Stop This Bill Washington Post Editorial

Habeas corpus is the age-old legal process by which federal courts review the legality of detentions. In the modern era, it has been the pivotal vehicle through which those on death row or serving long sentences in prison can challenge their state-court convictions. Congress in 1996 rolled back habeas review considerably; federal courts have similarly shown greater deference — often too much deference — to flawed state proceedings. But the so-called Streamlined Procedures Act of 2005 takes the evisceration of habeas review, particularly in capital cases, to a whole new level. It should not become law.

For a great many capital cases, the bill would eliminate federal review entirely. Federal courts would be unable to review almost all capital convictions ….

It gets worse. The bill, pushed by Rep. Daniel E. Lungren (R-Calif.) in the House and Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) in the Senate, would impose onerous new procedural hurdles on inmates seeking federal review — those, that is, whom it doesn’t bar from court altogether. It would bar the courts from considering key issues raised by those cases and insulate most capital sentencing from federal scrutiny. It also would dictate arbitrary timetables for federal appeals courts to resolve habeas cases. This would be a dramatic change in federal law — and entirely for the worse.

The legislation would be simply laughable, except that it has alarming momentum. … It is no exaggeration to say that if this bill becomes law, it will consign innocent people to long-term incarceration or death.

This terror will continue until we take Arab grievances seriously by David Clark, The Guardian

It must now be obvious, even to those who would like us to think otherwise, that the war on terror is failing. This is not to say that the terrorists are winning. Their prospects of constructing the medieval pan-Islamic caliphate of their fantasies are as negligible today as they were four years ago when they attacked America. It is simply to point out that their ability to bring violence and destruction to our streets is as strong as ever and shows no sign of diminishing. We may capture the perpetrators of Thursday’s bombings, but others will follow to take their place. Moreover, the actions of our leaders have made this more likely, not less. It’s time for a rethink.

The very idea of a war on terror was profoundly misconceived from the start. Rooted in traditional strategic thought, with its need for fixed targets and an identifiable enemy, the post-9/11 response focused myopically on the problem of how and where to apply military power. …

It should be clear by now that we cannot defeat this threat with conventional force alone, however necessary that may be in specific circumstances. Even good policing, as we have found to our cost, will have only limited effect in reducing its capacity to harm. The opposite response – negotiation – is equally futile. How can you negotiate with a phenomenon that is so elusive and diffuse? And even if you could, what prospect would there be of reaching a reasonable settlement? The term “Islamofascism” may be a crude political device, but those who coined it are right to see in Bin Ladenism a classic totalitarian doctrine that accepts no limits in method or aim. What they want, we cannot give.

An effective strategy can be developed, but it means turning our attention away from the terrorists and on to the conditions that allow them to recruit and operate. No sustained insurgency can exist in a vacuum. At a minimum, it requires communities where the environment is permissive enough for insurgents to blend in and organise without fear of betrayal. This does not mean that most members of those communities approve of what they are doing. It is enough that there should be a degree of alienation sufficient to create a presumption against cooperating with the authorities. We saw this in Northern Ireland.

From this point of view, it must be said that everything that has followed the fall of Kabul has been ruinous to the task of winning over moderate Muslim opinion and isolating the terrorists within their own communities. In Iraq we allowed America to rip up the rule book of counter-insurgency with a military adventure that was dishonestly conceived and incompetently executed. Tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis have been killed by US troops uninterested in distinguishing between combatant and noncombatant, or even counting the dead. The hostility engendered has been so extreme that the CIA has been forced to conclude that Iraq may become a worse breeding ground for international terrorism that Afghanistan was. Bin Laden can hardly believe his luck.

The political dimensions of this problem mean that there can be no hope of defeating terrorism until we are ready to take legitimate Arab grievances seriously. …

TheStar.com – Bush’s war on terror is a colossal failure by Haroon Siddiqui

Blair added: “We will not allow violence to change our values and our way of life.” And Anne McLellan parrotted: “We will defend our way of life.”

