American Civil Liberties Union:

For more than a decade, numerous members of Congress have tried to amend the U.S. Constitution to give the government the power to prohibit the physical desecration of the American flag. We have fought back hard with coalitions of veterans, religious leaders and other Americans who believe that such a constitutional amendment would undermine the very principles for which the American flag stands.

Colin Powell, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has strongly opposed the proposed amendment. “The First Amendment exists to insure that freedom of speech and expression applies not just to that with which we agree or disagree, but also that which we find outrageous,” he said. “I would not amend that great shield of democracy to hammer a few miscreants. The flag will be flying proudly long after they have slunk away.”

[Lifted from Whiskey Bar: Rush to Judgment, where there are still more. Well done, Billmon.]

We have laws against selling drugs, pushing drugs, using drugs, importing drugs. And the laws are good because we know what happens to people in societies and neighborhoods, which become consumed by them. And so if people are violating the law by doing drugs, they ought to be accused and they ought to be convicted and they ought to be sent up.

Rush Limbaugh
Rush Limbaugh TV Show
October 5, 1995

I warned you about this ever-broadening interpretation of the so-called right to privacy. It’s not a ‘right’ specifically enumerated in the Constitution or Bill of Rights.

Rush Limbaugh
Rush Limbaugh.com
August 22nd, 2003

Let’s be clear about something, folks. All these so-called human rights groups like People for the American Way and so forth, ACLU, all these Democrats, they claim to be standing up for human dignity and human rights. Well, like hell they are.

Rush Limbaugh
Truth Detector
January 5, 2005

Limbaugh has maintained his innocence throughout the investigation and argues that the case threatens the privacy rights of all Floridians — a point which has drawn the support of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Associated Press
Florida Supreme Court refuses
to hear Rush Limbaugh appeal
April 28, 2005

Breaking the Rules to Destroy Our Courts
Remarks as prepared by former Vice President Al Gore

Alexander Hamilton, in Federalist # 78, wrote that the “independence of the judges is equally requisite to guard the Constitution and the rights of individuals from the effects of those ill-humors which the arts of designing men… have a tendency, in the meantime, to occasion dangerous innovations in the government, and serious oppressions of the minor party in the community.”

When James Madison introduced the Bill of Rights, he explained that “independent tribunals of justice will consider themselves… the guardians of [these] rights, … an impenetrable bulwark against every assumption of power in the legislature or executive.” …

[T]he Republican leader of the House of Representatives responded to rulings in the Terri Schiavo case, by saying ominously: “The time will come for the men responsible for this to pay for their behavior.”

When the outrage following this comment worsened Rep. DeLay’s problems during the House Ethics scandal, he claimed that his words had been chosen badly, but in the next breath, he issued new threats against the same courts: “We set up the courts. We can unset the courts. We have the power of the purse.”

In previous remarks on the subject, DeLay has said, “Judges need to be intimidated,” adding that if they don’t behave, “we’re going to go after them in a big way.”

Moreover, a whole host of prominent Republicans have been making similar threats on a regular basis.

A Republican Congressman from Iowa added: “When their budget starts to dry up, we’ll get their attention. If we’re going to preserve the Constitution, we must get them in line.”

A Republican Senator from Texas directly connected the “spate of courthouse violence lately” to his view that unpopular decisions might be the explanation. “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 and builds to the point where some people engage in violence.”

One of the best-known conservative political commentators has openly recommended that “liberals should be physically intimidated.”

The spokesman for the Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee said: “There does seem to be this misunderstanding out there that our system was created with a completely independent judiciary.” Misunderstanding?

The Chief of Staff for another Republican senator called for “mass impeachment” by using the bizarre right-wing theory that the president can declare that any judge is no longer exhibiting “good behavior,” adding that, “then the judge’s term has simply come to an end. The President gives them a call and says: ‘Clean out your desk. The Capitol police will be in to help you find your way home.'”

