Only for Christians

By Capt. Fogg

You can laugh a bit and console yourself that it doesn't matter all that much if an Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice tells us the first Amendment only applies to Christians -- maybe even if you are like me, not a Christian. It's only Alabama, right?

They didn't bring the Koran over on the pilgrim ship, the Mayflower,

Justice Roy Moore announced to the mob at the Pastor for Life Luncheon. Maybe you'll remember that Jefferson owned one however and that he wasn't shy about warning us of religious tyranny. Maybe you'll remember Moore as the former justice who was removed from office for fighting to erect the Ten Commandments in the courthouse, but like that tumor you thought the chemo got rid of he came back two years later singing the same tune:

Let's get real. Let's learn our history. Let's stop playing games.

I would agree with that, but as we know, to the religious right, history is baked fresh every morning. The English colonists brought slaves, white and black, and Moore's ideological ancestors fought like hell to keep them, Bibles in hand.

Buddha didn't create us. Mohammad didn't create us. It's the god of the Holy Scriptures,

said Moore with the authority not granted him by anyone in particular, and grossly misrepresenting Jefferson and Madison and the U.S. Supreme Court with a stream of non sequitur he insisted that freedom of religion is only for Christians.

A newly-released video shows him expounding all this and worse in Jackson, Mississippi last January to a group called Pro-Life Mississippi. Of course it's hardly a game he's asking us to end, it's secular democracy, the pride of the age of Reason and Humanism, and like a stag at bay it's destined to be torn to ribbons and its head displayed on some courthouse wall. For nothing in our Constitution is as important, as hallowed by the blood of patriots, as the cracks, the loopholes, the weak spots that may just allow traitors and secessionist sons of the Confederacy to eviscerate it, hang it from its heels, bleed it and gut it like an animal to be sacrificed to his tyrannical, bloody-handed God.

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Church/State

By Mustang Bobby 

The Supreme Court will hear a case deciding whether or not a town council in upstate New York can open its meetings with a prayer:

For more than a decade starting in 1999, the Town Board began its public meetings with a prayer from a "chaplain of the month." Town officials said that members of all faiths, and atheists, were welcome to give the opening prayer.

In practice, the federal appeals court in New York said, almost all of the chaplains were Christian.

"A substantial majority of the prayers in the record contained uniquely Christian language," Judge Guido Calabresi wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel of the court, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. "Roughly two-thirds contained references to 'Jesus Christ,' 'Jesus,' 'Your Son' or the 'Holy Spirit.'"

Two town residents sued, saying the prayers ran afoul of the First Amendment's prohibition of the government establishment of religion. The appeals court agreed. "The town's prayer practice must be viewed as an endorsement of a particular religious viewpoint," Judge Calabresi wrote.

Cue up the Chorus of The Poor Persecuted Majority who will tell us that there is no place safe in America for them to impose their faith and practice on the rest of us whether we want it or not.

Solution: put an imam in the rotation as "chaplain of the month" and see how quickly they decide to bag the whole thing.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

North Carolina Republicans launch formal assault on the Constitution, seeking establishment of state religion

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Just in case you weren't quite sure Republicans are the party of Christian theocracy:

A bill filed by Republican lawmakers would allow North Carolina to declare an official religion, in violation of the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Bill of Rights, and seeks to nullify any federal ruling against Christian prayer by public bodies statewide.

The legislation grew out of a dispute between the American Civil Liberties Union and the Rowan County Board of Commissioners. In a federal lawsuit filed last month, the ACLU says the board has opened 97 percent of its meetings since 2007 with explicitly Christian prayers.

Overtly Christian prayers at government meetings are not rare in North Carolina. Since the Republican takeover in 2011, the state Senate chaplain has offered an explicitly Christian invocation virtually every day of session, despite the fact that some senators are not Christian.

The First Amendment initially prohibited Congress from establishing a state religion at the federal level, but as a result of Everson v. Board of Education (1947) and other subsequent case law the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment has come to apply to the Establishment Clause of the First, meaning that the prohibition against establishing a state religion applies not just federally but to the states as well. (It's called "Incorporation.") And there hasn't been a state religion since 1833 (Massachusetts).

The North Carolina proposal ignores all of this:

"The Constitution of the United States does not grant the federal government and does not grant the federal courts the power to determine what is or is not constitutional; therefore, by virtue of the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, the power to determine constitutionality and the proper interpretation and proper application of the Constitution is reserved to the states and to the people," the bill states.

"Each state in the union is sovereign and may independently determine how that state may make laws respecting an establishment of religion," it states.

This is the "Nullification" argument that states' rights conservatives have frequently used to try to circumvent federal law, including with respect to slavery. Essentially, it posits the supremacy of the Tenth Amendment, and of course of the states themselves.