This is a Bush-ian formulation: they hate us because we are free. It cleverly obviates any need for self-scrutiny.

It is also patently false.

Terrorists, if they are to be believed, are targeting us because of our policies in Muslim lands. Thursday’s communiqué made that clear enough.

Terrorists also have already changed our way of life.

Abu Ghraib. Guantanamo Bay. Secret prisons abroad. “Renditions.” Torture. Assassinations. CIA abductions, even on the friendly soil of Italy.

Fear still rules America. Even after waging a war on false pretences, Bush can find refuge from low approval ratings by continuing to link Iraq to 9/11, as he did the other day before — where else? — military cadets.

Our own governments are invading our privacy, suspending civil liberties, criminalizing entire communities and repeatedly exhorting us to be “vigilant,” thereby risking vigilantism, the anti-thesis of the rule of law.

All this may be excusable if it were making us any safer.

Not so easy to ‘carry on’ By Candida Crewe

We returned to see Tony Blair on the news being the statesman … talking of how these attacks would not change our “values” and “way of life.” They seemed like the rather meaningless and wishy-washy platitudes that politicians tend to employ in the face of such atrocities, but in this instance they stuck in the gullet more than usual.

I suspect Blair’s codependent love affair with George Bush and our repellent involvement in Iraq is largely responsible for today’s “inevitable.”? Of course, the prime minister is right: Few Londoners will want to appear to let the terrorists “win,”? to allow them to thwart our freedom of movement, to compromise our principles of liberty and democracy or to resort to religious hatred. But, we might not have had to think about this so much in the first place had he not willingly followed the Americans to war. And over the coming days in London and all England, who can guarantee there will not be some racist backlash against our Muslim communities?

For myself, for other parents of young children and for indeed the majority, we can only hope not. It feels a bit rich when Blair insists the attacks must not change our way of life. Easy to say, but several hundred people’s lives were changed on Thursday, beyond measure.

For the rest of us, while our lives may not change quite so manifestly (we shall just continue to avoid the tube and even West End musicals with our children), our famous British resilience or, as the cliche has it, our “stiff upper lip,”? is quivering a little. With full-blown anger as well as low-burn fear for the future. As well it might.

I was moved by Blair’s assertion that we would not allow terrorism to change our way of life. Perhaps it is a platitude. If only Bush had said such a thing, instead of changing everything in America. mjh

http://www.crosswindsweekly.com/cover1.htm
The Red Paint Canyon Battle
Defending a natural and cultural gem
by Sherry Robinson, Crosswindsweekly

Chief Victorio protested, ?This country belongs to my people as it did to my forefathers.?

It was 1875, and the government planned to move Victorio and his Warm Springs Apache people from Ojo Caliente, their homeland in southwestern New Mexico, to the despised San Carlos Reservation in Arizona. It wasn?t the first or last time they would be taken away, and they would return, as they had many times before.

?The Warm Springs Apaches loved that spot,? the late James Kaywaykla said of his people.

Ojo Caliente, like the better known village in northern New Mexico, got its name because of a spring. This Ojo Caliente, 38 miles northwest of Truth or Consequences, feeds Alamosa Creek, which over time has sliced its way through rock to form a picturesque box canyon. The Apaches cherished Ojo Caliente for its water, grassland and defensible location. Attacked from either side, they could flee to the box canyon and take refuge, rolling rocks down on their attackers.

According to Chiricahua Apache oral history, the entire tribe once lived in Ojo. There they received supernatural powers and learned the customs of their people. Afterward the tribe divided into four bands. The Warm Springs band remained and the other three moved south and west.

In 1859 the army established an outpost at Ojo Caliente along the river. At the village of Ca?ada Alamosa, 17 miles down the canyon, Hispanic farmers tilled their fields and maintained friendly relations with the Apaches.

