terrorists all over the world.'
Man, talk about idiots reinforcing the worst stereotypes about our side. Jeez. Fantasizing about eliminating the Defense Department isn't being part of the Reality Based Community. If that's the sort of thing you like to do, and are offended by my bluntness, then deal with it. Being a part of the reality based community means we must operate in -- you guessed it -- reality.
So there were the crazies, some of them in leadership positions of fairly prominent organizations. Fucking obnoxious, and clearly a reason why our side can seem out of touch."
I've written about the theocrats and their skirmish in our pharmacies, where pharmacists are refusing suddenly to fill scripts fro things like birth control pills to unmarried women, etc.
The new item excerpted below is 2 weeks old - I heard of the story but just now saw the news item.
I'll ask again: Will those crusading pharmacists be refusing to fill Viagra scripts for unmarried men? AND How will the crusaders verify marital status?
AND What warnings will be posted outside the building, so the general public knows that they entering a less-than-full-service pharmacy?
The public must be warned of course, otherwise crusading pharmacists are deceiving the public into thinking that the pharmacy is full service.
The main reason I get POd about stories like this is that the pharmacists seem to be rogue religious crusaders, imposing their religion on unsuspecting customers who are inconvenienced and insulted.
If I see a religious symbol on the outside sign of a pharmacy, I think I can expect a certain kind of experience inside, and so I can go somewhere else if I choose. But if you lure me on on false pretenses of being a full service retail pharmacy, I'm gonna get real upset when I learn the truth about you.
This kinda reminds me of my military days, when I was young recruit newly out of boot camp, and was on liberty in Chicago with buddies. After a night of drinking and stuff, we got hungry and entered a little restaurant that "welcomed" the military. We sat down in the intimate little quiet place, and then the truth came out - Turned out the "restaurant" was really a church of some sort. A couple of evangelicals scooted onto the ends of the booth, and made us sit through their religious lectures. We got out of there pretty fast, and didn't eat anything. I was 18, and too polite to cuss them out.
CNN.com - Illinois governor: No delays in birth control� prescriptions - Apr 1, 2005: "U.S.
Illinois governor: No delays in birth control prescriptions
CHICAGO, Illinois (AP) -- Gov. Rod Blagojevich approved an emergency rule Friday requiring pharmacies to fill birth control prescriptions quickly after a Chicago pharmacist refused to fill an order because of moral opposition to the drug.
The emergency rule takes effect immediately for 150 days while the administration seeks a permanent rule.
'Our regulation says that if a woman goes to a pharmacy with a prescription for birth control, the pharmacy or the pharmacist is not allowed to discriminate or to choose who he sells it to,' Blagojevich said. 'No delays. No hassles. No lectures.'"
In a rare burst of almost candor, a spy chief nearly admits that he'll trample all over our privacy rights if confirmed.
When a government spy chief admits he'll "push right up to the line" you can rest assured he'll approve going way OVER the line that you and I might establish under the same laws.
His opinion of where "the line" is drawn will differ radically from our opinion as citizens.
When someone like the ACLU challenges his opinion of where the line is, and a court agrees with the challenge, the spy chief will explain that he just made a good faith mistake. That dog won't hunt, except among the extremist talk show spinwits.
The spy chief and his team already know pretty well where courts will end up drawing the line, and the spy team will go FAR OVER that line until the ACLU beats them in court.
That's been the history of all spying organizations.
In my book, he's telling us that we don't really have any meaningful privacy from government snooping anymore.
The New York Times > Washington > No. 2 Intelligence Nominee Testifies on Privacy Rules: "ASHINGTON, April 14 - The Air Force general nominated as the country's No. 2 intelligence official said Thursday that American intelligence agencies needed to push 'right up to that line,' established under privacy laws, in using eavesdropping, surveillance and other tools to gather information.
The nominee, Lt. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, told the Senate Intelligence Committee that he was committed to ensuring that all American intelligence activities fell within the bounds defined by the law and the Constitution.
But after six years spent heading American eavesdropping, as director of the National Security Agency, General Hayden also made the case that agencies needed to be aggressive in employing their powers."
The Louisville Courier Journal has an interesting editorial about how Bush's legacy will appear in the history books.
I think it's too early to judge how long-term history will regard Bush. In the short term, he has been somewhat of a failure overall, I think. But long term, who knows? Due to Bush's warmongering ways, we might have excited a few Democratic revolutions in the Middle East, and might have dissuaded some rogue nations from offering much support for terrorist activity.
It's hard to know for sure, but our warmongering may have lessened the risk that terrorists could deploy true weapons of mass destruction, by denying terrorists any safe haven nation.
I think that no nation on earth wants to become known to Bush as a safe haven for terrorists, because every nation knows that Bush (even though a good Christian) will not hesitate to blow them all to hell.
I don't support warmongering, by the way. But aggression does have its upside.
If the rogue nations become less rogue, the history books (longer term anyway) may be more favorable toward Bush than current sentiments would anticipate.
However, if we have a huge economic catastrophe on Bush's watch, then that might overshadow anything positive on the international relations front. For more about the threat of an economic meltdown, you might want to read
Paul Volcker's Warning - from www.LewRockwell.com. Volcker was the Chairman of the Fed for a long time, before Greenspan. Volcker thinks we in some trouble. Here's a quote from Volcker: "... So I think we are skating on increasingly thin ice. On the present trajectory, the deficits and imbalances will increase. At some point, the sense of confidence in capital markets that today so benignly supports the flow of funds to the United States and the growing world economy could fade. Then some event, or combination of events, could come along to disturb markets, with damaging volatility in both exchange markets and interest rates."
The excerpt below is from the Courier-Journal, about how Bush will be remembered.
Ill-equipped for war: "George W. Bush will go down in the history books, for having led the country into war on false premises, jeopardized individual liberties, made America an international bully in the eyes of long-time allies, wrecked the federal budget, deserted conservative principles of governance, savaged the regulatory system, set back environmental progress and polarized the country even further."
LewRockwell.com is a great site. A lot of very good writers contribute columns regularly. The theme is mostly libertarian. But they run the spectrum, from left-libertarian to right-libertarian, and even to right-wingers. Except for the right-wingers, who apologize for Bush and the Republicans at every turn, there is a strong undercurrent of disenchantment with Bush and the Republicans. Here's another one -------
I've excerpted below from a scathing description of President Bush's trip to Rome to mourn the Pope. The writer essentially argues that Bush was not worthy to be in the same room as the Pope.
It's interested reading, because of the critique of Bush's behavior in light of the Ten Commandments, and also because of the comparison between the USA's war against Iraq and the Soviet Union's domination of Poland.
Autopsy of a Funeral by Lawrence M. Ludlow
[snip]
Out with the Ten Commandments, In with Regime Change
To make things worse, the president was the leader of a faux-religious pro-war gang that unilaterally had taken upon itself the mantle of an unrecognizably twisted version of Christianity. In so doing, it had violated six of the Ten Commandments in a very short time. In addition to substituting a nationalistic worship of the all-powerful state in place of the deity, they repeatedly took God’s name in vain with bumper stickers touting slogans such as "God bless America." Furthermore, in their quest to overturn the warning, "Thou shalt not kill," they laid waste to an entire nation and snuffed out the lives of over 100,000 Iraqi civilians – which have been trivialized as "collateral damage" by the American press. In addition, the war has cost the lives of 1,500-plus American soldiers who sought to honor their uniforms by taking part in a dishonorable mission at the behest of a representative of one of America’s least-respected professions: a politician. Of course, the pretext for launching this war was a hallmark case of bearing false witness, and the prospect of rich rewards in the form of cheap oil was a source of covetousness whose ultimate end would amount to confiscating the Iraqi oil fields, otherwise known as theft. Six, count 'em six violated commandments.
[snip]
Poland after World War II; Iraq Today
But the list of papal-presidential ironies goes far beyond the U.S. decision to go to war against Iraq. In the aftermath of World War II, which the U.S. and its allies waged in response to Hitler’s war of aggression against Poland, the homeland of the pope was never freed. Instead, that overwhelmingly Catholic country was handed over to the Soviet Union – beginning a 45-year span of Soviet domination that was countenanced by the very allies that claimed to have sought Polish freedom by entering the war in the first place. Under the domination of Stalin, events in Poland took on a character that bears an eerie resemblance to what has been happening in Iraq. Here are a few highlights:
[snip]
A Republican Representative write an interesting note about how the Republicans forget that the Pope was consistent in his anti-killing agenda, unlike the Republican Party.
Also, he points out the change from history: Historically, governments and religion have been at odds, due to mutual fear. But not any more, in the USA at least. We have so much intermixing of religion and government that the official government of the USA no longer sees religion as a threat.
Theology, Not Politics by Rep. Ron Paul
Just two years ago conservatives were busy scolding the Pope for his refusal to back our invasion of Iraq. One conservative media favorite even made the sickening suggestion that the Pope was the enemy of the United States because he would not support our aggression in the Middle East. The Pontiff would not ignore the inherent contradiction in being pro-life and pro-war, nor distort just war doctrine to endorse attacking a nation that clearly posed no threat to America – and conservatives resented it. September 11th did not change everything, and the Pope understood that killing is still killing. The hypocritical pro-war conservatives lauding him today have very short memories.
[snip]
Historically, religion always represented a threat to government because it competes for the loyalties of the people. In modern America, however, most religious institutions abandoned their independence long ago, and now serve as cheerleaders for state policies like social services, faith-based welfare, and military aggression in the name of democracy. Few American churches challenge state actions at all, provided their tax-exempt status is maintained. This is why Washington politicians ostensibly celebrate religion – it no longer threatens their supremacy. Government has co-opted religion and family as the primary organizing principle of our society. The federal government is boss, and everybody knows it. But no politician will ever produce even a tiny fraction of the legacy left by Pope John Paul II.
A right-libertarian professor got caught up in a political correctness controversy, and talks about how the ACLU helped him resolve it.
From the professor's version, it appears he went out of his way to show that he is not too sensitive to gay people, and this led to some complaints. Then, rather than smooth anything over, he threw a little gas on the fire.
