The Road To Environmental Apocalypse by Glenn Scherer

Forty-five senators and 186 representatives earned 80- to 100-percent approval ratings from the nation’s three most influential Christian right advocacy groups — the Christian Coalition, Eagle Forum, and Family Resource Council in 2003. Many of those same lawmakers also got flunking grades — less than 10 percent, on average — from the League of Conservation Voters last year.

These statistics are puzzling at first. … [A] scripture-based justification for anti-environmentalism — when was the last time you heard a conservative politician talk about that?

Odds are it was in 1981, when President Reagan’s first secretary of the interior, James Watt, told the U.S. Congress that protecting natural resources was unimportant in light of the imminent return of Jesus Christ. “God gave us these things to use. After the last tree is felled, Christ will come back,” Watt said in the public testimony that helped get him fired. …

Like him, many Christian fundamentalists feel that concern for the future of our planet is irrelevant, because it has no future. They believe we are living in the End-Time, when the son of God will return, the righteous will enter heaven, and sinners will be condemned to eternal hellfire. They may also believe, along with millions of other Christian fundamentalists, that environmental destruction is not only to be disregarded but actually welcomed — even hastened — as a sign of the coming Apocalypse.

We are not talking about a handful of fringe lawmakers who hold or are beholden to these beliefs. The 231 legislators (all but five of them Republicans) who received an average 80 percent approval rating or higher from leading religious-right organizations make up more than 40 percent of the U.S. Congress. …

Today, most of the roughly 50 million rightwing fundamentalist Christians in the United States believe in some form of End-Time theology.

Those 50 million believers make up only a subset of the estimated 100 million born-again evangelicals in the United States, who are by no means uniformly rightwing anti-environmentalists. In fact, the political stance of evangelicals on the environment and other issues ranges widely; the Evangelical Environmental Network, for example, has melded its biblical interpretation with good environmental science to justify and promote stewardship of the earth. But the political and cultural impact of the extreme Christian right is difficult to overestimate. …
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What’s New in the Legal World? A Growing Campaign to Undo the New Deal By ADAM COHEN , NYTimes

[S]tates’ rights conservatives are making progress in their drive to restore the narrow view of federal power that predated the New Deal – and render Congress too weak to protect Americans on many fronts.

We take for granted today the idea that Congress can adopt a national minimum wage or require safety standards in factories. That’s because the Supreme Court, in modern times, has always held that it can.

But the court once had a far more limited view of Congress’s power. In the early 1900’s, justices routinely struck down laws protecting workers and discouraging child labor. The court reversed itself starting in 1937, in cases that led to Wickard, and began upholding these same laws.

States’ rights conservatives have always been nostalgic for the pre-1937 doctrines, which they have lately taken to calling the Constitution-in-Exile. …

In pre-1937 America, workers were exploited, factories were free to pollute, and old people were generally poor when they retired. This is not an agenda the public would be likely to sign onto today if it were debated in an election. But conservatives, who like to complain about activist liberal judges, could achieve their anti-New Deal agenda through judicial activism on the right. Judges could use the so-called Constitution-in-Exile to declare laws on workplace safety, environmental protection and civil rights unconstitutional. …

The court will not return to the pre-1937 Constitution in a single case, but it seems likely to keep whittling away Congressional power and federally protected rights. If it does, what President Franklin Roosevelt declared in 1936 – after two key New Deal programs were struck down – will again be true: “It was not the wage earners who cheered when these laws were declared invalid.”

Daily Howler: George Bush won’t stop disinforming Gen X. Neither will CBS’ John Roberts

BUSH (12/11/04): While benefits for today’s seniors are secure, the system is headed towards bankruptcy down the road. If we do not act soon, Social Security will not be there for our children and grandchildren.

President Bush is lying again — and scribes like Roberts stare into air. Social Security is not ”headed towards bankruptcy,” and it’s absurd to say that the program ”won’t be there” if we don’t take emergency measures now. Why is Naja so misinformed? Because people like Bush keep misinforming her. In a rational word, journalists like would challenge Bush’s remarks. In our world, they rush hacks on the air to repeat them. …

Has there ever been a policy issue driven by so much disinformation?

The Daily Outrage by Ari Berman

Big media blowout: Radio behemoth Clear Channel has just chosen Fox News as the primary news provider for its news and talk radio stations. Fox will replace ABC Radio on more than 300 of Clear Channel’s 1,200 stations, boosting Fox’s radio presence and upping profits by several million dollars. The news company that consistently misinforms its viewers and listeners with pro-war propaganda will join forces with a radio giant who organized pro-war rallies across the country. Congratulate Clear Channel’s PR director Lisa Dollinger at lisacdollinger@clearchannel.com.