Ojo Caliente had another feature important to the Apaches. Nearby was Red Paint Canyon, a source of pigment the Warm Springs people used to paint their faces. In their own language they?re called Chihenne, or Red Paint People.

Along came a miner

Rancher Kenneth ?Tey? Sullivan, who owns Red Paint Canyon, wants to explore its mining potential and has asked the state for permission to drill. His family has owned land adjoining Ojo Caliente for generations.

It?s Sullivan?s third try. In 2002, he and David Tognoni, a geological engineer, began mining without a permit. Local residents alerted the state Mining and Minerals Division, which promptly shut them down. They returned this year and applied for a minimal?impact exploration permit to drill 30 holes. The state denied the permit in April because of potential impact to streams and habitat.

Next, the two enlisted Great Western Exploration LLC, which on May 11 reapplied for a minimal?impact permit. Their scaled? down plans now call for five holes up to 2,000 feet deep. They?ve moved the proposed drill sites away from the spring and creek and say in the application that disturbance wouldn?t exceed five acres.

Their interest is a deposit of bertrandite, a source of beryllium, which is somewhat scarce. Once used in nuclear weapons, beryllium has found new applications in electronics and golf clubs, but it?s a small, specialized market. In the past, beryllium exposure has been a health issue.

A geologist with the New Mexico Bureau of Mines & Mineral Resources is skeptical about the potential of this deposit. ?Great caution needs to be used in these situations,? he said. ?It could be a new discovery, but it?s somewhat unlikely.?

Little is known of Great Western except that the company incorporated in 2004 in Windsor, Colo. Tognoni is listed as a subcontractor and has apparently been involved in other small projects in the state. They?ve hired AMEC, an environmental consulting firm. The same players are also drilling on two other sites in Sierra County. Sullivan and Great Western have declined to comment; AMEC didn?t return calls.

The prospect of drilling or mining has alarmed residents of Monticello, the former Ca?ada Alamosa. The cottonwood?shaded village of about 50 people is a mix of long? time residents and newcomers.

?Any holes drilled have great potential for harm not only to our waters but also to the surrounding ecosystem,? says organic farmer Joshua Cravens. ?The surface water we irrigate with comes from the spring. Our well water is from the same aquifer.?

?The massive, deep drilling proposed is likely to penetrate several layers of ground water and thereby risk causing catastrophic damage to the quantity of water flowing down the creek,? writes Dennis O?Toole, who lives in the canyon. And drilling could lead to waste water discharge, which would drain toward the springs and the river.

Residents and neighboring ranchers also worry about the impact of moving heavy equipment around and carving drill pads, which could degrade ground cover and exacerbate erosion and silting.

Ojo Caliente is a warm spring that feeds Alamosa Creek. Considered sacred by the Warm Springs Apache people, it’s at the heart of their homeland.

This unusual water source and riparian area is habitat to creatures on state or federal lists of threatened or endangered species ? the Alamosa springsnail, the ovate vertigo snail and the Chiricahua leopard frog. The environmental issues have drawn the interest of the Sierra Club.

?We?ve received many, many calls and letters from citizens in the area,? says Karen Garcia, bureau chief of the state?s Mine Regulation Bureau.

The regulatory process requires the state Mining and Minerals Division to solicit comments from other agencies before making a decision. In the previous application, the state Surface Water Bureau held out concerns about impacts to surface water; the Game and Fish Department raised the issue of the toxicity of beryllium and noted that the geology in the canyon and groundwater connections aren?t well understood. This led mining regulators to deny minimal?impact status. Federal agencies are not involved because the proposed mine is on private land.

The decision is again before the Mining and Minerals Division. A minimal?impact application doesn?t require a public hearing, but the state was meeting with residents at press time and had not yet made a decision.