Whatever, we're a bit too sensitive these days in many settings. I point out this story because it shows what happens when the "system" gets triggered.
In the case excerpted, the student may have been too sensitive first, but then the professor got his dander up and became too sensitive in return and inflamed the situation.
No one wins this kind of fight. The student's "cause" gets bad press and he hurts his own movement. The professor's reputation gets damaged.
Who's more to blame? The professor, I think. He knew he was playing with fire by illustrating an economic principle using the lifestyle of homosexuals.
Is it political correctness to add sexaul preference to the list of things that we'd better be diplomatic about in private discussion? For example, we are usually careful before, face to face, ridiculing each others' religion, or income, or family, etc. When a teach teashes, he is having what amounts to a private conversation with his class, and he should be diplomatic.
Then, when he writes his articles and books, or give a lecture that is by invitation or admission fee only, he can "let it all hang out."
My Battle With the Thought Police by Hans-Hermann Hoppe: "I have long regarded the political correctness movement as a threat to all independent thought, and I am deeply concerned about the level of self-censorship in academia. To counteract this tendency, I have left no political taboo untouched in my teaching. I believed that America was still free enough for this to be possible, and I assumed that my relative prominence offered me some extra protection.
When I became a victim of the thought police, I was genuinely surprised, and now I am afraid that my case has had a chilling effect on less established academics. Still, it is my hope that my fight and ultimate victory, even if they can not make a timid man brave, do encourage those with a fighting spirit to take up the cudgels.
If I made one mistake, it was that I was too cooperative and waited too long to go on the offensive."
If you've been following my blog, you might recall several recent posts about the Republicans and their verbal attacks on our judicial system, to try to whip up religious fervor to support some kind of theocratic test for judicial office, I think.
anyway, all this friendliness with the forces of extremism has caused our judges to fear for their safety. And so two Republican Supreme Court Justices, Kennedy and Thomas, appeared at a Congressional hearing to plead for more more for court security.
Now, if you were a Republican Justice feeling threatened by the religious extremist rhetoric from your own party, wouldn't you be just a teensy bit less likely to vote for even more church-state mixing? I think so. I think the extremist Republicans are risking driving away their Republican allies on the bench.
Yahoo! News - High Court Justices Seek Security Boost: "High Court Justices Seek Security Boost
Tue Apr 12, 5:40 PM ET
By HOPE YEN, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - Two Supreme Court justices urged Congress on Tuesday to provide more money to boost security at their building, saying recent attacks on federal judges underscore the need."
Here's a bit of background about the most hard-core of the theocrats, called "Dominionists".
They are quite influential, and seem to have a direct line to the White House, and their talking points are repeated ad nauseum by Limbaugh-Hannity-Coulter and their ilk.
Their current point of most aggressive attack is judges.
They want only theocratic judges to be appointed.
They want to impeach judges who issue rulings contrary to the theocracy movement's wishes.
RollingStone.com: The Crusaders : Politics: "The godfather of the Dominionists is D. James Kennedy, the most influential evangelical you've never heard of. A former Arthur Murray dance instructor, he launched his Florida ministry in 1959, when most evangelicals still followed Billy Graham's gospel of nonpartisan soul-saving. Kennedy built Coral Ridge Ministries into a $37-million-a-year empire, with a TV-and-radio audience of 3 million, by preaching that it was time to save America -- not soul by soul but election by election. After helping found the Moral Majority in 1979, Kennedy became a five-star general in the Christian army. Bush sought his blessing before running for president -- and continues to consult top Dominionists on matters of federal policy.
'Our job is to reclaim America for Christ, whatever the cost,' Kennedy says. 'As the vice regents of God, we are to exercise godly dominion and influence over our neighborhoods, our schools, our government, our literature and arts, our sports arenas, our entertainment media, our news media, our scientific endeavors -- in short, over every aspect and institution of human society.'"
So the famous and influential revenend James Dobson is calling the Supreme Court the moral equivalent of the KKK.
Why do you suppose Dobson wants to whip up hatred for judges and for our Constitutional system of checks and balances?
Extremist talk like this has always gone in in the USA to some extent, but the scary thing is how OPEN it is now, and how POWERFUL are the voices of those who espouse extremism.
The more educated we are, the less likely we are to succumb to extremism and follow demagogues. That's why authoritarian and totalitarian governments demonize the educated - they can't win our hearts and minds with bullshit propaganda, because we have been trained to think critically.
But extremists in the media are preaching mostly to people of typical modest education, people more likely to succumb to the influence of the extremist propaganda.
Ignoramous US Senators, Republican political activists, famous talk show hosts, religious leaders --- all these people spouting anti-constitutional rhetoric to inflame the masses into rejecting our system of checks and balances.
What do they really want?
Is it One Party Rule? A totalitarian state?
James Dobson compared Supreme Court justices to ... [Media Matters for America]: "James Dobson compared Supreme Court justices to the KKK
On his April 11 radio broadcast, Focus on the Family founder James Dobson continued his tirade against what he has termed 'judicial tyranny.' With Mark Levin, author of Men In Black: How the Supreme Court Is Destroying America (foreword by Rush Limbaugh), as his guest, Dobson likened Supreme Court justices to the Ku Klux Klan:
DOBSON: I heard a minister the other day talking about the great injustice and evil of the men in white robes, the Ku Klux Klan, that roamed the country in the South, and they did great wrong to civil rights and to morality. And now we have black-robed men, and that's what you're talking about."
There's a big freedom and culture issue out there that needs to be talked about. I'll touch on it for a few minutes, but as time goes on I intend to write more about it - suburban planning.
Those like me who live in large metro areas see very day the devastation wrought by the shift of money to the suburbs. Those of us, like me, who live in the suburbs, contribute to some bad effects:
- We leave behind a decaying urban core of decreasing property values.
- We require increased taxes for new roads and bridges to link our suburbs to the metro area.
- We require new businesses and stores near our new homes, hurting the old businesses in the urban core.
- We require new government funded fire and police services, paid for with new taxes.
- We need more gas to commute, making oil a scarcer commodity, driving up prices for everyone - including driving up prices for businesses, causing inflation.
- We are so overtaxed now that we refuse to pay to fix the urban core of rot and decay we helped cause. And so the rot expands and gets worse, just like rust on a car.
Again, I am a suburbanite too, just as guilty as anyone else.
Many people have become sensitive to the issue of how the growth of suburbia has actually resulted in a huge shift of tax spending toward the wealthy, away from the needy. All those new roads cost a great deal of money, and all those new civic facilities cost money.
Every time the government builds or improves a suburban road, it's like welfare to the rich, in a sense, subsidizing the flight to suburbia.
Some metro communities, particularly in the Northwest, have tried to provide by zoning laws some incentives to encourage people to rebuild the urban core.
Imagine something: What if, 40 years ago, the government had provided tax incentives to encourage developers to tear down old urban run down neighborhoods and create new suburban style homes?
Then we would have "recycled" urban land.
There would be far fewer new roads and bridges to build now, and billions fewer miles to commute, holding down oil demand and oil prices.
Taxes would be lower due less need for complete new community facilities far outside the core.
There would not be a huge urban rusting effect.
The poverty pocket would have been contained in relatively small are of the urban core, rather than spread throughout the borders of the old cities.
Just imagine - if we had used true urban planning and foresight 40 years ago, we might have a much more vibrant and alive urban core in our old cities today.
Things are improving somewhat here in St. Louis over the last few years. But one thing we don't see: We don't see the suburbanites willing to pay to help improve the decayed urban core.
I wonder what we could have done with all that Iraq money, and what we could be doing if the 50% gas price increase had instead been a special tax paid to the government for civic projects, rather than paid (in effect) to OPEC?
I'm not a proponent of huge tax increases, but we are paying the Iraq tax at the pump already, and we are not seeing any benefit from it ---- just the detrimental effects on our pocketbooks and our businesses.
So, suburban planning has its merits for improving our living conditions and economic conditions.
Keep in mind that without suburban planning, we are in a situation where the wealthy suburbanites are requiring subsidies for roads and bridges and civic facilities, and are causing all of us to pay higher oil prices.
And so, it's not a freedom issue (as in "I'll live where I want to") --- we are free to live anywhere we want to. The issue is whether we as a community want to encourage people to recycle the urban core, or whether we want to encourage people to build new cores far away (with all the attendant problems and expenses).
By the way: For those who live in urban areas, have you noticed that the earliest suburban neighborhoods, from 40 years ago, are rotting and becoming their own blighted areas, just like the old urban core has rotted? ---- Just pointing that out.
The writer below is OPPOSED to suburban planning.
City planning by Those Who Know Best: "Many readers may be unfamiliar with New Urbanism and Smart Growth, two planning ideologies that are the hippest thing in the world of urban design. While the fixations of trendy planners might not register on the list of things that average Americans think about, these new utopian land-use ideals are filtering down into government agencies and city councils, and might eventually impact the way we all live.
It's time for more of us to get concerned, and to pay attention to what the planners are thinking, especially as O.C. seems to be at a planning transition point - continuing to spread out southward (i.e.: Rancho Mission Viejo) even as it rises upward with new high-rise proposals in more densely populated areas of Anaheim, Santa Ana and Irvine.
Recent history, in fact, shows that crucial debates in Orange County are to some degree an outgrowth of that new way of thinking about land-use planning. The attempts to build the CenterLine light-rail system despite the Orange County Transportation Authority's own data proving that the system would not move more than a fraction of a percent of county commuters is just one example of it.
It was never about transportation, but about planning, about implementing the transportation system that is at the core of the New Urbanist thinking, which emphasizes high-density urban living and eschews the supposed wastefulness of the car culture."
[snip]
Interesting read from a libertarian professor about how the government is advancing censorship, and we are letting it happen, and even the ACLU is off track in its defense of free speech.
Creeping Censorship by Tibor R. Machan
[snip]
Next, once the idea of individual rights has been gradually eroded this way, it no longer needs to be a public sphere for it to come under government supervision. Thus we see the push for the ugly creeping censorship that now faces us.
