Fighting the Right

Boykin: Secret Service Scandal Really the Fault of President Clinton

As Brian has noted several times already this week, Tony Perkins appears somewhat obsessed with the scandal involving Secret Service agents who solicited prostitutes while on detail with President Obama in Colombia.  In particular, he seems intent on trying to blame the scandal on the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell and the culture of deviance it has supposedly created within the military.

On today's installment of "Today's Issues," Perkins and Tim Wildmon brought Jerry Boykin on the program to give his thoughts on the topic ... with Perkins asking how the military is supposed to conduct itself within this climate of moral "schizophrenia" created by the Obama administration while Boykin blamed it mostly on President Bill Clinton:

Perkins: This administration has been a part of bringing about, really, a schizophrenia in our military and in government service, with overturning Don't Ask, Don't Tell, saying what most societies have always held as immoral now saying it's legal. How does our military, how does our government operate in this, really, relative standard of moral conduct?

Boykin: I think, first of all, a lot of this goes back to the Bill Clinton era when we had Secret Service agents that clearly knew what the president was doing with Monica Lewinsky in the Oval Office in the evening hours and so forth. And there were Secret Services agents that were observing, certainly not every detail of what was going on, but they knew what was happening and they were required to suppress it and I think that began what I would see as a pretty rapid moral decline, certainly within the secret service.

But I think, in a larger sense, it is indicative of the moral decline within our society and, quite frankly, since this administration took over and repealed Don't Ask, Don't Tell - which is at the very core of the cohesion and readiness of our military, of people being able to trust and respect each other - and that was repealed, I think that that has increased the pace of our decline morally within our government institutions, particularly the military and then the Secret Service falls right in behind them.

Kyle Mantyla's blog

Pat Robertson Suggests that 'The Poor Jews Don't Understand' the Root of Antisemitism

Today on the 700 Club, televangelist Pat Robertson said that Satan is using Antisemitism to destroy Israel in order to “wipe out that consciousness that people have of the existence of God.” But Robertson added that “the poor Jews don’t understand that, it’s too cosmic for most of them to grasp, especially because they don’t believe Jesus is the Messiah.”

Watch:

Brian Tashman's blog

Black SBC Pastor Condemns Land's 'Damaging, Alienating and Offensive Words' about Race

It appears that Richard Land’s non-apology backfired, badly, as the Religious Right leader and chief ethicist of the Southern Baptist Convention is quickly doing damage control following his explosive racial comments on President Obama and the Trayvon Maritn case and accusations that he repeatedly plagiarized conservative columnists during his radio show. Initially, Land took a defiant stance and criticized his detractors, but then issued two statements expressing his “regret” that he “overestimated the progress that has been made” on race relations, and he admitted not to plagiarizing but simply failing “to provide appropriate verbal attributions” during his show. As Kyle pointed out this morning, Land is now facing an investigation by the Executive Committee of the ERLC and also took down the archives of his radio show, ostensibly due to “the danger that such unauthorized use by news agencies or others might include quoted material used by Dr. Land without clear and proper credit being given to the author or source of the quoted material.”

Yesterday, Dwight McKissic, a prominent African American pastor in the SBC who has received attention for his virulently anti-gay views, slammed Land for his initial remarks and his condescending non-apology, and even threatened to boycott future SBC meetings if Land is not repudiated. He even said that Land was reviving the racist “curse of Ham”:

Richard Land’s racial remarks against the backdrop of the Trayvon Martin tragedy are the most damaging, alienating, and offensive words about race that I’ve read or heard, rendered by a SBC personality, in the twenty-eight years that I’ve served as a SBC church planter/pastor.

The pain that Richard Land inflicted upon Blacks in the SBC is a pain that would be only felt greater by the pain inflicted upon Trayvon Martin’s family by George Zimmerman. In his non apology—apology, he blames those of us who responded to his racial views, for the pain we felt. The opening line in his letter of apology, dated April 16, 2012, says, “I am writing to express my deep regret for any hurt or misunderstanding my comments about the Trayvon Martin case have generated.” He then blames his readers and listeners for not being “progressive” enough to be on the same page with him racially.