Cultural considerations

Regardless of the state?s decision, opponents know the fight isn?t over. ?Ultimately, we want to find somebody to buy the land and conserve it,? says Cravens. …

[read more about the history of the Warm Springs Apache – Cover Story Archives

mjh’s Blog: Help Save A Special Place in New Mexico – the Monticello Box in New Mexico

Jury Acquits HealthSouth Founder of All Charges By Carrie Johnson

Outside the courthouse, Scrushy told reporters that he was bolstered by the verdict. “There are a lot of wrongs that need to be made right,” he said. “Thank God for this.” …

Scrushy, who is white, preached at predominantly black churches and donated more than $1 million to the Guiding Light Baptist church, which he joined shortly before he was indicted in 2003. He invited black pastors, some wearing clerical collars, to occupy benches in the courtroom in the jury’s line of sight.

Defense lawyer Donald V. Watkins, a Birmingham fixture and owner of a local bank, entreated jurors in his closing to “send a message to Washington” and to remember the days of segregated water fountains and unequal treatment for blacks. …

HealthSouth’s new leaders restated earnings by more than $1 billion Monday to erase some of the fraud off the books.

Robert P. May, the company’s chairman, said in a statement that he was “appalled by the multibillion-dollar fraud that took place under Mr. Scrushy’s management and the environment under which such fraud could occur.” He said Scrushy would not be welcome at HealthSouth under any circumstances.

In Scrushy Trial, Jurors Chose Defense’s Portrait By Ben White

During the trial, Scrushy appeared on a morning television show in Birmingham called “Viewpoint” in which he and his wife read Bible verses. He began preaching in fundamentalist churches and invited pastors to the trial. Several jurors said in pretrial questionnaires that they attended church. …

Vanderbilt University law professor Larry D. Soderquist, a close observer of the trial, said defense efforts to highlight Scrushy’s connection to predominately black churches in Birmingham may have won points with the seven black members of the jury.

“Send a message to Washington” and to remember the days of segregated water fountains and unequal treatment for blacks.

Hmmm. Would that be the same Washington the smashed Jim Crow? What exactly is that message and what exactly do segregated water fountains have to do with a rich White crook who conveniently found god at the right time and place? mjh

The Armstrong Williams NewsHour – New York Times By FRANK RICH

That doesn’t mean the right’s new assault on public broadcasting is toothless, far from it. But this time the game is far more insidious and ingenious. The intent is not to kill off PBS and NPR but to castrate them by quietly annexing their news and public affairs operations to the larger state propaganda machine that the Bush White House has been steadily constructing at taxpayers’ expense. If you liked the fake government news videos that ended up on local stations – or thrilled to the “journalism” of Armstrong Williams and other columnists who were covertly paid to promote administration policies – you’ll love the brave new world this crowd envisions for public TV and radio. …

[In a secret study,] guests were rated either L for liberal or C for conservative, and “anti-administration” was affixed to any segment raising questions about the Bush presidency. Thus was the conservative Republican Senator Chuck Hagel given the same L as Bill Clinton simply because he expressed doubts about Iraq in a discussion mainly devoted to praising Ronald Reagan. Three of The Washington Post’s star beat reporters (none of whom covers the White House or politics or writes opinion pieces) were similarly singled out simply for doing their job as journalists by asking questions about administration policies.

“It’s pretty scary stuff to judge media, particularly public media, by whether it’s pro or anti the president,” Senator Dorgan said. “It’s unbelievable.”

Not from this gang. …

Then, on Thursday, a Rove dream came true: Patricia Harrison, a former co-chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, ascended to the CPB presidency. In her last job, as an assistant secretary of state, Ms. Harrison publicly praised the department’s production of faux-news segments – she called them “good news” segments – promoting American success in Afghanistan and Iraq. As The Times reported in March, one of those fake news videos ended up being broadcast as real news on the Fox affiliate in Memphis.