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Herman Cain ramps up the anti-Muslim bigotry, says communities should be able to ban mosques

By Michael J.W. Stickings

There is ample evidence out there that Tea Party pizza mogul Herman Cain, a presidential favourite for many in the GOP, is an ignorant anti-Muslim bigot. For example, he has proposed a loyalty test for Muslim Americans who would serve in his administration (not that he'll ever be president). In this regard, he fits in nicely with the Republican Party, which houses a good deal of such bigotry, from Peter King to Allen West to Newt Gingrich to so many others, bigotry widespread throughout the grassroots.

Well, Cain is ramping up the bigotry, or at least just being more open about his own views:

Herman Cain says voters across the country should have the right to prevent Muslims from building mosques in their communities.

In an exchange on "Fox News Sunday," the Republican presidential contender said that he sided with some in a town near Nashville who were trying to prevent Muslims from worshiping in their community.

"Our Constitution guarantees the separation of church and state," he said. "Islam combines church and state. They're using the church part of our First Amendment to infuse their morals in that community, and the people of that community do not like it. They disagree with it."

Asked by host Chris Wallace if any community could ban a mosque if it wanted to, Cain said: "They have a right to do that."

Cain, an African-American who grew up during the civil rights era, claimed he was not discriminating against Muslims. He said it was "totally different" than the fight for racial equality because there were laws prohibiting blacks from advancing.

Totally different? Hardly. What we're talking about is the right to worship freely and without either government interference. And any community that were to ban a mosque would be interfering in the exercise of that right. The fact that Cain is black and supposedly knows firsthand what such discrimination is all about only adds to the craziness of his position.

What's more, Cain apparently knows nothing about Islam. Are there some Muslims who wish to combine church and state? Sure, but in America there are many more Christians who do. Is Cain proposing that communities should be permitted to ban churches? Of course not.

But this is just the sort of bigoted fearmongering that spews forth from Republicans these days: Muslims are all the same, all trying to impose Sharia law on an otherwise free society. Which, of course, is utterly ridiculous. The vast majority of American Muslims are good, decent, and honest people who only wish to live like other Americans while also being free to worship as they please. And, again, if you really want to find religious types who seek to "infuse their morals," you need look no further than the Christianist right, a core Republican consituency. They're the ones who want to restrict your freedom in the name of their "faith."

But of course it's easier to scapegoat Muslims, especially if you're a Republican trying to win over your party's core supporters. As Doug Mataconis writes at Outside the Beltway, "[t]he Herman Cain boomlet is dying, because its becoming clear that everything that comes out of his mouth is utter nonsense." Yes, the boomlet is fading, but he still has his support, which goes to show that this sort of bigoted nonsense actually has some traction in today's Republican Party.

For more, see Think Progress, which also has the video (see below). We've also written previously about the efforts to build a Muslim community center in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, efforts that have met with violent resistance from locals in lockstep with the likes of Herman Cain -- see here and here.

Craziest Republican of the Day: Rand Paul

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Tea Party Republican Rand Paul is a libertarian, and on occasion admirably so (like when he opposes the Patriot Act), but it seems that his enthusiasm for liberty is disturbingly selective and comes with an unhealthy dose of typical Republican police-state authoritarianism. As he told Sean Hannity last Friday:

I'm not for profiling people on the color of their skin, or on their religion, but I would take into account where they've been traveling and perhaps, you might have to indirectly take into account whether or not they've been going to radical political speeches by religious leaders. It wouldn't be that they are Islamic. But if someone is attending speeches from someone who is promoting the violent overthrow of our government, that's really an offense that we should be going after — they should be deported or put in prison.

That's right, this libertarian, this oh-so-courageous defender of freedom, thinks that you should be put in jail if you attend a political event he doesn't approve of, an event at which "radical" things are said.

Now, despite his claim, he was probably thinking primarily of Islamic "radical political speeches," but whether Islamic or not, define radical.

Does it just mean "promoting the violent overthrow of our government"? But, then, where would the line be drawn? And who would draw it? And don't you think "radical" would come to mean so much more?

And what about the pesky little thing known as the First Amendment?

This would be the thin end of the wedge straight to a slippery slope.

But perhaps this should come as no surprise, As Think Progress notes, Paul actually isn't as much of an advocate of civil liberties as his reputation might suggest:

[A]side from his admirable stance on the Patriot Act, Paul's record shows he's hardly the paragon of civil liberties he claims to be, but rather is "indistinguishable from the rest of the GOP on national security issues," The American Prospect's Adam Serwer noted last year. He's said he will "always fight" to keep GITMO open; has said "[f]oreign terrorists do not deserve the protections of our Constitution"; and has never taken a strong public stance against torture, staying silent most recently after the killing of Osama bin Laden.

"I believe that America can successfully protect itself against potential terrorists without sacrificing civil liberties," his website says. Apparently speech is not a civil liberty.