Sadly, the one organization that is alert to it, the American Civil Liberties Union, is mounting a resistance with bad arguments – the ACLU is talking about how "indecency" cannot be defined, as if that were the main reason against the proposed policy. Yet even if "indecency" were perfectly definable – just as if "pornography" were – it would not authorize anyone at all to ban it. Free men and women must self-regulate these matters. Parents must deal with such hazards vis-à-vis their children, let alone themselves, not a bunch of politicians and bureaucrats who have no basic right to tell us what to watch, what to say, what to read or anything.
Let me tell you, this is really scary. And there isn’t even any allusion to terrorism here, so the folks pushing for this censorship are evidently very confident that they have worn us all down in our resistance to the creeping expansion of government power. I wish we could prove them wrong.
It's just a thought of mine: Is Bush allowing OPEC to make windfall profits on oil now, as payback for letting us invade Iraq without raising too much stink?
Dealmaking is part of politics. I think we're seeing a deal.
Would the American people have wanted to invade Iraq, if we had known Bush made a deal with OPEC, and we were going to have to tolerate huge oil price increases, resulting in a 50% increase in gas prices, and such increases would last years?
I think we would have been against the invasion, if we had know of this outrageous cost. Gas prices are dragging down the economy, and deeply harming the pocketbooks of low income citizens.
Gasoline price hits new record - Apr. 10, 2005: "NEW YORK (Reuters) - The average U.S. retail gasoline price rose 19 cents over the past three weeks to a fresh record high just below $2.29 a gallon, an industry analyst said Sunday.
But the price that U.S. motorists pay for gasoline at the pump may be peaking, Lundberg survey editor Trilby Lundberg said, because gas prices have caught up with recently skyrocketing crude oil prices, which slid in the past week.
The national average for self-serve regular unleaded gasoline was nearly $2.29 a gallon on April 8, up about 19 cents per gallon in the past three weeks, according to the nationwide Lundberg survey of about 7,000 gas stations."
Back to the theocratics for a minute, and their push to have states permit pharmacists to refuse to fill legal prescriptions on morals grounds.
DailyKOS has a thread about how non-judgmental pharmacies can capitalize on the moral exhibitionist pharmacy movement, by advertising that they are a "Patients' Rights Pharmacy", which fills all legal prescriptions. Good idea.
The excerpt below is merely one comment in the thread. It's about a related issue:
Will the "moral" phamacists also refuse to fill Viagra prescriptions for unmarried men? Will they refuse to sell condoms at all, or just refuse to sell them to unmarried men and women?
And, I wonder how in the world the moral pharmacists will attempt to establish whether someone is married or not? Will they take the word of the customer? In determining whether to accept the word of the customer, the pharmacist will have to judge credibility. That means the pharmacist will be refusing to take the word of some customers based on how they appear or act. This will lead to legal action for illegal discrimination, if the pharmacist has a pattern of not taking the word of persons of color or ethnicity.
Anyway, if the moral pharmacy movement wants to really take off, get Walgreens on board. Since the Mormons took over Walgreens some years ago, Walgreens eliminated its liquor section, and I think they are doing fine. If Walgreens got rid of birth control pills and Viagra and condoms, the public would still shop there. Womens' groups would raise hell, to no effect. Men would get their Viagra and condoms at Walmart, and women would get their birth control pills at Walmart or at the grocery store pharmacies. And American life would continue pretty much the same as before.
If a new pharmacy chain called "Patients Rights Pharmacies" sprang up, it would fail most likely, because Walgreens is just too darn big.
Daily Kos :: "We Are a Patients' Rights Pharmacy": "'Pharmacists for Ramming-our-pretend-morals-down-women's-throats' are only, and I mean only, interested in controlling drugs women can have; they are not even talking about objecting to giving unmarried men pecker-enlarging drugs. That is the part of this that is so very revealing. This is an attempt by the RW to control not only the sexual behavior of women, but all their behavior. If we are pregnant against our will, doesn't that control more than who with, where, how, and why we have sex? It controls everything about us, except what we think. Maybe they will have figured out a way to control that by the time we can no longer control our sex lives. It's funny, but the only women who won't be controlled will be our lesbian sisters, when all this enforced fertility comes to pass. I wonder if they've thought of that?"
Title of Post (if underlined, it's also a Link):
Conservative Opines on Judicial Assassination, yet again - A DailyKOS thread
Today I blogged about GOP activists' call for Stalinist purges of judges at a recent conference, as reported in the Washington Post.
Now I am pointing out what they are saying about this the call for purges over at DailyKOS.
The folks at DailyKOS are not pulling many punches in their critique of the conference and the participants.
For those of you sympathetic to the right wingers' call for purges, you might find it entertaining to see how Democratic activists are reacting.
Daily Kos :: Yet Another Conservative Opines on Judicial Assassination
by Hunter
Sat Apr 9th, 2005 at 19:04:22 PDT
From The Washington Post:
Lawyer-author Edwin Vieira told the gathering that [Supreme Court Justice Anthony M.] Kennedy should be impeached because his philosophy, evidenced in his opinion striking down an anti-sodomy statute, 'upholds Marxist, Leninist, satanic principles drawn from foreign law.'
Ominously, Vieira continued by saying his 'bottom line' for dealing with the Supreme Court comes from Joseph Stalin. 'He had a slogan, and it worked very well for him, whenever he ran into difficulty: 'no man, no problem,' ' Vieira said.
[...] The conference was organized during the height of the Schiavo controversy by a new group, the Judeo-Christian Council for Constitutional Restoration. This was no collection of fringe characters. The two-day program listed two House members; aides to two senators; representatives from the Family Research Council and Concerned Women for America; conservative activists Alan Keyes and Morton C. Blackwell; the lawyer for Terri Schiavo's parents; Alabama's 'Ten Commandments' judge, Roy Moore; and DeLay, who canceled to attend the pope's funeral.
As Milbank brightly points out, the full Stalin quote is 'Death solves all problems: no man, no problem.'
Edwin Vieira has made a name for himself decrying the unconstitutionality of paper money, among other things. So ya know he's not f---ing nuts or anything.
At this point, it seems prominent batshit-crazy conservatives are running to outdo themselves in just how suggestively they can muse over the murder of federal judges they don't like. Seriously, WTF? Is this a contest I don't know about? Reading up on the guest list for this conference, I am for no apparent reason reminded of a particular South Park episode depicting hooded members of a Klan rally playing 'what's the funniest thing you've got on under your robe?'
Does the conservative who can get closest to openly endorsing judicial assassinations without getting dragged off in handcuffs get to take home a pie or something?
(Via Atrios)
Update [2005-4-9 22:42:53 by Hunter]: Point of note, I am sorry if the 'pie' reference detracted from the seriousness of this post, but piteous humor is the only thing keeping me from throwing furniture through my front window. Here's a guy who stood up in the middle of a conference and approvingly cited Stalin's executions as a good 'bottom line' for dealing with troublesome Supreme Court judges. Spare me the sanctimonious, prissy crap, conservative apologists. These guys know what they're saying. And God help you if one of these murders actually takes place."
Title of Post (if underlined, it's also a Link):
GOP activists hint at Stalinist purges of judges - Cite Justice Kennedy as their enemy
The GOP's hard core supporters on the Christian Right are coming out into the open with their most radical positions these days, since they are riding high on the wave of the 2004 elections.
This Washington Post story (excerpted below) is chilling. Famous Christian Right activists are getting very close to calling for Stalinist purges of judges with whom they disagree. Violence is hinted at, yet again. I blogged about a Senator's violence-related comments a couple days ago.
There are three very positive side effects of the public suggestions of violence and purges emanating from the Christian Right:
- Democrats' fears of the Christian Right are being well confirmed, making Democrats more loyal to the party, and causing Democrats to speak out in private and in public.
- Moderate Republicans are offended and embarassed at being associated with such radicals.
- Conservative judges are becoming quite concerned, and maybe they will begin to rethink the appropriateness of allowing so much religious influence in government. The Supreme Court in particular has been a friend of the GOP, but that friendship is being severely tested.
And the Verdict on Justice Kennedy Is: Guilty (washingtonpost.com)
By Dana Milbank
Saturday, April 9, 2005; Page A03
Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy is a fairly accomplished jurist, but he might want to get himself a good lawyer -- and perhaps a few more bodyguards.
Conservative leaders meeting in Washington yesterday for a discussion of "Remedies to Judicial Tyranny" decided that Kennedy, a Ronald Reagan appointee, should be impeached, or worse.
Phyllis Schlafly, doyenne of American conservatism, said Kennedy's opinion forbidding capital punishment for juveniles "is a good ground of impeachment." To cheers and applause from those gathered at a downtown Marriott for a conference on "Confronting the Judicial War on Faith," Schlafly said that Kennedy had not met the "good behavior" requirement for office and that "Congress ought to talk about impeachment."
Next, Michael P. Farris, chairman of the Home School Legal Defense Association, said Kennedy "should be the poster boy for impeachment" for citing international norms in his opinions. "If our congressmen and senators do not have the courage to impeach and remove from office Justice Kennedy, they ought to be impeached as well."
Not to be outdone, lawyer-author Edwin Vieira told the gathering that Kennedy should be impeached because his philosophy, evidenced in his opinion striking down an anti-sodomy statute, "upholds Marxist, Leninist, satanic principles drawn from foreign law."
Ominously, Vieira continued by saying his "bottom line" for dealing with the Supreme Court comes from Joseph Stalin. "He had a slogan, and it worked very well for him, whenever he ran into difficulty: 'no man, no problem,' " Vieira said.
A minister and Christian right political activist writes an open letter to a Congressman accusing the GOP of using the abortion issue to keep inflaming its base, rather than affecting real reform.
It's interesting to watch the development of rips in the fabric of the GOP coalition.