Mr. Tomlinson has maintained that his goal at CPB is to strengthen public broadcasting by restoring “balance” and stamping out “liberal bias.” But Mr. Moyers left “Now” six months ago. Mr. Tomlinson’s real, not-so-hidden agenda is to enforce a conservative bias or, more specifically, a Bush bias. To this end, he has not only turned CPB into a full-service employment program for apparatchiks but also helped initiate “The Journal Editorial Report,” the only public broadcasting show ever devoted to a single newspaper’s editorial page, that of the zealously pro-Bush Wall Street Journal. Unlike Mr. Moyers’s “Now” – which routinely balanced its host’s liberalism with conservative guests like Ralph Reed, Grover Norquist, Paul Gigot and Cal Thomas – The Journal’s program does not include liberals of comparable stature.

THIS is all in keeping with Mr. Tomlinson’s long career as a professional propagandist. During the Reagan administration he ran Voice of America. Then he moved on to edit Reader’s Digest, where, according to Peter Canning’s 1996 history of the magazine, “American Dreamers,” he was rumored to be “a kind of ‘Manchurian Candidate’ ” because of the ensuing spike in pro-C.I.A. spin in Digest articles. Today Mr. Tomlinson is chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the federal body that supervises all nonmilitary international United States propaganda outlets, Voice of America included. That the administration’s foremost propagandist would also be chairman of the board of CPB, the very organization meant to shield public broadcasting from government interference, is astonishing. But perhaps no more so than a White House press secretary month after month turning for softball questions to “Jeff Gannon,” a fake reporter for a fake news organization ultimately unmasked as a G.O.P. activist’s propaganda site. …

Forget the pledge drive. What’s most likely to save the independent voice of public broadcasting from these thugs is a rising chorus of Deep Throats.

Outcry grows over public TV, radio
By Matea Gold and Jube Shiver Jr.
Times Staff Writers

The consultant, Fred Mann, categorized segments as “pro-Bush” and “anti-Bush,” according to copies of the reports obtained by Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.). Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, a frequent White House critic, was labeled “liberal” because he questioned Bush’s policy in Iraq.

“I think if you asked God, he’d say the Ten Commandments were a road map for living. Instead, you have these self-appointed pharisees who think the Ten Commandments can be turned into a stiletto to use against their political opponents.” Representative David Obey, Wisconsin Democrat
—–
Keeping Faith With Religious Freedom By E. J. Dionne Jr.

Thus did Obey offer an amendment to the military appropriations bill calling on the secretary of the Air Force to “develop a plan to ensure that the Air Force Academy maintains a climate free from coercive intimidation and inappropriate proselytizing.”

Obey’s all-American assertion of religious liberty was, for Rep. John Hostettler (R-Ind.), part of “the long war on Christianity in America [that] continues today on the floor of the House of Representatives. It continues unabated with aid and comfort to those who would eradicate any vestige of our Christian heritage being supplied by the usual suspects, the Democrats. . . . Like a moth to a flame, Democrats can’t help themselves when it comes to denigrating and demonizing Christians.”

Need I point out that paranoid, bellicose, radical right, evangelical Christians are turning themselves into demons without any outside help.

By the way, of our 3 New Mexico Representatives, Udall and Wilson, an Air Force Academy alumna, voted for the amendment while Steve Pearce channeled Joe Skeen and voted against it (alone, as he was, in voting against removing spying on library patrons from the Patiot Act). mjh

NOW. Transcript. June 10, 2005 | PBS

CHRISTOPHER HEDGES: The far Christian right has been very astute in building communications networks that enwrap millions of people essentially within their embrace.

So they’ve created a kind of parallel information network that has essentially closed minds. And has become a form of indoctrination. Coupled with far right Christian schools and everything else.

I mean the– you know, the teaching of creationism for those of us who read the book of Genesis is ridiculous. I mean the writers of the book of Genesis thought the world was flat. You know, God according to Genesis created light on the first day and sun on the fourth.