I guess his libertarianism is a matter of partisan and ideological convenience to him. He is when he is and isn't when he isn't. And when he isn't, as here, he's downright un-American.

**********

The good thing is, if there is any good here, he might just put himself in jail.

Yes, he attended an event at which a radical right-wing militia advocated extreme and treasonous violence -- and yet claims he didn't hear a thing! How convenient.
 

Supreme Court gets around "establishment of religion" prohibition by allowing tax credits for religious tuition

By Michael J.W. Stickings

And so the right-wing Supreme Court continues to erode the First Amendment:

The Supreme Court on Monday let stand an Arizona program that aids religious schools, saying in a 5-to-4 decision that the plaintiffs had no standing to challenge it.

The program itself is novel and complicated, and allowing it to go forward may be of no particular moment. But by closing the courthouse door to some kinds of suits that claim violations of the First Amendment's ban on government establishment of religion, the court’s ruling in the case may be quite consequential.

Justice Elena Kagan, in her first dissent, said the majority had laid waste to the doctrine of "taxpayer standing," which allows suits from people who object to having tax money spent on religious matters. "The court's opinion," Justice Kagan wrote, "offers a road map -- more truly, just a one-step instruction -- to any government that wishes to insulate its financing of religious activity from legal challenge."

The decision divided the court along the usual ideological lines, with the three other more liberal members -- Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor -- joining the dissent.

The Arizona program gives taxpayers there a dollar-for-dollar state tax credit of up to $500 for donations to private "student tuition organizations." The organizations are permitted to limit the scholarships they offer to schools of a given religion, and many of them do.

The question comes down to whether a tax credit is essentially the same as a government expenditure -- in this case with respect to government financial support for religious institutions (if not for a specific religion). Justice Kennedy, writing for the conservative majority, said no, but I'm really not sure there's a substantive difference. As Justice Kagan wrote: "Taxpayers experience the same injury for standing purposes whether government subsidization of religion takes the form of a cash grant or a tax measure." And so what the Supreme Court is saying -- or, rather, its majority -- is that government subsidization of religion, through organizations that are not religion-neutral, is constitutional.

As BooMan notes, this is all "rather clever." Handing out tax credits instead of direct subsidies (which even this court might object to) is a way for conservatives, and for conservative states like Arizona, to circumvent the First Amendment's "establishment of religion" prohibition. It's theocracy through the back door, and, because "standing" was taken away from you, there isn't a damn thing you can do about it.

In GOP we trust

By Capt. Fogg

There are a few things that seem to be endless about the American Lie Machine and it's quest to rephrase our founding principles, rewrite our documents and refashion us into the government by divine right the colonists left behind. The endless assault on the First Amendment is one of them.

Congressman J. Randy Forbes (R-VA), the founder and chairman of the Congressional Prayer Caucus, sponsored a bill to make "In God We Trust" the official motto on the United States of America, giving unlawful support to an unspecified, but intentionally Christian God and allowing and encouraging the carving of religious credos into the stone of our institutions and establishing state Theism contrary to the letter and intent of the US Constitution. He was troubled by a pattern of omitting God from the nation's heritage, said he. Could a talking snake be any more devious? Of course omitting God is not the same thing as preventing state recognition of Forbes' god and that's the forbidden and worm eaten fruit we're being offered and that some of us are deluded and befuddled enough to bite into.

"There is a small minority who believes America does not have the right to trust in God, who believes the United States should not affirm trust in God, and who actively seek to remove any recognition of that trust,"

But the writers of the constitution weren't a small minority and had no intention whatever of forbidding the free exercise of religion by citizens -- only of forbidding the government officially to recognize any religion, sect, denomination or cult as preferred. But as I said, it's devious. There is nothing in our laws and no credible movement to prevent any American from trusting in any God or gods or principles or making statements to that effect -- or from ignoring them. There is the First Amendment to prevent the government from doing so.

Although Republicans are notorious for portraying the government as an alien force, separate from the people and their interests, it's interesting to see how in this instance, they're quite willing to see the people and the government as congruent or identical because equivocation is the armature about which is built this grotesque idol. But of course not paying for you to engrave your God on the wall I paid for isn't a rejection of anything but the government's right to do so, which is the precise intent of our constitution. There is no official God or gods in the United States, no official belief -- and this legislation furthers only the intent to create one.

Forbes claims that the resolution is meant to affirm the importance of God in the heritage of the United States, but refuses to address the question of who the "we" are. If he's talking about the people as people, perhaps he's right, at least in the sense of a majority of them, but to a good number of Americans for whom the right to be irreligious, atheistic or pagan is protected, this resolution is an exclusion act. There is no me in that we.