Republicans and Abortion
by William Reid Dalton III
[TO]
Hon. Jo Ann Emerson
Member of Congress
United States House of Representatives
Dear Mrs. Emerson,
I wonder, sometimes, if I still belong in the Republican Party. The Party and I go back more years than I care to remember. When we were debating abortion in College Republican meetings in the 1970's, there was only one question: Would we ban all abortions, except to save the life of the mother? Or would we also make exception for cases of rape and incest? I was on the "hard" right. It seemed to me logical consistency required it. If the principle was to protect the lives of the innocent, the children of rape and incest were no more guilty than any others. And if that wasn't the principle, then the only purpose of abortion laws would be to punish women guilty of misconduct. Which of course was what triggered feminist ire at that time – punishing women alone for what both men and women bore guilt. So we stuck to the hard line. We wouldn't be vulnerable to the charge of hypocrisy. But it was always assumed that after we succeeded in overturning Roe that the campaign against abortion would be undertaken in the States, just as it had been before Roe.
The problem was that this logically consistent position did not have public support. If there was any hope of passing a repeal of Roe v. Wade, compromise would be necessary. This, incidentally, marked the line of division between supporters of Gerald Ford and supporters of Ronald Reagan, the pragmatists and the idealists.
[snip]
I was part of that 1980 campaign, a candidate for the General Assembly, endorsed by Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority.
[snip]
Today the Republican Party is involved in a debate that was inconceivable in the 70's and 80's. Instead of overturning Roe v. Wade, the talk, such as your own H. J. Res. 4, is to create its mirror image. By proposing a Constitutional Amendment to extend the protection of that body of courtmade law under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments "to all human beings irrespective of age, health, function, or condition of dependency, including their unborn offspring at every state of their biological development," you would join the Roe justices in robbing the States of their constitutionally reserved authority to legislate standards of medical practice, of the degrees of homicide, and defining appropriate protection at each of stage of human gestation. I would give it back to them.
[snip]
You have staked out a position that is not achievable. My position, while more likely to be achieved, is not, as was the "moderate" position of the 70's, pragmatic. It is, in fact, principled – based upon the very constitutional principles in which our nation's government has its origin.
[snip]
Consider, if you will, what I have heard reported, that the Bush Administration, and Republican strategists in general, are interested not in resolving the abortion issue, but in keeping it alive as a motive for continued campaign contributions and voter mobilization.
I've recently blogged a couple of times about Real Science vs. Religious Science, as part of the debate about the GOP's embracing of the theocratic anti-science movement.
In religion, if the real facts do not correspond to some articles of faith, the articles of faith are unaffected. In "creation science" when the facts contradict the faith, the religious scientists reinterpret the facts, or keep digging for more facts, but they DO NOT abandon or modify the articles of faith. The articles of faith in creation science are that the earth is about 6,000 years old and that evolution through natural selection does not occur.
Now let's see how Real Science handles the problem of facts contradicting doctrine.
Below is an excerpt from a news item, showing a very fresh quick and dirty example of how "Real Science" works.
In astronomy, scientists had developed a theory to explain how some kinds of old stars can re-ignite in a superhuge flash. The theory predicted a timeline for the re-ignition. According to theory, the re-ignition should take several hundred years.
Well, a recent observation of a star showed that the timeline was wrong. A star re-ignited in a huge flash in a very short period of time (a few years), about 100 times sooner than the theory predicted.
In other words,
the theory failed to predict an event accurately - the theory failed, it was inadequate - Facts proved that the theory was not able to explain as observed event.
Notice the quote from a scientist in the article: " 'Sakurai's object went through the first phases of this sequence in just a few years -- 100 times faster than we expected,' Zijlstra said.
So we had to revise our models.".
"So we had to revise our models." ---- In other words, when the theory is wrong then "real scientists" revise the theory. This is exactly the opposite of what "religious scientists" do.
I understand the emotional need of the religiously faithful to see their beliefs confirmed with real facts, hence the need to have religious science accepted (and even mandated by law). It's the old problem of faith, and how to maintain it - Philosophers have written about it for thousands of years. It's hard to maintain strong faith. And so the faithful want real factual confirmation of their faith, hence "creation science". Creation science is not science - but it makes the faithful feel good.
CNN.com - Reborn star surprises astronomers - Apr 8, 2005: "Computer simulations indicated that heat-spurred convection would bring hydrogen from the star's outer envelope down into the helium shell, driving a brief flash of new nuclear fusion. This would cause a sudden increase in brightness. The original computer models suggested a sequence of observable events that would occur over a few hundred years.
'Sakurai's object went through the first phases of this sequence in just a few years -- 100 times faster than we expected,' Zijlstra said. 'So we had to revise our models.'
The new scheme predicted the star should rapidly reheat and begin to ionize gases in its surrounding region. 'This is what we now see in our latest VLA observations,' Zijlstra said."
The thread from DailyKOS excerpted below is a lesson in political strategy, from the reality based community.
I hesitate to call the thread "liberal" or "Democrat", because in the 21st Century we should not be having to mount a major political campaign just to get people to believe in basic fundamental science.
But the right wingers and the GOP are SO anti-science that they are almost threatening to turn the clock back 1000 years to the dark ages.
The reality based community, whatever their political persuasion, has a great interest in stopping this ridiculous public campaign to stamp out science (at least any science that might possibly suggest that the earth is older than 6,000 years or that evolution occurs).
The talking points below point out that Bush's monied corporate supporters all make their living off of the true hard sciences, those same sciences that maintain that the earth is billions of years old, and that evolution occurs, etc, etc.
Yet these corporations support the anti-science GOP.
So, Does George W. Bush REALLY believe that science is BS, like his most hardcore supporters seem to believe?
We say "NO", that Bush does NOT believe science is BS. And we'd like to force him to say so.
That's what the thread is all about. Enjoy.
Use Science as wedge issue to force GOP to reject nutty anti-science base (from DailyKOS)
Young Earthers form the bulk of support for Intelligent Design Creationism, despite the fact that most of the Discovery Institute's top shills will profess being old earthers if you corner them and berate them long enough. Young Earthers deny pretty much every field of natural science. That means geology (Energy), astronomy (Space), biology (Pharmaceutical, biotech, and health care workers), and physics (Defense technology). Yes, BushCo will use them without shame, but the industry captains and senior managers understand quite well that science is their breath of life. Make it a big enough stink so that the Neo-Christain right flips out and starts raving against science, and you force the BushCos to either loudly denounce creationism, or loudly support it. And believe me, they absolutely do not want to do either, because they understand the danger. And besides, you sideline them with a non-issue for once.
Everyone in this nation knows that in one form or another, science impacts their lives positively. Whatever else one thinks or says about science, it delivers the goods. If your children has virulent appendicitis, you can pray to Buddha, cast horoscopes, go to psychics, try acupuncture, whatever, and that child will die a painful, septic death. Or you can go to the hospital for a routine operation and medications, and the child will recover as if nothing happened. Yet we let them, the Bushistas, get away with hijacking a good chunk of the Christian community based, in part, on discrediting science, despite the life-saving gifts it has bestowed.
"People often seem to forget that Christian doesn't equal Fundamentalist. Just as the politicaly conservative have high-jacked terms like pro-life they have also hijacked the term "Christian." I am a born-again evangelical. What that means literally is that I have had a spiritual experience and I'm willing to talk about it, it doesn't mean that I hate science, gays, or anyone else. Except maybe fundamentalists who have hijacked the terms I used to use to describe my beliefs, they suck."-NamelessSoldier
I believe that science is a potential wedge issue for democrats, because BushCo and key members of Congress have hitched their star to the Theocratic Conservatives who almost to a man reject evolutionary biology, looming oil shortages, climate issues, environmental pollution issues, and so forth. To defeat Bush and Co. you only need to cleave off a few percentage points of their theocon base and a few points of their secular base. You do that, they're dead in the water. I'd send up a trial balloon by hanging the antiscience moniker on DeLay, Santorum, or Frist, and see if it has any effect.
It may be useful because by pushing it, you force BushCo to publicly side with the Theocratic Conservatives. At least, I don't think they really can come out strongly in favor of science/evolution and survive politically. Although I should note that the WH Science Advisor, Richard Marburger, has stated quietly but openly that Intelligent Design Creationism is nonsense. So, even if they do the right thing, science wins. But by forcing their hand, I'm guessing they will be far more likely to come out strongly for what has morphed into an entire anti-science genre of fringe nutballs, and by highlighting that issue you drive away several groups of support for the Bushistas without losing votes.
Hard-nosed, pragmatic Defense Hawks fully understand that our ability to project military power is utterly contingent on our scientific prowess. Both educated Christians and atheist GOP supporters (Oh yes, there are plenty), who are waffling already, especially science types, are repulsed by Intelligent Design Creationism and the whole anti-intellectualism of the Neo-right.
The Schiavo memo is that nasty political action memo circulated to Republican Senators, which encouraged them to speak out for action to save Schiavo, because the issue would hurt Democrats.
The Republican spin machine then lied and said that the memo was a Democrat forgery, like the Dan Rather CBS memogate fiasco.
Well, a staffer for Republican Senator Mel Martinez has admitted writing the memo:
The legal counsel to Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) admitted yesterday that he was the author of a memo citing the political advantage to Republicans of intervening in the case of Terri Schiavo, the senator said in an interview last night.
Ok, now that the Republicans have admitted the memo was authentic, what to do about all those demonizing spinwits who put out the smug self-assured BS that the memo was absolutely a fake. See below for excerpts.
Will all those spinwits apologize or issue corrections? Listen carefully to them.
Here are some examples of the Right Wing spin universe, proudly declaring with utter assurance that the Schiavo memo was fake:
All excerpts from:
So much crow, so little time - Waiting on mea culpas (from DailyKOS) and/or from
Love it when conservatives make assess of themselves (from AmericaBlog).
Rush Limbaugh:
"Truth Detector: Supposed GOP Schiavo Memo Forged by Democrats."
Tucker Carlson:
"Last week a memo surfaced, reportedly written by the Republican members of Congress explaining how to make hay with the Terri Schiavo case, the Talking Points Memo, Ah, I think within a week or two it will become clear that that memo was a forgery, possibly written by Democrats on the hill in an effort to discredit Republicans. Bloggers are saying that now and it sounds like they may be right."