The writers of Genesis, like the rest of the Bible, were not trying to teach us about the process of evolution or creation. They were trying to teach us about the purpose. That is the power and wisdom of the Bible, that it’s about values. Facts are left up to science. They’ve tried to turn the Bible into a kind of scientific textbook. And it doesn’t work of course unless you ignore whole sections of it. And you don’t allow outside thought, outside opinion, honest intellectual inquiry to intrude upon you.

BRANCACCIO: And as you looked around, as you talked to people you saw things that added up to quite a big word. I mean the headline to your piece in Harper’s had the word hate–

CHRISTOPHER HEDGES: Yeah.

BRANCACCIO: –in it.

CHRISTOPHER HEDGES: Because that’s what the ideology is about.

The final aesthetic of this movement is violence. This obsession with the apocalyptic end of the world with the rapture, which of course is not in the Bible, with you know, the torment that will befall unbelievers. The nothion, cult of masculinity, the notion of Christ the avenger. All of this bares far more in common with despotic ideologies, even sort of fascist ideologies, than it does with I think with the message of love, which I think is essentially certainly within the four Gospels the message that Jesus tries to bring. …

BRANCACCIO: Help me understand something though. I mean who are you talking about? You’re not talking about Christians, evangelical Christians. Who specifically are the people that are worrying you?

CHRISTOPHER HEDGES: Yeah. I mean David that’s a really good point. I’m not talking about evangelical Christians. I’m talking about people we would classify as Dominionists.

BRANCACCIO: Dominionists.

CHRISTOPHER HEDGES: Yeah, it’s a term that they perhaps would not embrace themselves. I think they would call themselves Bible-believing Christians as a way to separate themselves?

BRANCACCIO: God’s dominion over our civic life, over our government?

CHRISTOPHER HEDGES: Yes, very much so. And this comes out of a sort of theological or ideological movement begun roughly 30 years ago by J. Rousas Rushdoony with the Institutes of Biblical Law. And I think what a lot of people don’t understand is that we’re– when we talk about evangelicals in America we’re no longer talking about the Billy Grahams or the Luis Palaus people who are concerned primarily with person salvation.

You know, Billy Graham didn’t talk a lot about hell and apocalypse and violence. He talked about the joys of salvation. It’s not a theology I embraced but it’s a theology I could understand.

We’ve had Christian revivals throughout this nation since our inception. But all of these revivals have called on followers to remove themselves from the contaminants of secular society to live a more Godly life. This movement is different. What it’s calling on is for its followers to essentially take control of secular society and create a Christian, what they define as a Christian nation.

BRANCACCIO: And how would that live alongside people who may have different religious views in our republic?

CHRISTOPHER HEDGES: Well, what they would like to do is impose their– what they call as their moral agenda on the rest of us. You know, there’s a real hostility to federal programs. Headstart, public education. I mean, you know, James Dobson, the head of Focus on the Family has called for Christian followers to remove their children from public schools. And put them in schools that teach creationism. Put them in schools that teach them that they have been anointed as Christians to have dominion ? dominion over the United States and dominion over the rest of the world.

There are very specific plans. I mean there’s a book they use in the Christian schools as well as the home schooling movement called AMERICA’S PROVIDENTIAL HISTORY, and there’s a chapter on Christian economics. And when you read through the book it’s clear that what they want– the federal government essentially will be reduced to carrying out national defense and protecting property rights, and not much else.
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NOW. Transcript. June 17, 2005 | PBS

JUJU CHANG: What would be wrong if a judge started putting their own personal faith above the law?

JUDGE ALVAREZ: What would be wrong? You would be in a state of utter chaos. A Catholic judge could never be assigned to the domestic division, because the Catholic Church doesn’t believe in divorce. We do divorces all the time. You can never be assigned to the Criminal Division, because we have to impose the death sentence, and the Catholic Church doesn’t believe in the death sentence.