…

I remain appalled at his unrepentant words. And since Dr. Land will not repent of his words, I feel compelled to ask the SBC by way of resolution to repudiate and renounce the racially offensive, biblically unjustifiable and factually incorrect words of Dr. Richard Land. He spoke these words as an official of the SBC; therefore, the SBC must take ownership and responsibility for Dr. Land’s words. I could not with a good conscience attend a SBC meeting in the post Luter years, or increase giving to the Cooperative Program as long as Land’s words remain un-repented of. To do so would be to engage in self-hatred; the exercise and practice of low self-esteem; to support Land’s view of racial profiling and his flawed racial reasoning.

What was even more troubling to me than Land’s remarks, was his assertion that the vast majority of Southern Baptists agree with his racial views. If he is accurate in his assessment, it confirms the suspicion that many Black Baptists have held for years regarding Southern Baptists; and that is many Southern Baptists, if not the majority, inherently and instinctively don’t honestly respect, relate to or view Blacks with a mindset of mutual respect, equality and understanding. Blacks are primarily viewed as mission projects, not as mission partners. Inadvertently, Dr. Land opened to us the window of his heart and showed us this painful reality (Mark 7:20-23). The question now is, did Richard Land show us the heart of the entirety of the SBC?

To read Land’s initial comments and his apology is painful, shameful and heartbreaking for many of us. Now the SBC must take ownership of Dr. Land’s words, because according to Dr. Land, his words reflect the views of his constituency. There are three reasons why I believe the SBC must repudiate Dr. Land’s remarks; or I, for one, will remove myself from SBC gatherings.

…

As I’ve listened to Black Baptists discuss Land’s comments, I believe his most offensive remark related to his belief in justified racial profiling. The SBC must repudiate the profiling comment, if nothing else. According to the prosecutor and investigators in Florida, Trayvon Martin was shot and killed because of Zimmerman’s profiling. Land’s comments gives ecclesiastical license from the SBC for this kind of profiling. Land’s racial profiling comments are analogous to what the major SBC pastors and theologians said about Black people for many years—for which they have never repented of—and that is, Black people were cursed by God. Land’s “justifiable profiling” doctrine is virtually identical and analogous to the SBC “curse of Ham” doctrine. Land just presented the 21st Century version of the “curse of Ham” doctrine, financed with Cooperative Program dollars. This is an egregious offense. Black SBC churches only give 1% to the Cooperative Program. Nevertheless, our churches helped to finance Richard Land’s communicating to all of America that racial profiling is justifiable. It was the justifiable profiling doctrine that led the SBC to conclude that slavery and segregation were biblically permissible. Land has revived that doctrine. According to Dr. Land, persons like me are worthy of being profiled.

Elsewhere in the post, McKissic commented on racial segregation at SBC meetings, called on Land to apologize to President Obama and Trayvon Martin’s family, and said that is comments “are not only factually incorrect” but are also “biblically unjustifiable.”

Brian Tashman's blog

Mitt Romney, Judge Bork, and the Future of America’s Courts

Thu, 04/19/2012 - 11:36am — Miranda

People For the American Way launched a major new campaign today highlighting what a Mitt Romney presidency would mean for America’s courts. Romney has signaled that he’s ready to draw the Supreme Court and lower federal courts even farther to the right. And no signal has been clearer than his choice of former Judge Robert Bork to lead his campaign advisory committee on the courts and the Constitution.

In 1987, PFAW led the effort to keep Judge Bork off the Supreme Court. Ultimately, a bipartisan majority of the U.S. Senate recognized his extremism and rejected his nomination.

Last night, PFAW’s Jamie Raskin went on The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell to discuss PFAW’s campaign and what a Supreme Court picked by Mitt Romney and Robert Bork would look like:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

 

Watch our full video, Don’t Let Romney Bork America:

To find out more about Judge Bork and what a Romney presidency would mean for America’s courts, visit www.RomneyCourt.com.
 