Small minority? I'm not so sure, what with the penalties attendant to disbelief and doubt and unsanctioned belief, but so what? A small minority of Americans are of African descent or Jewish decent or indigenous descent and the triumph of our democracy is to protect their rights, their numbers notwithstanding. I might say that a large minority of Republicans are asserting that intellectual minorities don't have the same rights when it comes to private thought and this mumbling against "small minorities" is nothing but an attempt to marginalize intellectual non-conformism.

In God We Trust isn't all that historical anyway. Although some, but not all US coins have had it stamped on them since about 1864 as part of the attempt to give a boost to the unpopular war, the motto only became "official" in 1956, shortly after the Knights of Columbus and other religious lobbyists convinced Dwight Eisenhower it would help give Americans another reason to hate and fear Communism.

The first appearance of "In God is our trust" was in Francis Key's poem, later set to an old drinking song and made into an anthem which didn't become official until the 1930's, by which time there wasn't much left of Jefferson's bones to be furiously gyrating in his coffin. That he would do so is of course contested by the plethora of Church funded revisionist historians like All About History who make statements saying President Thomas Jefferson wrote,

"The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time" and "Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are of God?"

which words, of course, Jefferson never spoke or wrote. Perhaps you can see why the GOP stands against public education, science and history -- and for the Christian Bible and Christian government. Perhaps somewhere, the shade of Galileo is wryly smiling and George III, Rex Dei Gratia is giggling because the long upward climb to freedom is sliding back into the reeking sump from which it emerged.

(Cross posted from Human Voices)

The chill in the air

By Carl 

Yesterday, the SCOTUS made one of the single biggest boneheaded decisions from a court full of them (Citizens United, anyone?): 

The Westboro Baptist church were sued for emotional distress by the family of Lance Corporal Matthew Snyder, after members of the church picketed his funeral with signs that read: "Thank God for Dead Soldiers" and "You're Going to Hell".

But the US Supreme Court ruled 8-1 against the family and said that the church was entitled to protest under the Constitution's First Amendment, the right to free speech. 

In those two paragraphs are all you need to know to understand the dire predicament the right to privacy is facing in the United States with the Roberts court. There can be no more private moment in a person's life than the moment at which the friends and family gather together to say goodbye, to mourn the loss of a human life.

Yes, free speech is important and should be encouraged at all times, but the right of an American to be free to be where he wants, to do what he wants (within the boundaries of the law) and to be left alone trumps the sole right to shout obscenities, 3 to 1.

This ruling has implications beyond that of some rude speech by evil people. Privacy and the right to it is on shaky legal ground in a strict constuctionist court. See, it's not in the original Constitution per se. Yes, freedom from undue search and seizure, and stuff like that, all point to a Constitutional basis for a right to privacy, but the right is not delineated in the document, and according to the children on the right who act like demented fifth grade crossing guards, it cannot possibly exist.

This means sodomy laws can and will be enforced. Abortion can and will be under dire assault nationwide. It means fifty separate lawsuits defining what consenting adults may or may not do behind closed doors (the case that brought about the implied right to privacy, Griswold v. Connecticut, was about the use of contraception... contraception!... by a married couple).

The Roberts court has opened the barn door on all the horses now, guaranteeing itself a long run as arbiter of America's moral code.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

Why does Ken Buck hate America? Republican Talibanism and the conservative effort to destroy the separation of church and state

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Ken Buck, the Colorado Republican who thinks that gays are like alcoholics, said last year that he objected to a fundamental principle of American constitutional democracy:

I disagree strongly with the concept of separation of church and state. It was not written into the Constitution.

Now, he rightly noted that the Constitution bars "a religion that's sanctioned by the government," but, in his view, that "doesn't mean that we need to have a separation between government and religion." He specifically criticized President Obama for (supposedly) calling it a "holiday tree" instead of a Christmas tree.

But that's exactly the point, albeit on a minor scale. Government shouldn't, and isn't allowed to, support one religion before or against all others. Now, I actually don't have a problem with calling it a Christmas tree. It's true, of the course, that the "Christmas" season has become more of a generic "holiday" season, a season that American can celebrate in different ways, some secular, some not. But a tree at that time of year is historically a Christmas tree, just as a Menorah is Jewish, though, of course, non-Christians can still celebrate the holiday with a tree, and that was Obama's point, the point of the separation of church and state. If you want to call it a Christmas tree and celebrate (the myth of) Jesus of Nazareth's birth, fine, that's up to you. But if you want to call it a holiday tree, spend time with your family, exchange gifts, and enjoy the season according to your own values, however non-Christian or vaguely Christian, that's fine too. Welcome to America. Welcome to a free society that puts liberty before government promoting a specific faith.

All of this, though, is beside the point -- or, rather, an obfuscation of the point. Think Progress gets to the heart of the matter:

Needless to say, while the Constitution doesn't contain the exact words "separation of church and state," legal scholars and the courts agree it does prohibit the establishment or endorsement of religion, and that the involvement Buck wants is dangerous. As Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote in a concurring opinion in 1984, the government is prohibited from "making adherence to a religion relevant in any way to a person's standing in the political community." In 1801, Thomas Jefferson wrote that "religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God," and argued the Constitution required "building a wall of separation between Church & State."

