Just the Beginning - "Court Stripping" by radical right - Eleanor Clift

[TacticalPeek]

Just the Beginning
Forcing a rule change on filibusters is only the start of the GOP’s radical judicial agenda

WEB EXCLUSIVE

By Eleanor Clift
Newsweek

Updated: 4:59 p.m. ET May 20, 2005

May 20 - A Jewish friend after making her first trip to Israel said, “This would be a great place if they could figure out how to separate government and religion.” I was reminded of her sentiments this week as the U.S. Senate began debate on two of President Bush’s judicial nominees, Priscilla Owen and Janice Rogers Brown, hostages in the ongoing culture war between born-again religionists and the more-or-less secular society the Founding Fathers envisioned.

When Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist accuses Democrats who oppose Owen and Brown of wanting to “kill, to defeat, to assassinate these nominees,” he transforms political rhetoric into an apocalyptic vision that is better suited to Bible class than the floor of the Senate. What’s behind his passion is naked ambition. He wants to be president and he’s courting the religious right. The scary part is that this over-the-top wooing of God-obsessed Christians is embraced by a growing number of Republican senators, all apparently sincere in their religiosity and some, like Frist, with presidential aspirations.

Stripping Senate Democrats of their right to filibuster judicial nominees is a prelude to a broader assault on the judiciary known as “court stripping.” Alabama Republican Richard Shelby last year introduced The Constitution Restoration Act of 2004 to acknowledge God as the sovereign source of law and threaten judges with impeachment should they uphold separation of church and state. Former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore appeared with Shelby at the press conference announcing the legislation. Moore is now touring the country with the granite block depicting the Ten Commandments that he was ordered to remove from the state court house.

Shelby reintroduced the bill in March of this year when the Terri Schiavo case was in the headlines. His press secretary says the two events were unrelated, yet if anything like Shelby imagines comes to pass, it would turn our constitutional democracy into a theocracy. The legislation says no court has jurisdiction to rule on issues surrounding God, the flag, separation of church and state and establishment of religion. The wording is broad enough to remove from civil law all matters of personal status, like whom you can marry and issues related to child custody and child support. “We’re lulled into thinking it’s too ridiculous to pass,” says Judith Lichtman with the National Partnership for Women & Families. “But it’s the genius of the right to make what is really radical accepted in the mainstream.”

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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7924870/site/newsweek


:wow:

[ClintonTyree]

1. The Talibornagains.....

are a HUGE problem in this country. I have no idea how to combat them, other than appealing to more moderate "real" Christians to reject this Theocratic bullsquat.

The mere thought of Frist as President scares the bejebus out of me. It would be "A Handmaid's Tale" come alive. I can only hope that a majority of sane Americans loudly, forcefully reject the Talibornagains agenda.

I do believe a majority of Americans support separation of Church and State, however these are the "silent majority". They MUST become more vocal in their rejection of these radical, extremist Fundamentalists.

[Dhalgren]

2. The problem is that if you separate all of the major issues

and address them individually, most Christians (except maybe the real leftists) would not see a problem with the undead...I mean reborn, solutions or responses. Most Christians believe that there is nothing wrong with praying at public venues; they see no problem in denying gays equal rights; they believe abortion should be illegal; they think that laws are or should be based on the Ten Commandments or the "Bible"; They believe that the US is a "Christian" nation; and that it is the duty of "good Christians" to work to convert the rest of humanity to the "only true religion". Now a lot of liberal Christians will say that this is too broad a brush job, but from my experience it isn't. By the time the sane Christians realize what has happened and withdraw their support of these blatantly theocratic usurpations, it will be too late - for themselves as well as the rest of us heathens...

[struggle4progress]

3. kick