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PFAW

Barber: Failure to Overturn 'Obamacare' is Judicial Activism Through Omission

On today's "Faith and Freedom" radio program, Matt Barber and Shawn Akers were positively incensed by President Obama's "shameless attack on U.S. Supreme Court Justices," by which they meant his remarks from a few weeks ago that it would be "unprecedented" for the Supreme Court to  strike down health care reform legislation.

Despite the fact that President Bush made a very similar point during his presidency, Barber was particularly outraged at the idea that Obama would dare to call it "judicial activism" because, as he explained, not striking down health care reform would be judicial activism by omission:

Any judge that is not an Originalist is acting in a counter-constitutional manner. We have four Justices currently sitting, at least, on the bench of the United States Supreme Court that buy into this living, breathing model of the Constitution, that it is whatever we say it is whenever we say it is. So clearly this was a disingenuous portrayal of what is or what is not judicial activism on the part of this president. If the United States Supreme Court fails to overturn Obamacare, that would be judicial activism through an act of omission.

Kyle Mantyla's blog

Romney and Bork, a Dangerous Team: People For the American Way Campaign Exposes Romney’s Embrace of Judicial Extremism

Today, People For the American Way launched a major new campaign – including a website, a web ad and an exclusive report – exposing Mitt Romney’s dangerous agenda for America’s courts.

The campaign highlights Romney’s choice of Robert Bork to lead his constitutional and judicial advisory team. By allying with Bork, a jurist so extreme he was rejected by a bipartisan majority of the U.S. Senate 25 years ago, Romney has sent a clear signal that he means to drag America’s courts even farther to the right, endangering many of the civil rights, liberties and economic protections won by the American people over the past five decades.

The ad, Don’t Let Romney Bork America, and the report, Borking America: What Robert Bork Will Mean to the Supreme Court and American Justice, can be viewed at www.RomneyCourt.com.

“The debates over health care and immigration have reinforced the importance of the Supreme Court to all Americans,” said Michael Keegan, President of People For the American Way. “However, few are aware of the extreme agenda Mitt Romney has for the High Court – an agenda exemplified by his close alliance with Robert Bork.

“In 1987, People For the American Way led the fight to keep Judge Bork off the Supreme Court,” Keegan continued. “25 years later, we are as relieved as ever that we succeeded. When Bork was nominated, Americans across the political spectrum rejected the dangerous political agenda that he would have brought to the bench – his disdain for modern civil rights legislation, his acceptance of poll taxes and literacy tests, his defense of contraception bans and criminal sodomy laws, his continued privileging of corporations over individuals. Since then, he has dug his heels even deeper into a view of the law that puts corporations first and individuals far behind.

“It is frightening that a quarter century after Robert Bork’s jurisprudence was deemed too regressive for the Supreme Court, a leading presidential candidate has picked him to shape his legal policy.”

People For the American Way Senior Fellow Jamie Raskin, the author of the report, added: “The return of Robert Bork and his reactionary jurisprudence to national politics should be a three-alarm wake-up call for all Americans. In his work on the bench as a judge and off the bench as a polemicist, Bork has consistently placed corporations above the government and government above the rights of the people. The idea that Bork could be central to shaping the Supreme Court in the 21st century is shocking because he wants to turn the clock back decades in terms of the civil rights and civil liberties. His constitutional politics are even more extreme today than in 1987, when a bipartisan group of 58 senators rejected his nomination to the Supreme Court.”

The new report and ad review Bork’s record from his days as solicitor general to President Richard Nixon to his turn as co-chair of the Romney campaign’s committee on law, the Constitution and the judiciary. Highlights of Bork’s career include:

  • Consistently choosing corporate power over the rights of people. As a judge, Bork regularly took the side of business interests against government regulators trying to hold them accountable, but the side of the government when it was challenged by workers, environmentalists and consumers pressing for more corporate accountability.
  • Opposing civil rights, voting rights, reproductive rights, gay rights and individual free speech. Bork disparaged the Civil Rights Act of 1964; defended the use of undemocratic poll taxes and literacy tests in state elections ; disagrees with the Supreme Court ruling that overturned sodomy laws; and believes that the government should be able to jail people for advocating civil disobedience.
  • Advocating censorship and blaming American culture first. Bork promotes censorship to combat what he calls the “rot and decadence” of American society, saying “I don’t make any fine distinctions; I’m just advocating censorship.” He writes that “the liberal view of human nature” has thrown American culture into “free fall.”
  •  Rejecting the separation of church and state. Bork rejects the science of evolution, advocates legalizing school-sponsored prayer and has written that he wants to see the Constitution’s wall of separation between church and state “crumble.”
  • Turning back the clock on women's rights: Bork has argued against Supreme Court decisions upholding abortion rights and decisions upholding the right to contraception for single people and even married couples. He believes that the heightened protections of the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause don’t apply to women. As a judge, he authored a decision reversing the Secretary of Labor and holding that federal law permits a company to deal with toxic workplace conditions by demanding that female employees be sterilized or lose their jobs.

Learn more at www.RomneyCourt.com.


###
 

Schlafly's Schtick

Phyllis Schlafly is an all-around right-wing activist who has been around forever. You could say she was Tea Party before her time, railing against liberals and taxes and the UN's threat to US sovereignty. Her 2009 "How to Take Back America" conference was an amazing gathering at which health care reform was described as fascism, President Obama was described by Rep. Trent Franks as an "enemy of humanity," and attendees were encouraged to buy guns and ammo to defend themselves against impending tyranny.

But Schlafly’s real bread and butter is the hostility to feminism that fueled her campaign against the Equal Rights Amendment – and it was her anti-feminist schtick that she brought to George Washington University in D.C. last night.  I use the word schtick because it’s hard to take seriously Schlafly’s caricature of feminists as anti-men, anti-marriage, anti-family, and anti-child-rearing, not to mention claims like these:

  • “Feminists don’t have any role models of happiness.”
  • “They don’t believe that women can be successful. You never hear the feminists  talking about really successful  women like Margaret Thatcher or Condaleeza Rice, they just don’t believe women can be successful…that’s why they hate Sarah Palin….”

What?  Feminists don’t believe women can be successful?  That didn’t ring true to the many GW students, women and men, who politely protested Schlafly’s appearance.  During the Q&A, one challenged Schlafly directly, saying her mother is a feminist, a role model of happiness, and had instilled in her children a love of family.  The student said Schlafly seemed to be having a 40-year old argument with quotes plucked from early feminist writers.

Schlafly did have her admirers.  The young woman who introduced her said Schlafly had given her an example of how to stand up against the emerging “gender-interchangeable society.”  Schlafly returned to that theme later, saying that feminists don’t want equality for women, they want “gender interchangeability.”

Schlafly reveled in the recent flap about Ann Romney never having to work outside the home, since she saw it as proof that feminists have no respect for mothers who choose to answer to a husband rather than a boss.  But Schlafly was not on message with the Romney campaign’s claims that women have accounted for almost all job losses during the Obama administration.  Schlafly, who repeatedly claimed that the Obama administration is utterly controlled by feminists, “proved” her case by saying that feminists had successfully demanded that most jobs created by federal stimulus funds went to women.

Schlafly touched on a few other issues, such as her opposition to marriage equality (though she seemed to say she didn’t think civil unions were worth fighting about).  And she pushed the same theme being pushed by Ralph Reed and other strategists trying to build a broad electoral coalition: you can’t separate fiscal and social conservatism.  She took a shot at Mitch Daniels for seeking a “truce” on social values, something she called “impossible.”

In the end, she told the young women, they should get married before having babies, and they should ignore feminists who might poison their attitude toward life by telling them that women are victims of the patriarchy. She derided the notion of a "glass ceiling" and denied that unequal pay is a problem. Men, she said, are willing to do dangerous jobs that women aren't, because "women like nice inside jobs with carpeted offices." American women, she said, are the most fortunate people who have ever lived.  Why, in Africa, she said, some women have to wash their clothing in the river.  “We have all these wonderful modern conveniences that men have invented for our pleasure.”  

 

Peter Montgomery's blog

Richard Land's Terrible Week Gets Even Worse as ERLC Launches an Investigation

As Brian noted the other day, it has not been a very good week for Richard Land, head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.