Also, Buck's charge about Obama and the White House Christmas tree doesn't rise above the level of a crude viral e-mail hoax: or in the words of FactCheck.org, "hooey."

That's right, it's all a lie, one that Buck, ignorant or not, was obviously more than willing to spread. While Obama would have been justified to call it a holiday tree, he didn't. It was a traditional Christmas tree.

And that's Sandra Day O'Connor who wrote that opinion -- a Reagan appointee to the Supreme Court.

And that's Thomas Jefferson, a rather more impressive authority than Ken Buck, who interpreted the Constitution as requiring a clear separation of church and state.

But Buck is hardly alone in seeking to undermine one of the foundations of America, as Steve Benen, an expert on this issue, reminds us:

Of course, if this sounds familiar, it's because we've seen and heard quite a few attacks these First Amendment principles lately. Delaware's Christine O'Donnell recently humiliated herself during a debate by rejecting the separation of church state as a constitutional principle, and Nevada's Sharron Angle recently made very similar remarks. Last week, Rush Limbaugh denounced the very idea of church-state separation, and in April, former half-term Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) rejected any notion that "God should be separated from the state."

I just wrote up a lengthy item on the history here a few days ago, so I won't re-hash it again. Needless to say, the separation of church and state is a bedrock principle of the American system of government, and the foundation for the greatest experiment in religious liberty the world has ever known.

And he asks an important question:

But putting aside the fact that these unhinged Republicans simply have no idea what they're talking about, I have a related concern: what is it, exactly, they'd replace church-state separation with?

What we're seeing is, to a certain extent, the rise of the Taliban wing of the Republican Party -- the Taliban rails against secularism, and insists that the law must mirror and be based on their interpretation of a religious text. Buck, O'Donnell, Angle, Limbaugh, and Palin have all argued something eerily similar. Thomas Jefferson said the First Amendment built "a wall of separation between church and state," and these Republicans are anxious to tear it down.

Let's say, for the sake of conversation, they succeed. What then? Once the foundation for religious liberty in America is gone, what does Ken Buck suggest we replace it with? There are some countries that endorse Buck's worldview and intermix God and government -- Iran and Afghanistan under Taliban rule come to mind -- but they're generally not countries the United States tries to emulate.

So what do Buck and his ilk have in store for us? A European-style official church? A theocracy along the lines of Saudi Arabia? Are conservatives who want the government to shrink also telling us they want the state to play a larger role in promoting and "helping" religious institutions?

When the right denounces American the principles that have made us great, they stop being merely wrong, and start becoming even more dangerous.

I think that's exactly right. The Ken Bucks and Christine O'Donnells and Sharron Angles of the Republican Party, the "Taliban wing" of the GOP that more and more is taking over the party, are profoundly dangerous and deeply anti-American, and it's not enough just to laugh at them for being stupid. They pose a threat to American democracy, and to America itself, and to the very idea of "America," that, in a way, far exceeds, is far more nefarious than, and is far more likely to succeed than the threat posed by Islamic jihadism.

For while jihadism seeks to destroy America, or at least to cause significant physical damage to America (and to kill Americans), it comes from outside and can be opposed with actions and policies that seek to destroy it first. Republican Talibanism, in contrast, seeks to undermine America from within, removing enough bricks so that the entire wall comes crumbling down. Jihadists can cause immense damage, but Americans can collectively stand firm and resolute in their conviction that the terrorists will not win (even as they disagree over how best to defeat them). But these Republicans can win elected office, as many of them have already, and inject their virus into the body politic. There may not be an equivalent of 9/11 for these anti-Americans, but that makes what they are doing all the more difficult to detect, and to fight back against. You can have a war on terror, however misguided, but what do you do about the Republican Taliban?

Well, you have to vote against them, of course, and you have to see through their propaganda (or, in some cases, just pay attention to them, given how open about their goals some of them are) to see what they're really all about. If you needed another reason to oppose them when you go to the polls next Tuesday, here you go.

Am I the last person left with long-term memory?

By Edward Copeland

You will see me shedding no tears for Juan Williams' firing from NPR. It's not a First Amendment issue. Free speech gives you the right to say whatever you want, but when you are a paid commentator, it doesn't protect you from getting the heave-ho from your employer when you say something stupid and are being promoted as a representative of their brand. Besides, a $2 million consolation prize from Fox News is a nice consolation prize for someone who is Fox's idea of a liberal the way that Alan Colmes was. The only real liberal I ever saw was on the only show Fox ever aired that used to be truly fair and balanced, "Fox NewsWatch." His name was Neal Gabler but he criticized the boss and co-workers too often so he got shown the door as did the impartial moderator Eric Burns and the show turned into a propaganda fest like every other program. (One of the replacement "liberals" was Juan Williams.)