Once you start mixing religion and the law, you’re no longer going to make decisions based upon the law. We’re being critical of Iran that they’re permitting their law to be interpreted according to the Koran. I think that’s what we’re asking the judges in this country to do.
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NOW. Transcript. June 10, 2005 | PBS

ROY MOORE: The center of the message is judges need to answer to the Constitution. They need to answer to the law. And our law recognizes God. And today, we’ve divorced God from many things. So, it’s not answering directly to God. It’s answering to our Constitution, which recognizes the sovereignty of God.

That’s the whole purpose of the First Amendment. And the first thing that our forefathers did when they wrote the First Amendment was to acknowledge God. It was all about God. So, when you say that God’s not in the Constitution, it is because people don’t understand what the Constitution is about.

BRANCACCIO: So, not only about God, but God of the Bible?

ROY MOORE: God of the Bible. That’s right. Not God of the Muslim faith. Not God of, you see there was a particular God that gave freedom of conscience.

That’s the freedom to believe what you want. I often say that without the first commandment, there would be no First Amendment. Without a recognition of the Judeo-Christian God, the God that gave freedom of conscience, there would be no need to keep the state out the affairs of the person, with regard to the duties you owe to God. …

ROY MOORE: If you’re uncomfortable with the recognition of the Judeo-Christian God, then you’re uncomfortable with America. Because without a recognition of that God, America would not exist. America would have never been started.

BRANCACCIO: So you wouldn’t have put a cross in the middle of your court rotunda?

ROY MOORE: Well, when you’re talking about what I would do, of course, that’s … what I did. …

ROY MOORE: We’ve got to recognize what morality is. It’s the definition of right and wrong. For example, there’s a big debate, right now, in our country, about same-sex marriage. Where did the definition of marriage come from? Did it come from the Constitution? No. The Declaration? No. It comes from no official document.

It comes from the fact that our morality comes from God and from the Bible. That’s why we have laws against bestiality, we had laws against sodomy until it was struck down by the United States Supreme Court. Laws against incest. Without a recognition of the God of the Bible, we lose our national morality, and that’s happening, today, right under our noses. Nobody seems to understand it.

BRANCACCIO: You’re saying we can’t live in a society– cause I’m just trying to understand this, judge, where there– it’s a moral free-for-all. That there–

ROY MOORE: That’s right.

BRANCACCIO: –has to be some basic values that we agree on.

ROY MOORE: There’s– this country was established on the moral basis of God. When you depart from that, what is the moral basis? Whatever nine men and women on a court say it is. There is no end to it. There is no standard. They can say anything. They can say you can marry a cow, if you want. You say, “Well, that’s ridiculous.”

Fifteen years ago, it was ridiculous to think a man could marry a man, until one Massachusetts judge and her court decided to tell the legislature to redefine the word marriage and started this whole debate. Well, who makes the law in Massachusetts? When you start redefining the word, it looks like the court’s making the law.

BRANCACCIO: Is that your greatest fear?

ROY MOORE: I have no fears. I know that God’s still sovereign. I know God’s still in control of our country. And this country was meant for very particular purpose. It was for freedom and liberty.

And that’s represented by what we’re established upon. The Declaration of Independence where God gives us rights. And government is to secure them, not to presume to give them to us. And that is the basis of freedom. It– logically, when we don’t acknowledge there’s a God, then government must be the one that gives us our freedoms. And if they give it, why can’t they take it away? But if God gives it, no man can take it away.

Roy Moore may be insane. Certainly, his circular illogic makes you wonder about his judicial rulings.

Just one thing before some liberal judge requires you to marry a donkey. Not too long ago it more than ridiculous that a black person and white person might marry. Or go to school together or eat together at a lunch counter. Judges had a lot to do with fixing that.

Ever notice how easily so many Southern Democrats became Republicans (like Zell From Hell Miller). Lincoln was awful; queers and atheists must be worse. mjh