First there was the continuing controversy over his statement that "race hustlers" where using the Trayvon Martin tragedy in order to "gin up the black vote" for President Obama. Land had largely remained defiant in the face of the criticism he had been receiving, saying he was being "mugged" by the media and that he would "not bow to the false god of political correctness."

But this week, Land backed down and issued a rather passive-aggressive quasi-apology, saying he "overestimated the progress that has been made in slaying the ugly racist ghosts of the past in our history."

But that was not the only bad news for Land, as he also had to fess up to having routinely plagiarized articles and columns during his weekly radio program, where he had a habit of reading things on air written by others without attribution and passing them off as his own words.  

But Land's multiple apologies have not put an end to his problems, as the ERLC's executive committee has now issued a statement saying that it is "very concerned" about how Land's behavior "may damage the work of the ERLC" and is launching an investigation: 

Comments by Richard Land about the Trayvon Martin killing "have angered many and opened wounds from the past," the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission's executive committee said in a statement released April 18.

The executive committee also registered concern that Land, the ERLC's president, had used sources from other media without proper attribution for some of his comments in his weekly radio call-in show.

An ad hoc committee has been formed "to investigate the allegations of plagiarism and recommend appropriate action," the ERLC executive committee reported in its statement.

"The [ERLC] Executive Committee is very saddened that this controversy has erupted, and is very concerned about how these events may damage the work of the ERLC in support of Southern Baptists and in furtherance of the Kingdom of our Lord," the six-member committee said.

On the website for Land's weekly radio program, all of the archived programs have now been removed and replaced with this message from the ERLC:

We recently became aware of instances in which Dr. Richard Land read from materials written by others during his radio show without clear and proper attribution to the authors of those materials on the program. We have also learned that news agencies occasionally access this website and use clips from Dr. Land’s past broadcasts without prior notice or permission. Due to the danger that such unauthorized use by news agencies or others might include quoted material used by Dr. Land without clear and proper credit being given to the author or source of the quoted material, we have removed links to prior radio broadcasts.

Kyle Mantyla's blog

Don't Let Romney Bork America!

Romney and Bork, a Dangerous Team: A New PFAW Campaign Exposes Romney's Embrace of Judicial Extremism
Read more

Religious Right Groups Reaffirm Opposition to Decriminalizing Homosexuality

Earlier today we posted video from Truth in Action Ministries of Religious Right leaders condemning the Obama administration’s push to curb anti-LGBT violence and persecution and the criminalization of LGBT status. now the group’s president Dan Scalf is comparing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to the Pharisees in John 8:1-11, who wanted to stone a woman for adultery, for her attempt to “promote homosexuality globally”:

How should Christians react to our tax dollars being used to promote homosexuality globally?

I am reminded of the situation religious leaders created in an attempt to trap Christ. They brought a woman to him they had caught in act of adultery and asked, “Now Moses, in the law, commanded us that such should be stoned. But what do you say?”

Hillary Clinton did something similar to that in her speech. She reminded the international leaders and representatives in her audience that the United Nations had adapted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. Then, she went on to state that homosexual, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people deserve the same protections as people persecuted because of their religion, ethnicity, age, or gender.

Christians are often trapped by that type of intellectual posturing. We allow those who call good evil and evil good to frame the argument without challenging their agenda or assumptions. We cannot come to a good solution when beginning with a flawed presupposition.

…

Hillary Clinton, and all those who promote homosexual, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender rights have an agenda. It is not “equal” rights. They want nothing less than complete cultural acceptance for a practice that God’s holy and infallible Word calls sinful.

Concerned Women for America is also voicing their opposition to efforts to decriminalize homosexuality. CWA’s Mario Diaz called the administration’s policy against anti-LGBT discrimination “embarrassing,” claimed that a “majority of Americans” do not believe that gays and lesbians should have equal rights, and even heralded a statement from the Foreign Minister of Russia, which has a dreadful record on safeguarding LGBT rights and protecting LGBT community from violence:

U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton has made clear that the President has put an emphasis on all foreign assistance from the U.S. to advance lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) "rights."

"Gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights," Clinton said in a speech at the end of last year that sparked strong criticism from many nations who do not adhere to the same belief.

…

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said:

We have repeatedly said that the Russian Federation condemns any forms and manifestations of discrimination on any grounds…

In this connection we cannot agree with attempts to artificially single out this category of people as an independent group claiming that its rights and interests should be specially protected.

Embarrassing.

This is yet another reason why the next election is so crucial for our nation. Will we continue to export homosexuality as a human "right," despite the fact that the majority of Americans do not agree with that?

There is little doubt as to where President Obama stands in this question. His emphasis on the promotion of homosexuality as a human right internationally and his all-out effort against the traditional definition of marriage have been swift and decisive.

While many "conservatives" plead with us to stop talking about "social" issues and focus on the economy, the President has been steadfast in undermining marriage and the family. Under his leadership, the future looks bleak in this regard.

 

Brian Tashman's blog

Barber: 'The Secularist Left are Bullies' Who Need to be Punched in the Mouth

On yesterday's episode of the "Faith and Freedom" radio program, Matt Barber stated that groups such as ours and Americans United and the ACLU were nothing but "paper tigers" to whom conservatives must stand up.

In fact, said Barber, the "secularist left" in general is nothing buy a bunch of bullies who intimidate the righteous and push "religious bigotry" on everyone else.  And like all bullies, they just need to be punched in the mouth:

They're bullies. And we know that we people stand up to the bully on the playground - the bully on the playground intimidates, that's what he does, intimidates people into silence, into fear, into avoiding the bully. And oftentimes the bully is the paper tiger and when the righteous individual who is being bullied defends his or herself and punches the bully in the mouth, guess what, the bully more times than not has a glass jaw, falls down and then everyone on the playground says "whoa, the bully was a weakling after all."

That's the secularist left. The secularist left are bullies. They try to bully and intimidate and push religious intolerance and religious bigotry on everyone else.

Kyle Mantyla's blog

The Right's 2012 Solution: "Just Close Your Eyes"

Wed, 04/18/2012 - 1:05pm — Michael Keegan

This post originally appeared in the Huffington Post.

Last month, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett offered a solution for women who were going to be forced by the government to undergo a completely unnecessary ultrasound against their wills: "You can't make anybody watch, okay? Because you just have to close your eyes." The governor's suggestion would be almost comical, if it weren't for the tragic fact that forcing women to watch was the whole point of the legislation Corbett supported.

But it seems that Corbett's suggestion doesn't just apply to women seeking abortions in the Keystone state. It is, in essence, what the GOP is telling to every woman turned off by the party's attacks on reproductive rights, equal pay and domestic violence protections: "You just have to close your eyes."

Mitt Romney's campaign is banking on the fact that voters of both genders are concerned about the economy in these uncertain times. Polls show that they're right. But just because you're concerned with the economy doesn't mean you ignore it when a group of people are systematically taking away your rights for their own short-term political gain.

Sadly, this is the new normal. The Tea Party's success has been based on this "just close your eyes" formula. Swept into power on a wave of economic dissatisfaction, Tea Party legislators in Washington and the states asked the country to "close its eyes" as it did everything but fix the economy. "Pay no attention while we roll back decades of progress everything else you care about. Just close your eyes while we bash immigrants, cut essential services, make it very hard to vote, and take away collective bargaining rights". Many minorities have been affected, particularly in the last two years, but arguably and amazingly, no group has been under attack more than the American majority--women.

A new report from People For the American Way investigates the new landscape that the Tea Party is creating for American women. Mississippi is set to become the only state in the country without a legal abortion clinic. Texas is on the path to denying reproductive health care to 130,000 low-income women. Wisconsin repealed its enforcement mechanism for equal pay lawsuits. Senate Republicans are fighting to stop the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. Following an all-male panel speaking on women's health, a woman who dares speak in front of Congress about the importance of affordable contraception is called a "slut."