Before I move on to my other reasons for why I think his NPR firing was long overdue, just let me add that the comment that got him axed showed his ignorance. He admitted getting nervous when he got on a plane and saw people dressed in "Muslim garb." None of the 9/11 hijackers wore Muslim garb, brain wizard. If you saw people dressed in Muslim garb, that probably would be more of an indication of safety.

Of course, I've disliked Williams since long before Fox News even existed. No one seems to remember (and no one would probably have remembered this week if not for the fortuitous timing of that famous Teabagger, Mrs. Clarence Thomas, calling Anita Hill for an apology) that Juan Williams is a sexist moron.

Back during the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings, Williams, thought of as a "liberal" wrote scathing columns against Anita Hill, saying her story was full of holes. What he didn't say was that he was sympathizing with Thomas because at the time he was being accused of sexual harassment by 50 (you read that right, that's why I put it in bold) Post employees and was disciplined, though it amounted to a slap on the wrist, considering the numbers involved.

Of course, though Firedoglake remembered that and reported it today, I seem to be the only one that recalls that Williams scoured his copy of the novel The Exorcist to find a passage he remembered about a pubic hair and a drink and showed it to Arlen Specter who then brought it up in his questioning of Anita Hill to accuse her of having read the book and having it inspire her to make up the pubic hair on the Coke can incident.

One positive thing did come out of re-opening the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill can of worms: It inspired Thomas' former girlfriend to finally come forward and back up her charges of how he was obsessed with porn and would comment on female office workers' breast sizes. We've always known he committed perjury (I mean, he never discussed Roe v. Wade? Yeah, right), but this is more evidence of it. Still, nothing will come of it. They don't have the balls to pursue the last administration's far more serious crimes, you think they'd try to go after a Supreme Court justice for perjury? They wouldn't have even done that back in 1991.

To me, the most sickening display is watching all the talking heads on all sides of the political spectrum take to the airwaves to defend Williams because they all are on the same D.C. party circuit. Truth doesn't matter. Actions don't matter. No one remembers anything.

Christine O’Donnell, shedding brain cells before our eyes

By R.K. Barry

You may have seen this, but it’s so damn much fun that I have to post it myself.

 

Christine O’Donnell, the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate for Delaware was debating her opponent Chris Coons. She asked Coons where in the Constitution one can find a reference to the separation of church and state. The audience gasped and giggled because, as a group with at least a basic education, they knew instantly that it was in fact the First Amendment that sets out this seminal doctrine. The text is as follows:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

In the clip below, the audience howls, and Coons schools O’Donnell, as she proves herself to be woefully unqualified to be a U.S. Senator. All is right with the world.

Now the fun starts. What follows reminds me of that Hunter S. Thompson quote: "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."

O’Donnell was not only schooled in this pathetic episode, but she was too stupid to know she was being schooled. In an interview on ABC television shortly after, she claims that all the press got it wrong and it was she who embarrassed Coons in the exchange. I’m not joking. Here is what she said:

It's really funny the way that the media reports things. After that debate my team and I we were literally high fiving each other thinking that we had exposed he doesn't know the First Amendment, and then when we read the reports that said the opposite we were all like "what?"

 O'Donnell explained that her line of questioning to Coons was not because she didn't know the First Amendment, but to make the point the phrase "separation of church and state" does not appear anywhere in the Constitution.

So, her explanation was that the exact words “separation of church and state” do not appear in the text verbatim, despite the fact that anyone reasonably conversant with the English language would understand the intent of the phrase “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion."

Wow, she missed that. And we are going to miss her after election day. This has been too much fun.

Christine O'Donnell uses debate against Chris Coons to reveal her abject ignorance of the Constitution and the foundations of American democracy

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Yes, Christine O'Donnell really is stupid -- and, needless to say, utterly unqualified to hold public office, let alone a seat in the U.S. Senate.

It's one thing not to be able to name a Supreme Court decision you disagree with, quite another not to have a clue about something as fundamental to American democracy as the separation of Church and State -- not to mention the First Amendment.

Yesterday, during a debate at Delaware's Widener School of Law, O'Donnell and her opponent, Chris Coons, were discussing whether or not creationism (or so-called "intelligent design") should be taught in public-school science classes. Once again, as in their recent TV debate, O'Donnell refused to say whether or not, as she has said publicly before, she believes that evolution is a myth. But it was what followed that was perhaps even more troubling:

Coons said that creationism, which he considers "a religious doctrine," should not be taught in public schools due to the Constitution's First Amendment.  He argued that it explicitly enumerates the separation of church and state.