Fred Barnes:
"So rather than an example of aggressive reporting, the memo story turns out to be yet another instance of crude liberal bias, in this case against both Republicans and those who fought to have Schiavo's feeding tube restored. Naturally, the memo had a second life when the story was picked up by other news outlets, pundits, and columnists. How did ABC and others get wind of the memo in the first place? It came from 'Democratic aides,' according to the New York Times, who 'said it had been distributed to Senate Republicans.' Not exactly a disinterested source."
Newsmax:
There was just one problem: Closer examination by The American Spectator, talk show hosts Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, The Weekly Standard, and Accuracy in Media (AIM) indicates that the memo is a fraud - a political dirty trick, if you will, specifically aimed at causing public revulsion at Republicans.
Michelle Malkin:
I suspect that no one at the Post or ABC News still believes the amateurish, unsigned, misspelled memo was circulated by Republican Party leaders.
Accuracy in Media:
Accuracy in Media today questioned the authenticity of the much-publicized "GOP Talking Points" memo on the Terri Schiavo case.
In the Agora:
On Friday four staffers accused a renegade aide to Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) of distributing forged "talking points" to members of the media and claiming Republican authorship. In the Agora's extensive investigations in the alleged "GOP" Schiavo talking points memo reveal possible tricks from low level Democratic aides. Two of the four GOP staffers tell ITA they were eyewitnesses to the exchange.
Sen. Bennet:
Sen. Robert F. Bennett, Utah Republican, said the issue "stinks" of a news fabrication similar to the one that engulfed CBS anchorman Dan Rather during the 2004 presidential campaign, after he reported that President Bush did not fulfill his duties while in the National Guard, citing documents that CBS later admitted could not be authenticated.
Since the Schiavo memo was SO high profile, we should reasonably expect retractions and corrections. Please watch for those to occur. I expect you will see some. I wonder how much prominence will be given to the correction. The blowhards are SO smug when running down Democrats, that it's hard to imagine they will give reasonable prominence to admitting being completely wrong.
In the piece excerpted below, Media Matters for America takes on the Republican spin machine with regard to the alleged liberal bias among professors.
In the article, there is a quote from Bush's political guru Karl Rove, where he is asked how to identify a Democrat, and he says "Someone with a doctorate."
I can well recall many times hearing Rush Limbaugh demonize the educated by referring to "pointy headed academics".
Whenever I heard Limbaugh demonize the educated, I recalled history lessons. Historically, authoritarian politicians appeal to the uneducated masses by demonizing the "elite".
Educated people, like journalists and professors, and even lawyers, are accustomed to viewing things skeptically. We read, we criticize, we DO NOT accept the preaching of our politicians at face value. We have become accustomed and comfortable with thinking critically.
The educated will SPEAK OUT AGAINST the authoritarians, until it becomes dangerous to do so.
And so, the authoritarian movement must DISCREDIT the voices of the educated.
If you want to mobilize the uneducated populace toward authoritarianism, one way is to demonize the educated.
Do a little studying, and you will see that the great authoritarian regimes on the last hundred years demonized the educated in almost exactly the same way as the Republicans do today.
And while you are thinking about these things, you might ask yourself why it is that the higher the level of education, the more likely you are to be left-leaning.
Part of education is to respectfully and responsibly address differing viewpoints. In order to justify your thesis, you have to show that you understand the opposing viewpoint in good detail, and then show why your viewpoint is better. You have to prove your case, not just scream that you are right.
And so the educational system teaches the value of marshalling facts to support your viewpoint, and teaches respect for opposing viewpoints, and gets you accustomed to a more reasoned form of debate.
Authoritarian regimes cannot withstand the scrutiny of reasoned debate and study, and cannot justify their authoritarianism using true facts and reasoned argument - they must propagandize, demonize, and lie. That's why they must trash the educated, who stand in the way of the propaganda movement. Propaganda --- That's been going on blatantly for quite a while, as I've been blogging about.
Our own authoritarian movement her in the USA has a religious flavor to it, and I'll keep blogging about the growth of Theocracy.
Wash. Times news, opinion pieces peddled flawed ... [Media Matters for America]: "Moreover, available data suggest that highly educated Americans may be more left-leaning than the general population. Exit polls from the November 2004 presidential election indicate that 55 percent of voters who have postgraduate study experience voted for Democrat John Kerry, compared to 44 percent for Republican George W. Bush. (Interestingly, when New Yorker staff writer Nicholas Lemann asked Bush adviser Karl Rove how to identify 'who's a Democrat' as opposed to a Republican for a 2003 profile, Rove answered: 'Somebody with a doctorate.')"
Well well, some moderation from Senator Frist --- He says judges acted fairly in the Schiavo case.
Why the moderation? Just a couple of weeks ago Frist propelled the Save Schiavo bill through the Senate. The Save Schiavo bill was anti-conservative in the worst way, treading upon the US Constitution and States' Rights. The Save Schiavo bill was accompanied by the entire Republican universe, pretty much, claiming that "liberal activist judges" were forcing their culture of death on Schiavo.
For the past week, I have been seeing references in the media to how "polls" are showing that about 70% of the general public disapproved the Republican Save Schiavo bill. I don't have links to the polls yet.
Then, as I blogged about a couple of days ago, a Republican Senator, Cornyn, said he "understood" why people are so very upset at judges that they might resort to violence (ang he didn't mention that it was ignorant demonizing by the right wing that whipped people into a frenzy).
So, we can speculate about Frist's motives in backtracking. Maybe he understands that the American People as a whole are not as extremist as his own party has become, and he wants to stop the bad press and the bleeding. That's the most likely reason, pure politics.
The Republican leadership has not shown any signs that it intends to stop demonizing those with who it disagrees --- because whipping the faithful into a feeding frenzy has been great electoral politics.
However, the Schiavo case has backfired on the Republicans (at least a lot of moderate Republicans are pissed at them), and so they have to cool it for awhile, hence the words of respect and peace from Frist. We'll see how long Frist is willing to be "reasonable". Not long I bet.
Yahoo! News - Frist Says Courts in Schiavo Case Acted Fairly: "Reuters
Frist Says Courts in Schiavo Case Acted Fairly
By Thomas Ferraro
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senate Republican leader Bill Frist said on Tuesday that courts had acted fairly in the Terri Schiavo 'right-to-die' case, differing sharply from a vow of retribution by his House of Representatives counterpart, Tom DeLay.
'I believe we have a fair and independent judiciary today,' said Frist, now trying to resolve a battle with Democrats over judicial nominations that threatens to tie his chamber into knots. 'I respect that.'
Frist and DeLay, as the Senate and House majority leaders, had led a charge for emergency legislation calling on the federal courts to review the Schiavo case.
President Bush flew back from a Texas vacation to sign the bill into law.
But federal courts refused to intervene and let stand a Florida state court order to remove a feeding tube from the brain-damaged woman. Schiavo's husband had said she would not have wanted to live in her condition, but her parents fought against the tube's removal.
Schiavo died last week after spending 15 years in what courts had ruled was a persistent vegetative state.
DeLay, a Texas Republican, said afterward: 'We will look at an arrogant, out-of-control, unaccountable judiciary that thumbed their nose at the Congress and president when given jurisdiction to hear this case anew.'
In a written statement, DeLay said: 'The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior.'
'FAIR AND INDEPENDENT'
Frist, asked about the furor over the case, told reporters, 'I will let members (of Congress) ... speak for themselves.'
But the Tennessee Republican said he believed the courts 'acted in a fair and independent way.'"
The following is a short excerpt from a nice history lesson about Abraham Lincoln's suspension of the civil right of having a judge review the legality of one's imprisonment.
This civil right is called "Habeus Corpus" or "Produce the body [in the courtroom]". It's mentioned in the Constitution, by the way.
George W. Bush has in effect suspended the writ of habeus corpus for anyone the military or intelligence community chooses to round up. That's why there have been so many legal actions filed against the indefinate imprisonments wihtout trial.
Habeus Corpus is a civil right with long pre-Revolution roots. It's a fundamental freedom of civilized peoples.
And it's thoroughly Patriotic to raise holy hell about any government action that threatens the writ of habeus corpus, or seems to be a backdoor method of violating the writ.
Remember to old maxim about how power corrupts? So we have to keep an eye on our government, whether they be of our favorite party or another party.
Abraham Lincoln’s Suspension of Habeas Corpus
President Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus lacked both moral and constitutional justification. It confined thousands in military prisons for opposing war and voided years of jurisprudence. The Constitution never gives the president the right to suspend habeas corpus, nor can that right be inferred from the commander-in-chief clause or the president’s duty to faithfully execute the laws. Lincoln’s suspension was not only illegal; it was also dangerous, threatening the separation of powers that prevents any one branch of government from becoming too powerful. Moreover, his actions inspired future presidents to ignore the Constitution during times of crisis. Especially today, with the post-9/11 crackdown on civil liberties, Americans would be wise to reread Ex parte Merryman.
The following is the introductory passage on the website called "Theocracy Watch". It's a fascinating website, that makes the case that the religious extremists are in control of the Federal Government, and shows their ties to the major factions of religious extremism in the USA.
If you are one of the religious extremists, then you will ready Thoecracy Watch with some joy in your heart.
Read the introduction, below, and you will get a pretty good feel for how far we've down the path toward theocracy we have come. People of importance are talking about the threat of theocracy openly. It's kinda scary.
Rise of the Religious Right in the Republican Party: "'This Republican Party of Lincoln has become a party of theocracy.' U.S. Representative Christopher Shays, R-CT, (New York Times, March 23, 2005)
Theocracy is derived from the two Greek words Qeo/j(Theos) meaning 'God' and kra/tein (cratein) meaning 'to rule.' Theocracy is the civil rule of God, or the belief in government by divine guidance.
The powerful Majority Leader of the United States House of Representatives, Tom DeLay (R-TX) embodies government by divine guidance:
He [God] is using me, all the time, everywhere, to stand up for a biblical worldview in everything that I do and everywhere I am. He is training me.
Tom DeLay represents an ultraconservative religious movement seeking to impose a narrow theological agenda on secular society. Chip Berlet and Margaret Quigley, senior analysts at Political Research Associates, have named this movement the theocratic right:
The predominantly Christian leadership envisions a religiously-based authoritarian society; therefore we prefer to describe this movement as the 'theocratic right.'