The elected and appointed Republican officials who made these dangerous statements are reflecting an even more broadly-held belief system of grassroots extremist organizations that have made the destruction of judicial independence the centerpiece of their political agenda.

Tony Perkins, leader of the Family Research Council, who hosted a speech by the Senate Majority Leader last Sunday, has said, “There’s more than one way to skin a cat, and there’s more than one way to take a black robe off the bench.” Explaining that during his meeting with Republican leaders, the leaders discussed stripping funding from certain courts, Perkins said, “What they’re thinking of is not only the fact of just making these courts go away and recreating them the next day, but also de-funding them.” Congress could use its appropriations authority to just “take away the bench, all of its staff, and he’s just sitting out there with nothing to do.”

Another influential leader of one of these groups, James Dobson, who heads Focus on the Family, focused his anger on the 9th circuit court of appeals: “Very few people know this, that the Congress can simply disenfranchise a court. They don’t have to fire anybody or impeach them or go through that battle. All they have to do is say the 9th circuit doesn’t exist anymore, and it’s gone.”

Edwin Vieira (at the “Confronting the Judicial War on Faith” conference) said his “bottom line” for dealing with the Supreme Court comes from Stalin: “He had a slogan, and it worked very well for him whenever he ran into difficulty: ‘no man, no problem.'”

Through their words and threats, these Republicans are creating an atmosphere in which judges may well hesitate to exercise their independence for fear of Congressional retribution, or worse.

It is no accident that this assault on the integrity of our constitutional design has been fueled by a small group claiming special knowledge of God’s will in American politics. They even claim that those of us who disagree with their point of view are waging war against “people of faith.” How dare they?

Long before our founders met in Philadelphia, their forebears first came to these shores to escape oppression at the hands of despots in the old world who mixed religion with politics and claimed dominion over both their pocketbooks and their souls.

This aggressive new strain of right-wing religious zealotry is actually a throwback to the intolerance that led to the creation of America in the first place.

James Madison warned us in Federalist #10 that sometimes, “A religious sect may degenerate into a political faction.”

The Nation | Blog | The Daily Outrage | Republican Broadcasting Corporation | Ari Berman

A conservative coup is underway at PBS.

The new head of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (the gatekeeper between lawmakers and public broadcasters), Ken Ferree, is a staunch Republican proponent of media deregulation and a former top adviser to FCC Chairman Michael Powell. Three top CPB officials, all with Democratic affiliations, departed or were dismissed in recent months. For the first time in its 38-year history, the CPB ordered a comprehensive review of public TV and radio programming for “evidence of bias.” The CPB even tried to condition all new PBS funding agreements upon the network following “objectivity and balance” requirements for each of its programs.

Last January, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings denounced the cartoon rabbit Buster, of “Postcards from Buster” fame, for visiting a lesbian family in Vermont. The decision to slash in half the popular investigative show NOW after Bill Moyers’ departure, and the addition of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Tucker Carlson (who has since left for MSNBC) to the programming line-up proves just how far right PBS has moved in an attempt to appear fair and balanced. “This is the first time in my thirty-two years in public broadcasting that CPB has ordered up programs for ideological instead of journalistic reasons,” Moyers told The New Yorker last year.

A majority of the CPB’s eight-member board–chaired by Ken Tomlinson, a good friend of Karl Rove–are now Republican appointees. Two of the newest, Gay Hart Gaines and Cheryl Halpern, have donated more than $800,000 to the Republican Party since 1995. Gaines once ran a political action committee for Newt Gingrich, who as speaker of the House pushed to “zero out” all of PBS’s federal funding. In 2003, PBS President Pat Mitchell offered Gingrich a town-hall style show. It would’ve happened if Gingrich wasn’t already under contract with Fox News.

Ironically, the CPB was created to shield PBS from political pressure, just as PBS was intended to address the “needs of unserved and underserved audiences.” One can hardly argue that the WSJ edit page or Tucker Carlson fit into that category. “To find the same combination of conviction, partisanship and ideological extremism on the far left,” wrote my colleague Eric Alterman, “A network would need to convene a ’roundtable’ featuring Noam Chomsky, Alexander Cockburn, Vanessa Redgrave and Fidel Castro.”