Even with closed eyes, these things are very hard to miss. The Romney campaign has attempted to distract voters from this train wreck of anti-woman policies by claiming that a second Obama administration will hurt women economically. Last week, they hammered hard on the claim that women have accounted for 92 percent of job losses under President Obama- a mangled statistic that ignores, among other factors, that many of those losses were the result of Republican-led layoffs of teachers and other government employees. Then they decided to accuse Democrats of waging a "War on Moms" - forgetting, perhaps, the candidate's history of aggressively pushing low-income women to work outside of the home when their children are very young.

Women haven't bought it. In polls, Romney still trails Obama among women voters by double digits. And in an under-reported fact, among women ages 18 to 29, he's losing by an astounding 45 points. You don't need a political science degree that know that that spells disaster.

Mitt Romney and congressional Republicans seem to think they can get away with almost anything because, in the end, their Election Day hopes will be saved by a bad economy. The problem is, the people they attack on a regular basis - women, gays, Latinos, Muslims, you name it -know the Tea Party's record on the economy and its history of cynical, culture-war attacks that deeply affect the lives of real people. We have our eyes wide open.

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PFAW

Ken Hutcherson: Anti-Gay Activists Must 'Take Back the Rainbow'

Jennifer Roback Morse of the National Organization for Marriage isn’t the only anti-gay activist seeking to take the symbol of the rainbow “back” from the “gay lobby,” as Washington state pastor and NOM-ally Kenneth Hutcherson, who is working to overturn the state’s marriage equality law, writes today in WorldNetDaily that it is time to “take back the rainbow for God” and let “the homosexual community find a different religious symbol to commandeer.”

How did we get here? Just when was this symbol liquidated of its meaning? When was the sign pointing to God’s promise intentionally co-opted to point to a certain lifestyle choice? Let’s just say that the homosexual movement has been busy over the last couple of decades and that many of these changes have taken place without so much as a peep from the larger Christian community. Rome’s burning; Nero’s fiddling; and Christians are taking a well-deserved nap.

…

Yes, let’s take back the rainbow for God. Let the homosexual community find a different religious symbol to commandeer. If they were feeling congenial, perhaps the Muslims would let them borrow their crescent moon. In these desperate economic times, maybe the Wiccans would rent the pentagram to them. I don’t really care. What I want is for the Christian community to wake up, wipe the sleep from their eyes, and realize that they are in a spiritual battle that isn’t going away and has no demilitarized zones. The rainbow is a symbol, but it’s meaning points to the very character of God. So Christians …use this God-given symbol for His glory. Using it won’t make you a homosexual. It won’t make you a New Ager. It won’t make leprechauns real. But it might allow you to get into conversations with people who need to meet the very One Who gave us His promise in the first place.
Brian Tashman's blog

Mitt Romney Won’t Disavow Supporter Ted Nugent’s Violent Rhetoric

Contrary to some media reports, Mitt Romney has failed to disavow the inflammatory and violent remarks made by Ted Nugent on Saturday at the NRA national convention. Nugent, a longtime NRA board member, made his remarks one day after Romney addressed the convention.

Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul said yesterday that “divisive language is offensive no matter what side of the political aisle it comes from.” “Mitt Romney believes everyone needs to be civil,” she continued. Remarkably, some in the media have characterized this weak and vague statement as Romney disavowing, even condemning, Nugent.

“Mitt Romney is apparently unable, or unwilling, to confront Nugent’s violent rhetoric directly,” said Michael Keegan, president of People For the American Way. “This isn’t just a case of incivility or divisiveness. We’re talking about a prominent supporter of Mitt Romney making threats to shoot and chop the heads off of his political opponents.”

Nugent endorsed Romney after the two had a long conversation about gun laws, and Nugent made Romney pledge to oppose any new restrictions. The Romney campaign touted the endorsement, and Romney himself said he had a good time getting to know Nugent.

“Presidential candidates can’t be expected to answer for everything their supporters say, but it’s different when a candidate seeks an endorsement, makes promises to win it and then touts it to the public,” said Keegan. “Romney’s vague, pox on both their houses, approach shows that his campaign is more concerned about courting extremists like Nugent than doing the right thing for America.”