Television preacher Pat Robertson sent out a memo to his political organization in 1986 calling on his followers to 'Rule the world for God.' That call to arms sums up the goals of the theocratic right, and explains their Congressional leadership which suspends the basic rules of Democracy: all that matters is winning, because it is for God. The ends justify the means.
This web site explores the narrow theological agenda that the theocratic right is imposing on secular society. Twenty-five years ago it targeted the Republican Party as the vehicle through which it could advance its agenda. Today it has extraordinary power in the U.S. government, with two branches solidly in its pocket and the third, the judiciary, just a couple of retirements away. It is also making great strides in schools, in the media, and in State Legislatures.
This movement values guns and the death penalty. It values the rich at the expense of the poor. It favors corporations at the expense of individuals. It seeks to eliminate virtually all regulations that protect the environment, worker safety, and public health.
It opposes international treaties and the United Nations. In his book The New World Order, Pat Robertson accused Presidents Woodrow Wilson, Jimmy Carter, and the first President George Bush of being agents for Satan because they supported international groups of nations such as the United Nations.
In an effort to fulfill the dominionist belief in the manifest destiny of 'Christian' nations, the theocratic right values an aggressive foreign policy. And It claims that the principle of separation of church and state is 'a myth.'
It is possessed of absolute moral righteousness. It tolerates no dissent.
The theocratic right is not a conservative movement. It is striving to radically change the status quo. From a training manual of the theocratic right:
We will not try to reform the existing institutions. We only intend to weaken them, and eventually destroy them."
The Rude Pundit is over the top but entertaining. He's a Rant and Rave commentator who scores points. He's kinda like a drunk and disorderly loudmouth, preaching politics in crude terms.
And he does not take himself too seriously.
However, he does make good points. In the excerpt below, the Rude Pundit tears into the upcoming gathering of theocrats in D.C. For each group of theocrats, he has some choice rude words.
His best point is this: (to paraphrase) For those who support Judge Roy Moore (of Ten Commandments fame) ---- Why is that when the judge ordered the installation of a clearly illegal religious monument in a court building, the judge was NOT being an activist, yet when a more powerful judge ordered the removal of the illegal religious monument, the more powerful judge was being "activist"?
The Rude Pundit
The Rude Pundit wishes he could attend the hatefest this week in D.C. called "Confronting the Judicial War on Faith."
He wishes he could attend the many and sundry sessions, [snip]
Like Rick Scarborough, head of Vision America, which seeks to create a network of "Patriot Pastors" who get their flock out to vote like the good sheep they are. Scarborough has finely tuned his demented paranoia. Said Scarborough in his "book" Enough is Enough: "Those who are anti-God and anti-Christian in America have infiltrated the highest levels of the educational establishment. They have a philosophical commitment to eliminating any vestige of biblical Christianity from American thought and life. They are well-positioned, well-funded and well-connected. They are a very small minority in America, yet their level of commitment is rarely matched among Christians."
He wishes he could attend the Judge Roy Moore hookah party, where all the participants will get to suck down that sweet intoxicating smoke which says that putting a huge goddamn monument in a public building is not activism, but saying get rid of the fucking thing is.
[snip]
And why? Why would the Rude Pundit miss such a gathering of blithering, dithering, dangerous idiots, assholes, and charlatans? Such chicanery is manna from heaven, material for bloggery for weeks.
Because the Rude Pundit despises traitors. And anyone who believes that the judiciary of this nation has run amok and must be reined in through legislation, impeachment threats, and/or violence is a traitor, an anti-American Christian extremist who wishes to transform this country into something it is not. A revolutionary in the worst sense, a terrorism-enabler, if you will, but terrorism from white people, 'cause, you know, it's different. And they deserve contempt, derision, and prosecution.
Excerpt speaks for itself.
See also the previous post below.
Republicans are in effect encouraging violence against judges by speaking with incredible disdain and disrespect whenever they disagree with a court's ruling.
"Congressman Conyers rips Senator Cornyn for justifying violence against judges
During the protracted coverage and debate of the Schiavo matter, I was struck by the disrespectful and reckless language being used against judges. One by one, my Republican colleagues took the House floor to attack judges as 'unconscionable,' lacking 'human compassion,' needing to be held in 'contempt,' and having 'answering to do.' I remember thinking that such dehumanizing rhetoric is especially dangerous in these times towards anyone, let alone judges.
[snip]
But there is no excuse, no excuse, for a Member of Congress to take our discourse to this ugly and dangerous extreme.
My message is not subtle today. It is simple. To my Republican colleagues: you are playing with fire, you are playing with lives, and you must stop.
Senator Cornyn and Congressman DeLay should immediately retract these ill considered statements."
All the disrespectful talk by Hannity-Coulter-Limbaugh about activist judges who hate life and liberty, and the evil Democrats who hate America, is having its logical effect of apparently driving the nutcases to take such crazy sentiments to the extreme.
A Republican Senator understands, it appears. Does he condemn the disrespectful rants by Hannity-Coulter-Limbaugh? - not that I can see.
Excerpt below from a DailyKOS thread ----
Daily Kos :: Cornyn: Violence against judges understandable: "Remarks by Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) on the Senate floor today:
I don't know if there is a cause-and-effect connection but we have seen some recent episodes of courthouse violence in this country. Certainly nothing new, but we seem to have run through a spate of courthouse violence recently that's been on the news and I wonder whether there may be some connection between the perception in some quarters on some occasions where judges are making political decisions yet are unaccountable to the public, that it builds up and builds up and builds up to the point where some people engage in - engage in violence.
Violence against judges is nothing short of domestic terrorism. And Cornyn (along with DeLay and their ilk) are nothing more than apologists for such violence.
The GOP's war on the judiciary is now entering dangerous territory."
Fascism and theocracy do NOT have to come roaring in flamboyantly on a gilded white horse, with swords swinging.
Fascism and theocracy can actually make the people SMILE, all the while undermining their freedoms.
Seet he excerpt below for a look at a new scholarly book in Germany regarding the Nazi takeover, and how Hitler obtained and maintained power by being seemingly GOOD to the people of Germany.
Of course the USA is not Germany, and Bush is not like Hilter. However, Bush's bullhorns (Hannity-Coulter-Limbaugh-Foxnews) call liberals nad Democrats "evil" and other Hitler-like rantings. They stop just short of saying that liberals and Democrats don't deserve to live.
And so a fascist-like mentality is present in the USA, and getting worst all the time. But just like the Germans, the Republicans are ok with it, because it isn't the Republicans who are the targets of the dark side of the Republicans and their supporters. In fact the Republicans are the ones receiving a lot of the benefits of the emerging fascist-theocratic movement.
New Holocaust Book, New Theory: How Germans Fell for the 'Feel-Good' Fuehrer - International - SPIEGEL ONLINE: "How Germans Fell for the 'Feel-Good' Fuehrer
By Jody K. Biehl in Berlin
Hitler not only fattened his adoring 'Volk' with jobs and low taxes, he also fed his war machine through robbery and murder, says a German historian in a stunning new book. Far from considering Nazism oppressive, most Germans thought of it as warm-hearted, asserts Goetz Aly. The book is generating significant buzz in Germany and it may mark the beginning of a new level of Holocaust discourse.
Hitler took great care to pamper and coddle his people and they loved him -- and the Nazi regime -- for it.
A well-respected German historian has a radical new theory to explain a nagging question: Why did average Germans so heartily support the Nazis and Third Reich? Hitler, says Goetz Aly, was a 'feel good dictator,' a leader who not only made Germans feel important, but also made sure they were well cared-for by the state.
To do so, he gave them huge tax breaks and introduced social benefits that even today anchor the society."
Theocracy, Fascism. Those are very tough words to utter in connection with the USA. But see the article excerpted below for a history lesson about creeping fascism.
Thankfully, we are not a theocracy (yet) but millions are trying to make us a theocracy of the kinder gentler US Variety (with freedom of political speech mostly intact probably).
Governments around the nation are trying to promote Christrian doctrine in many ways. They are writing laws and taking other acts that codify Christian doctrine or endorse Christian doctrine or promote Christian doctrine, or indoctrinate people into the Christian faith. In summary:
- Official Christian decision making is to be protected: The US Congress is trying to pass a law that would provide that Christian government officials can make official decisions based on their religion, and no court will be permitted to hear challenges to such faith-based offical acts. (I blogged about this a few days ago)
- Denying health care based on religious belief: And state legislatures are trying to pass laws that allow Christian health care practitioners to withhold treatment based on their Christian religious beliefs. (I blogged about this recently)
- Christian faith to be taught as actual science: State legislatures and local school boards have already decided in many places that the schools must elevate Christian religious doctrine to equal footing with actual scientific doctrine, and lie to the students about how the religious doctrine is a legitimate form of actual science. (This textbook-based dispute is a generation old, and and just continues on)
- Government money to promote Christian theology and indoctrination: George W. Bush and his "Faith-Based Initiative" have resulted in many millions in direct funding of Christian groups. Groups of other faiths have had great difficulty obtaining a fair share of this windfall for the promotion of religion. After all, those in charge of the White House and Congress are not Jews, they are evangelical Christians, and they know who they really want the money to go to.
- Bush and the Government are in God's hands, doing God's Will: George W. Bush has sent out MANY SIGNALS that his decisions are faith-based, that God is with the USA, that it's US vs. THEM. Bush said in an interview that he felt chosen by God to become President. Bush wants people to feel that the USA is run by God not man, and that the elected representatives are doing "God's Will".
- Those examples are enough for now. If I weren't so lazy today I would find the links to flesh out the above examples. Maybe I'll do that later and submit and edited version.
The article that follows is a history lesson in the rise of forms of fascism, and contains excerpts from books that discuss how difficult it is to BECOME AWARE of the growth of the fascist tendencies, and how difficult it is to TAKE ACTION in time to affect the process.
By "action", it can be as simple as letting our legislators know that they are going a bit too far, and it's time to slow down now. We've gone far enough in endorsing religion through official government action.