"The First Amendment does?" O'Donnell asked. "Let me just clarify: You're telling me that the separation of church and state is found in the First Amendment?"

"Government shall make no establishment of religion," Coons responded, reciting from memory the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. (Coons was off slightly: The first amendment actually reads "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.")

"That's in the First Amendment...?" O'Donnell responded. 

And there was more:

Also during the debate, O'Donnell stumbled when asked whether or not she would repeal the 14th, 16th, or 17th Amendments if elected.

"The 17th Amendment I would not repeal," she said, before asking the questioner to define the 14th and 16th amendments, adding: "I'm sorry, I didn't bring my Constitution with me." 

Oh, you say, you O'Donnell apologist, most people don't know their Constitutional Amendments by heart, and Coons wasn't exactly perfect himself, so stop picking on her. Well...

Earlier in the debate, O'Donnell accused Coons of constitutional ignorance, saying that "perhaps they didn't teach you Constitutional law at Yale Divinity School."

She's amazing, isn't she? You gotta give her that.

(Oh, and where exactly did she study Constitutional law? Was it Harvard or Yale or Columbia or Berkeley or Stanford or Chicago or Cornell or Georgetown? I forget.)

Supreme Court strikes down law banning depictions of extreme animal cruelty

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I'm all for free speech -- in fact, I consider myself a firm civil libertarian in this regard -- but some "speech" isn't really speech and shouldn't be free.

Take, for example, the case of videos depicting extreme cruelty to animals:

The Supreme Court on Tuesday forcefully struck down a federal law aimed at banning depictions of dog fighting and other violence against animals, saying it violated constitutional guarantees of free speech and created a "criminal prohibition of alarming breadth."

The 8 to 1 ruling, written by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., was a ringing endorsement of the First Amendment's protection of even distasteful expression. Roberts called "startling and dangerous" the government's argument that the value of certain categories of speech should be weighed against their societal costs when protecting free speech. 

Again, I'm all for the First Amendment, but, to me, animal cruelty videos should be considered akin to child pornography:

The law was enacted in 1999 to forbid sales of so-called crush videos. They appeal to a certain sexual fetish by depicting the torture of animals -- cats, dogs, monkeys, mice and hamsters, according to Congress -- or showing them being crushed to death by women wearing stiletto heels or with their bare feet. While dog-fighting and other forms of animal cruelty are already illegal, Congress said the legislation was necessary to stop the production of videos for commercial gain.

What was Roberts' objection?

Roberts' opinion said the court was not passing judgment about whether a narrower statute limited just to crush videos and "other depictions of extreme animal cruelty" might be constitutional.

But the court said the legislation passed by Congress was far too broad. Anyone who "creates, sells or possesses a depiction of animal cruelty" for commercial gain can be imprisoned for up to five years. A depiction of cruelty was defined as one in which "a living animal is intentionally maimed, mutilated, tortured, wounded or killed."

Roberts wrote that the definition was so loose that it could include all depictions of wounding or killing animals, even hunting videos or magazines. He said the law's exemption for works of "serious religious, political, scientific, educational, journalistic, historical or artistic value" was not enough protection, and the court was not reassured by the government's argument that prosecutions were rare.

That's just silly. The law in question is clearly aimed at depictions of extreme animal cruelty, not depections of hunting (which I consider cruel but certainly not at the level of what is depicted in these "crush" videos). And so I actually find myself in agreement with Justice Alito, the lone dissenter:

He said the law was enacted "not to suppress speech, but to prevent horrific acts of animal cruelty." He said that the entire law need not be found unconstitutional, and that the "practical effect" of the ruling would be to spur production of crush videos, which opponents such as the Humane Society of the United States said had decreased with passage of the 1999 law.

As Wayne Pacelle, the head of The Humane Society of the United States, wrote at HuffPo, "[t]he Court got hung up in a stream of hypothetical scenarios, imagining that the law as worded might sweep up the sellers of hunting, bullfighting, and other videos that the federal lawmakers never intended to address." Furthermore:

Justice Samuel Alito dissented, noting that the majority has struck down "a valuable statute that was enacted not to suppress speech, but to prevent horrific acts of animal cruelty -- in particular, the creation and commercial exploitation of crush videos, a form of depraved entertainment that has no social value." Justice Alito explained that "the animals used in crush videos are living creatures that experience excruciating pain. Our society has long banned such cruelty, which is illegal throughout the country."

With the Court issuing a disappointing albeit carefully crafted decision, it seems that Congress can step in and write a more narrowly tailored federal statute to prohibit the commercial sale of videos depicting extreme and illegal acts of cruelty. Clearly, it should not be legal to stage a dogfight in your basement and then sell the video of this criminal action. It is illegal to molest a child and sell a video of this sort of child pornography, and the same should be true for the most extreme and widely criminalized acts of animal cruelty.