These days, PBS is more likely to give James Dobson his own special on religion.

U.S. SENATOR BARBARA BOXER | Issues

In 1981, three counties in Texas–Galveston, Matagorda, and Brazoria–decided to opt out of Social Security and instead provide their public employees with a system of privatized accounts.

While the privatization proposal advocated by President Bush is not an exact replication of the Texas plan, the concept is similar enough to warrant an examination of the Texas plan to see the impact of plans to privatize Social Security. …

Under the Texas plan, a married couple that has earned the median income would receive a monthly annuity benefit of $1568. Under Social Security, that married couple would receive $1818 at retirement–$3000 more over the course of the first year of retirement. Because Social Security beneficiaries receive an annual cost-of-living adjustment, at age 80, that gap increases to $13,440 more per year under Social Security than under the Texas plan.

Minor children are clearly better off with Social Security’s survivor benefits. If a worker who earned the median income dies at the age of 40, after working 20 years, the surviving spouse and two minor children would receive Social Security survivor benefits more than two and half times greater than they would receive under the Texas Alternate Plans.

“So you can make a case that, gee, if the level’s about the same, then the insurgency must be down because we’re paying less attention to it….” — Donald Rumsfeld
—–
frontline: rumsfeld’s war: paths to power: nixon administration | PBS

Donald Rumsfeld

Rumsfeld might have been a moderate compared to Barry Goldwater, but over the years, his political profile moved to the right….

ABC News: Conservatives See Win in Rise of New Pope By RICHARD N. OSTLING, The Associated Press

“Faithful Christians ought to be thrilled,” declared Charles Colson, the prison evangelist who’s among the best-known members of America’s largest Protestant group, the Southern Baptist Convention.

Colson is especially pleased because, as he sees it, America’s cultural elite is alarmed by the cardinals’ choice. He praised Ratzinger’s recent sermon against moral relativism, which amounted to a papal campaign platform. He also agreed with the pope that Western civilization is doomed if secular trends persist.

It’s significant that Colson is scheduled to appear Sunday night in Louisville, Ky., for a “Justice Sunday” rally where conservative Protestants will denounce what they call “out-of-control courts” and Democratic filibusters to block U.S. Senate votes on nominees to be federal appeals judges. …

[Sidebar on the honorable Charles Colson

Known as President Nixon’s hatchet man, Colson could be counted on to break the china – do whatever was necessary – to achieve the desired political ends of his boss. The saying at the time was that he would be willing to run over his own grandmother if the President ordered it to be done. (Colson never did so.) Such a reputation showed him as an administration loyalist.

Colson was involved in the Watergate Scandal, and in 1974 voluntarily agreed to a plea of nolo contendere (no contest) to obstruction of justice in the Watergate affair. Some months before this plea, Colson became an evangelical Christian.]

While the pope is no Protestant, conservative evangelicals see him as a powerful ally in such matters and Benedict’s track record suggests they’re correct. …

While Catholic liberals believe it would be both wise and just for the church to loosen up on doctrinal demands, Benedict might draw the opposite conclusion from U.S. Protestant trends.

Since the mid-1960s, liberal denominations like Thomas’ United Church of Christ have suffered a steady slide in membership, while conservative groups like the Southern Baptists have continued to expand. And in the past generation, Southern Baptist agencies have actually moved from moderate conservatism to stricter conservatism.

Penn State historian Philip Jenkins noted in his book “The Next Christendom” that the same trend is true globally.

While flexible, modernized churches stagnate, evangelical and Pentecostal Christianity are growing in the developing world as is Islam. These groups have been dogged in preserving doctrinal and moral tradition.

If Benedict plays to conservative Christians in the United States, he’ll be working with the growth sector of the religious world today.