(DV) Berkowitz: Lurching Toward Theocracy
Lurching Toward Theocracy
by Bill Berkowitz
www.dissidentvoice.org
April 1, 2005
“No people ever recognize their dictator in advance. He never stands for election on the platform of dictatorship. He always represents himself as the instrument [of] the Incorporated National Will. ... When our dictator turns up you can depend on it that he will be one of the boys, and he will stand for everything traditionally American. And nobody will ever say ‘Heil’ to him, nor will they call him ‘Fuhrer’ or ‘Duce’. But they will greet him with one great big, universal, democratic, sheeplike bleat of ‘O.K., Chief! Fix it like you wanna, Chief! Oh Kaaaay!’”
-- Dorothy Thompson, 1935
“What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security.…”
-- They Thought They Were Free, Milton Mayer, 1955
[snip]
“... STOP groups like the ACLU from removing all mentions of Christmas from the public square!”
-- Christian Response e-Alert, December 2004
[snip]
“To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it... unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, ‘regretted,’ that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these ‘little measures’ that no ‘patriotic Germans’ could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.
[snip]
“You see,” Mayer's colleague went on, “one doesn't see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for the one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don't want to act, or even to talk, alone; you don't want to 'go out of your way to make trouble.' Why not? -- Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.
[snip]
Christmas Bells and Frazzled Nerves
Right wing Christian leaders concoct campaigns to “convince people that there is a 'them' out there -- liberals in this case -- who are out to destroy America's moral fiber and are thus responsible for working-class misery,” Thom Hartmann wrote.
[snip]
Don't expect the jackboots to march around the corner tomorrow. Don't expect homes to be indiscriminately raided. Don't expect citizens to be hauled off in the dead of night -- although that has been the case with indiscriminate arrests of many Muslim immigrants since 9/11.
Consider, however, the anti-democratic warning signs: the Patriot Act and subsequent civil liberties-busting legislation; election snafus seamlessly fading into history; a war carried out on the basis of misinformation and disinformation; secret prisons where captives are tortured.
Think about how things change slowly, yet dramatically, while good people either aren't paying attention or are too satisfied to raise their voices.
“As nightfall does not come all at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight. And it is in such twilight that we all must be aware of change in the air -- however slight -- lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.” -- Justice William O. Douglas, US Supreme Court (1939-75).
I've blogged a little in the past about the nationwide religious crusade to get pharmacists to push their religious beliefs on customers through refusing to fill certain lawful prescriptions.
The moralistic pharmacy movement is an interesting skirmish in the struggle of the religious right to bring a Christian theocracy to America.
Legislatures around the country are considering laws that would permit pharmacists to refuse to fill birth control prescriptions, for example. The article linked below recounts some stories about such things as religious lectures by pharmacists.
The article talks a little about how some big chains try to balance the pharmacists' desires. For example, the pharmacist who objects to a prescription can have another pharmacist on duty fill it. Well, THAT approach will work only if there are multiple pharmacists on duty.
Small towns might not have a multiple-pharmacist store available.
Another issue is whether the objecting pharmacist should refer the patient to a different phamracy that WILL fill the prescription. The objecting pharmacists argue that by referring the patient somewhere else, they are acting immorally.
Pharmacists hold licenses issued by the State, to serve the health needs of the citizens.
The State must establish controls over this movement toward pharmacist-refusal-to-fill. Patients have trusted that their local pharmacy will fill their lawful prescriptions without question.
But nowadays, patients cannot be sure that their pharmacists will fill their lawful prescriptions. Patients might be subjected to a religious lecture about their immoral ways, by a pharmacists who refuses to fill their prescription for birth control pills. (I can imagine this kind of stuff happening in Iran or Saudi Arabia or any other Muslim country, but I did not think I'd see the day when it would be happening here in the USA).
So we need laws that set standards for how and when fundamentalist pharmacists can exercise their faith to the detriment of a patient's rights.
A Pharmacy license is a public trust. The license is to make sure that the pharmacist is capable and professional so that the health of the patient is well-protected. Religious beliefs can be accommodated, but religious pharmacists (holding a public trust) cannot be permitted to limit another citizen's right to receive lawful health care. Here are a few suggestions:
- A state-licensed pharmacist, if the only one on duty, MUST fill all lawful prescriptions - otherwise, the pharmacist CANNOT be assigned duty as the only licensed pharmacist in a pharmacy.
- A state-licensed pharmacist CANNOT refuse to transfer a prescription to another licensed pharmacy where the patient can get a lawful prescription filled. A pharmacist who attempts to refuse such transfer is violating the civil rights of the patient and his license should be disciplined.
- A state-licensed pharmacist should be forbidden to set a "condition" on the filling of a lawful prescription (other than payment of course), where the condition is that the patient must tolerate a religious or moral lecture in order to complete the transaction.
- The State should consider issuing "limited practice" licenses for objecting pharmacists, to prevent those pharmacists from being able to serve as the ONLY pharmacist in a pharmacy. In the same way, the military will not assign conscientious objectors to combat duty.
Pharmacists' Rights at Front Of New Debate (washingtonpost.com)
Pharmacists' Rights at Front Of New Debate
Because of Beliefs, Some Refuse To Fill Birth Control Prescriptions
By Rob Stein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, March 28, 2005; Page A01
Some pharmacists across the country are refusing to fill prescriptions for birth control and morning-after pills, saying that dispensing the medications violates their personal moral or religious beliefs.
The trend has opened a new front in the nation's battle over reproductive rights, sparking an intense debate over the competing rights of pharmacists to refuse to participate in something they consider repugnant and a woman's right to get medications her doctor has prescribed. It has also triggered pitched political battles in statehouses across the nation as politicians seek to pass laws either to protect pharmacists from being penalized -- or force them to carry out their duties.
Karen L. Brauer, Pharmacists for Life president, defends the right of pharmacists to refuse medicine. (Courtesy of Karen L. Bauer)
"This is a very big issue that's just beginning to surface," said Steven H. Aden of the Christian Legal Society's Center for Law and Religious Freedom in Annandale, which defends pharmacists. "More and more pharmacists are becoming aware of their right to conscientiously refuse to pass objectionable medications across the counter. We are on the very front edge of a wave that's going to break not too far down the line."
[snip]
"There are pharmacists who will only give birth control pills to a woman if she's married. There are pharmacists who mistakenly believe contraception is a form of abortion and refuse to prescribe it to anyone," said Adam Sonfield of the Alan Guttmacher Institute in New York, which tracks reproductive issues. "There are even cases of pharmacists holding prescriptions hostage, where they won't even transfer it to another pharmacy when time is of the essence."
The Republicans are trying their hardest to take a giant step toward theocracy. They have proposed a new law which almost ensures a major move toward theocracy.
The step is to create a completely safe harbor for the open government acknowledgment that Go'd law is the supreme law of the land. Any government official is free to proclaim such religious tenets, it seems, at any time even in connection with official acts.
Any judge who exercises jurisdiction (ie. hears a case about crossing the line of separation of church and state) can be REMOVED FROM OFFICE for violating the standards of good behavior.
Why is this frightening? It's frightening because it tries to prevent judicial review of the degree of theocratic involvement in government.
Judicial review of government actions is the LAST RESORT to correct the excesses or misdeeds of a rogue government official or rogue government agency.
By removing the LAST RESORT, there are no meaningful brakes on religious-directed government action.
Those who do not fear the right wing Republicans will interpret this law in a benign fashion, for they will convince themselves that "surely the Republicans do not want a theocracy or anything close to it".
Well, with this new bill, the Republicans are in effect encouraging all government officials to acknowledge "God" (What type of God, though, is unspecified) as the true soveriegn, not the US Government or other government elected by the people. And, the courts are not allowed to hear challenges to the officials' actions when the official declares he is doing God's will.
I think we could all agree that this new bill moves us closer to a (kinder gentler?) theocracy, by mandating a theocracy-friendly legal system.
Daily Kos :: New Law to go after Non-God fearing judges:
"The following is a summary of the Constitutional Restoration Act proposed by Republicans in the 109th congress that makes it possible for the Congress to charge any judge with a crime who disagrees with the concept that all law, liberty, and government comes only from God. 'The Constitution Restoration Act of 2005 - Amends the Federal judicial code to prohibit the U.S. Supreme Court and the Federal district courts from exercising jurisdiction over any matter in which relief is sought against an entity of Federal, State, or local government or an officer or agent of such government concerning that entity's, officer's, or agent's acknowledgment of God as the sovereign source of law, liberty, or government.
Prohibits a court of the United States from relying upon any law, policy, or other action of a foreign state or international organization in interpreting and applying the Constitution, other than English constitutional and common law up to the time of adoption of the U.S. Constitution.
Provides that any Federal court decision relating to an issue removed from Federal jurisdiction by this Act is not binding precedent on State courts.
Provides that any Supreme Court justice or Federal court judge who exceeds the jurisdictional limitations of this Act shall be deemed to have committed an offense for which the justice or judge may be removed, and to have violated the standard of good behavior required of Article III judges by the Constitution.
Four co-sponsors:
Sen Brownback, Sam - 3/3/2005
Sen Burr, Richard - 3/3/2005
Sen Craig, Larry E. - 3/8/2005
Sen Lott, Trent - 3/8/2005
(Notice the Sponsors include Sen. Sam Brownback-R who has just declaired that he will be running for President in 2008.)
Sandrover
Source of summary of bill (according to DailyKOS)
Interesting opinion piece in the National Catholic Reporter, pointing out the fierce forces that stand arrayed to crush debate, within the Church and within the Congress and within Society.
To disagree with the ruling power is to risk being branded as something evil.
And the ruling power seems to want to stifle disagreement.
I say "ruling power" because our rulers in Washington (of the Republican Party) are not the majority in the country, just the majority of the elected officials. I doubt that the Republicans would have a majority of the nation as a whole if all eligible voters actually voted.
Most of the sentiments expressed in this opinion piece below are similar to my own sentiments. But rather than ME say them, I often think it's appropriate to point out when OTHERS say the same thing. A lot of people are feeling the same way.