With this ruling, a narrower statute is certainly necessary and ought to be enacted as soon as possible. Surely even ardent civil libertarians could get behind that.

And I would add this: While depictions of such animal cruelty ought to be banned, those who inflict the cruelty and those who party to it ought to face significant punishment under the law. There are laws in place, yes, but they are not nearly strong enough, and we ought to take the welfare of animals far more seriously than we do.

As for these disgusting "crush" videos, which I had no idea even existed before learning of this case, Alito is right, they are "a form of depraved entertainment that has no social value." But who are the utterly depraved individuals who make them, and who enjoy them? I realize that there is extraordinary depravity out there, and I realize that depravity is a matter of perspective (consider those ignorant bigots who think that homosexuality is depraved, for example), but surely there is a line than can be drawn. It is one then when consenting adults engage in certain activities with each other, quite another when children or animals or even adults who are in no position to consent are abused, tortured, and, in this case, killed.

There should be zero tolerance for such abhorrent behaviour.

Truth in Comics

By Creature


If it's Sunday, it's Truth in Comics.

Can I get an "Amen," brothers and sisters?

By Carl

One could only hope for this:

SHOULD Barack Obama win the presidency and Democrats take full control of Congress, next year will see a real legislative attempt to bring back the Fairness Doctrine - and to diminish conservatives' influence on broadcast radio, the one medium they dominate.

Yes, the Obama campaign said some months back that the candidate doesn't seek to re-impose this regulation, which, until Ronald Reagan's FCC phased it out in the 1980s, required TV and radio broadcasters to give balanced airtime to opposing viewpoints or face steep fines or even loss of license. But most Democrats - including party elders Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry and Al Gore - strongly support the idea of mandating "fairness."

It's funny. I never really noticed how much I missed the disclaimer that my local television stations had to broadcast.

See, when some moron, say, Bill Donohue of the Catholic League, would wrangle a moment of air time from the local television outlet, a) he was forced to keep his comments factual and polite, and b) the station was forced to "provide free air time for responsible spokespeople of opposing views."

In 1980, sensing an opening, the broadcast media, owned and operated in many instances by stridently right wing corporatists with an agenda (think Richard Mellon Scaife) prevailed upon Ronald Reagan's FCC to do away with the Fairness Doctrine, thus eliminating reasoned discourse presented for the public enlightenment.

The Fairness Doctrine was introduced in 1949 by the FCC, but until 1969 was usually applied on a case-by-case basis.

In 1969, journalist Fred Cook was torn to shreds on the radio program of the Rev. Billy James Hargis. Attacked personally for writing a book about Barry Goldwater, Cook argued before the Supreme Court that the FCC doctrine implied the right to free and equal time to respond to the scandalous (and nearly slanderous) charges levelled.

At first blush, it may seem that this was not a matter for the Courts to decide, free enterprise, First Amendment and all, but the SCOTUS took note of the fact that the airwaves were a public trust overseen by the Congress and therefore were actually public domain. As a public trust, there was no reason the government couldn't require such a doctrine and upheld Cook's complaint.

(The other thing the Fairness Doctrine required was programming "in the public interest" which is why your rock or hip-hop station broadcasts those bizarre programs really early on Sunday morning, like herbal medicine shows or community affairs programming.)

When the Reagan administration effectively eviscerated the Fairness Doctrine, it created Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Monica Crowley, Michael Savage and any number of right wing knuckleheads whose only claim to fame is being potty-mouthed and willing to be paid for it.

It also created Stephanie Miller, Air America Radio, Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann.

I apply the Fairness Doctrine to my columns, you see... ;-)

This deregulation of the broadcast market, along with the consolidation of power amongst five mammoth content distributors, created the hugely right wing media goliath that we have today.

It is no secret the agenda that General Electric, Disney, and the others have established: entertain at the expense of informing. Don't tell the truth, tell a masking of truth. Put lipstick on a pig and trot it out as a beauty queen. Tout American Idol rather than America's failures in Iraq.

In short, cry havoc and unleash the dogs of war on the people of the United States. Beat us into submission until we no longer care, and never EVER let a responsible spokesperson with an opposing point of view have any air time whatsoever, except in a context where he can be edited and mocked into submission.

Mr. Anderson's article, as panicked as it is (after all, he works for Rupert Murdoch, who made his life's fortune on being a strident partisan and suppressing rational discussion), points out the enormous success lying on the radio has had.

It's about time it stopped. He cites the First Amendment, but as anyone with a speck of understanding can see, the First Amendment is under more savage attacks without the Fairness Doctrine than with.

What Anderson is more concerned with (and his article amply demonstrates) is comfort. The comfort of not having one's views challenged substantively. The comfort of being truly elitist because one is truly ignorant. The comfort of being, in short, an idiot.

So "amen" to the Fairness Doctrine, and long may she oversee the dialogue of this great nation.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)