From Where I Stand by Joan Chittister, March 24, 2005: "In the church these days, too, anyone who wants to talk about the nature of life, the stem-cell question, the definition of marriage, the human rights of homosexual citizens or the ordination of women is targeted for ecclesiastical sanction, accused of being a 'bad Catholic,' silenced on church property, threatened with excommunication, and made the target of right-wing pressure groups designed to save the world from the possibility of examining other ideas. Like curing paralytics on the Sabbath or raising women from the dead, I'm sure.
In the Senate of the United States, that supposed guardian of U.S. civil rights, almost no one raised a voice against the invasion of Iraq for fear of being accused of being un-American. It was 'a time of a war' -- though that 'war' hadn't declared yet -- and the expectation was that at the first whiff of administration intent everybody had to 'get behind the President.' Lawmakers who questioned the idea, who did what lawmakers are supposed to do, were scorned in public, scoffed at on the floor of the House and Senate. Or, even more pointedly, were accused in election campaigns of being unpatriotic for thinking differently.
No doubt about it: We have entered a new phase of history. In the name of freedom and goodness, thought suppression is in the air. Now discussion has become dissent.
It is intimidation time in the United States of America. Everybody is expected to follow the flag bearer rather than the Bill of Rights.
It is inquisition time in the church. Everybody is expected to accept clerical answers rather than pursue Christian questions of conscience.
It is the period of the new McCarthyism, the rush to purify the soul of the nation by those who would do anything, however democratically impure, to achieve it."
Looks like the Pope is just about to pass on.
I remember very well all those years ago when the last papal election took place. First we had Pope John Paul I, who was loved immediately for his pastoral ways.
Then John Paul I died suddenly (was it only a month or so after election?). And another election occurred.
Maybe due to the great outpouring of support for the pastoral ways of John Paul I, the new Pope called himself John Paul II.
Or maybe both John Paul I and John Paul II were "products" of the same culture in that, as cardinals, they both were longing for a more pastoral papacy.
I've never read a biography of John Paul II, but I'd like to one day.
I am not Catholic, but I have always respected and liked John Paul II for the good he has tried to do in the world.
The next Pope will have giant shoes to fill.
ABC News: Chance of Surviving Septic Shock Slim: "The Vatican announced a further deterioration in the 84-year-old pontiff's condition, saying he had slipped into heart and kidney failure, with a further drop in blood pressure and shallow breathing.
'The shallow breathing is totally consistent with severe failure of the blood vessels to provide blood to all the key organs,' Dr. Peter Salgo, associate director of the intensive care unit at New York Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview."
Title of Post (if underlined, it's also a Link):
The RM plays judge
Today, April 2, 2005 your friendly neighborhood RM gets to play judge in a mock trial competition for high school students.
I wonder if I should be a nice judge or a crusty old world weary judge?
Should I sugar coat things and make it easy for the students, or give them a dose of the real world of the courtroom?
I am leaning toward real world. These mock trial students are probably among the brightest, and they might learn more from a dose fo reality than from a dose of artificial gentleness.
The below linked newspaper editorial calls for moderate minded people to stand up against the wave of religious extremism in the USA. He goes on to talk about a confrontation between a doctor and Joe Scarborough, and calls for more such confrontations. He says the extremists and the media propagate ignorance, and must be confronted.
In the excerpt below, the author draws a comparison between what the religious extremists are trying to do to the USA, and to Iran.
I think the comparison to Iran is still over the top. I prefer to think (is it wishful thinking?) that our "religious extremists" in government and the judiciary are NOT trying to impose Iranian-style theocracy - they just want a few more key religious doctrines made into the law of the land.
Oops - What happens AFTER we outlaw abortion and birth control by constitutional amendment, and make the Ten Commandments the law? Do the religious extremists then push for a constitutional amendment to require the equal teaching of religious creationism along with real science? Etc, Etc, Etc.
If the extremists can get those constitutional amendments passed, then I expect they would keep going, in order to try to keep molding our society according the the dominant theological viewpoint.
In other words, we would become a kind of Christian Iran, a kinder gentler theocracy. I'm sure many religious conservatives would like to see just such a thing.
Even under a kinder gentler Christian theocracy, we might still have a powerful liberty with regard to freedom of political speech, however, and so we would still be way more free than Iranians.
I think if we come to a compromise on abortion, the religious conservatives would then be more comfortable with the separation of church and state. If stop inflamming people about abortion, though, the Republicans lose about 30% of their base, so I don't expect the top political thinkers in the Republican Party to do ANYTHING to bring the sides together and make peace on the abortion issue.
Did I say "compromise" on abortion? Yes. Those of you opposed to abortion rights currently compromise somewhat from the most extreme position, at least most of you do - you permit exceptions for rape and incest and life of mother. Only a very few of you, percentage wise, are so extreme that you would require that BOTH the mother AND the baby die, rather than allow an abortion to save mother's life.
Another compromise most of you will make: You will permit a near-viable baby to be c-sectioned out of the womb (at high risk of death) if vital to mother's health, even though you know that the fetus might not be strong enough to survive the stress, or might die soon, or might die early from being so premature, or might suffer permanent debilitating handicaps. If the severely premature baby dies, has an abortion (in effect) occurred?
Can we come to some compromise? For just one example, maybe we could pay for good comprehensive health care for all pregnant women, and provide a guaranteed income during pregnancy, and a stipend to replace their income when they have to stop working due to having the baby, and then pay for their child care so they can work again. But that's too "liberal" and "tax and spend" and "big government".
So rather than get too liberal, we invest some money but direct it at programs to prevent unwanted pregnancies (ok so far) ---- but then we don't focus on effective forms of birth control, or alternatives ot sexual intercourse, because that offends the conservative Catholics and the non-Catholic religious conservatives, who think the availability of birth control encourages pre-marital sex (a step backward in our goal of preventing unwanted pregnancies, seems to me).
We could pay fertile women to get sterilized. But no politicians will back such a policy. Social libertarians like me find that idea tolerable, but acknowledge that opponents raise valid concerns.
And a constitutional amendment banning abortion is a non-starter ---- the states won't vote for it, and it wouldn't stop abortions anyway - it would just drive abortion underground where it was a couple of generations ago.
But if we COULD make peace on the abortion issue, then I think we could have a better society because the Republicans and Democrats could stop behaving so much like enemies and start behaving more like people of one nation having civil and reasonable debate about the issues.
Editorial: Dr. Cranford/A powerful antidote to lunacy: "In a column this week, the New York Times' Paul Krugman mused about the dangers inherent in the rise of religious extremism in the United States. Increasingly, he said, the Christian right wing is willing to bend the law, ignore the spirit of the law, rewrite the law and ultimately reinterpret the law by packing the court with fellow travelers. All this in order to impose upon the nation an extremist religious ethic that looks more Iranian than American.
You've seen this play out over the past few weeks in lurid, 24/7 coverage of federal meddling in the Terri Schiavo case. It's also affecting the classroom as more teachers come under pressure to teach 'intelligent design' as a counter to evolution science. And it is coming soon to the U.S. Senate in the form of a Republican effort to prohibit filibusters against the most radical of President Bush's federal court nominees."
Food for thought: The right wingers like to proclaim "judicial activism" a lot when the Supreme Court upholds a right to privacy (which, according to right wingers, isn't mentioned in their copy of the Constitution).
What about the 9th Amendment? Thats the one which declares that the people retain other rights not specifically mentioned in the Constitution. But the 9th does not list all those other rights. So what can they be?
Religious conservatives like to say we only have those rights that we had in about 1783 or so when the Constitution was drafted.
I know why they say that: Those were times before birth control and pornography and vulgar mass media. And so, obviously, we should be able to prohibit or severely restrict new modern things, because our constitution does not cover new modern things, since those things didn't exist in 1983.
Religious conservatives have this huge problem, I think, in explaining the meaning of the 9th Amendment. Even under an "original intent" analysis, the religious conservatives still have a problem: Do you mean to say that our Constitution did NOT envision a right to privacy existing in 1783?
The Constitution is a brief summary of our governing principles, not a comprehensive and detailed code of explicitly allowed, or disallowed, things.
Since the Constitution is a brief summary, there will be argument about whether some specific things "fit" within the summary terms. Who is tasked in our society with resolving those arguments? Our legal system is tasked with resolving those arguments. Judges are not "activists" just because they are playing their Constitutionally mandated role of resolving civil arguments about the meaning of the summary terms in the Constitution.
The editorial below raises similar issues surrounding the 9th Amendment.
Demystify the Ninth Amendment: "Demystify the Ninth Amendment
A 'living' Constitution might well be dangerous, but so can a frozen one
Tibor R. Machan
Ethics professor at Chapman University & adviser to Freedom Communications
In a recent talk, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia criticized his fellow justices for making law, a role he believes belongs to the legislature or the people themselves. Justices, he argued, are there to interpret the U.S. Constitution and this they must do by reading it as it was intended back when it was framed and when it was later amended.
In his dissent Scalia wrote of his concern that the high court is proclaiming itself the sole arbiter of the nation's moral standards.
The charge Scalia has leveled at his colleagues - five of them, the majority who ruled for abolition of the death penalty for juveniles and the mentally impaired - is the substance of the general criticism usually labeled 'judicial activism.'
This view decries it when the court rules as if there exist rights that are not explicitly mentioned or enumerated within the U.S. Constitution.
One of the most famous of these unenumerated rights is the right to privacy, and the majority of the court has ruled in several recent cases that various state laws violate this right and are, therefore, unconstitutional and invalid laws.
In his recent public talk, Justice Scalia argued that the idea of a living constitution is essentially wrongheaded because it leaves the country without a firm basis of law by which it can be governed. Instead of a stable set of constitutional principles, justices have come to make laws based on their 'personal policy preferences,' thus undermining the classic doctrine of the rule of law (as opposed to that of arbitrary governors).
The case Scalia makes has a good deal going for it because it is indeed part of the theory of politics in the USA that the role justices play does not include making laws, only interpreting the Constitution.
Yet, there is a problem here because Justice Scalia ignores the Ninth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the one that states unequivocally that aside from rights enumerated in that document, the people have others as well.
The Ninth reads: 'The enumeration in this Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.'"