# # #

People For the American Way’s Right Wing Watch blog discovered Nugent’s remarks and posted them online:

 

Religious Right Defends Criminalization of Homosexuality with Warnings of God's Judgment for 'Sexual Paganization'

Last week, Truth in Action Ministries released a film marking the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic by arguing that the “radical homosexual agenda” is the “iceberg” that will destroy America, and today the group unveiled a new video, Is Our Government Promoting Immorality? Hosts Jennifer Kennedy Cassidy and Jerry Newcombe called for gays and lesbians to be delivered from “this deadly lifestyle” and introduced a segment featuring the Family Research Council’s Peter Sprigg, Southern Baptist Convention’s Richard Land and right-wing author Michael Brown where the Religious Right activists defended the criminalization of homosexuality and attacked Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s speech against anti-LGBT violence and persecution.

Sprigg, who has advocated for the criminalization of homosexuality in the past, condemned attempts by the State Department’s push for “decriminalizing homosexual acts” and Brown attacked the “outrageous” dissemination of “our gay activist standard.” “Whenever you go against God’s law, when you challenge God’s law and you have the effrontery and the hubris of trying to redefine one of God’s institutions like marriage you are putting yourself in the place of judgment,” Land concluded, “there is no question in my mind, God is already judging America and will judge her more harshly as we continue to move down this path towards sexual paganization.”

Watch highlights from the film here:

Brian Tashman's blog

Schlafly: 'American Women are the Most Fortunate People who Ever Lived on this Earth'

Earlier this month, we posted a report on remarks that Phyllis Schlafly delivered to a class at The Citadel entitled the "Conservative Intellectual Tradition in America" during which she warned the cadets not to date feminists.

The Citadel has finally posted the video of Schlafly's appearance, which turned out to be an excruciatingly dull hour and forty five minutes of Schlafly railing against feminism and gay marriage and abortion to a group of cadets who, based on the question and answer session toward the end, clearly did not share many of her views.

The bulk of Schlafly's remarks was dedicated to recounting the rise of the conservative movement and her efforts to defeat the Equal Rights Amendment, which she said was unnecessary because "women have had every constitutional right men have [had] since the day it was written" ... which seems like a rather odd statement considering that the Constitution had to be specifically amended to give women the right to vote.

We managed to grab a few "highlights" from Schlafly's remarks, such as we she said that feminism "is a bad word and everything they stand for is bad and destructive" because "American women are the most fortunate people who ever lived on this earth." 

She then went on to explain that the true motive of feminists is to destroy the stay-at-home mother as a model because it gives men an advantage over women in the workplace.  As Schlafly explained it, men have wives at home cooking them dinner and raising their children and the feminist "is insanely jealous of that [and since] she can't have a wife of her own, she wants to abolish the wife of the man."

Finally, she warned the cadets not to date women who are feminists, no matter how pretty they are and offered a surefire way to know whether a woman is a feminist or not - simply ask her how she feels about Phyllis Schlafly:

Kyle Mantyla's blog

Tony Perkins says Repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell led to Cascade of 'Deviance' in Condemnation of Military Academy Club

After linking the Secret Service prostitution scandal to the end of the military’s Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy, Family Research Council president Tony Perkins is doubling down on his anti-gay attacks by now launching a tirade against a student club at Norwich University in Vermont for organizing a Pride Week. A group of LGBT students and straight allies is planning to host “seminars on bullying, safe sex and HIV testing and discussions with veterans” along with a queer prom that will include speeches from Gov. Peter Shumlin and US Army Chief Warrant Officer Charlie Morgan. Student organizer Joshua Fontanez said that the week is meant to help create “a community here who will embrace you and love you and support you” in an interview with WCAX, whose news van was tagged with the word “Fags” while parked on campus.

Perkins, however, claimed in a radio message today that the Pride Week was all about the desire to throw a “party” for “a community that thinks promiscuity is something to celebrate.” Perkins also said that the Obama administration is “banning Christian speakers at military academies,” presumably referring to Jerry Boykin who decided to withdraw from a speaking engagement at West Point after his extremist anti-Muslim statements came to light.

Perkins: When students at Norwich University crowed their prom queen, something was missing. That something was a girl. Hello, I'm Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C. America's oldest private military academy says it prides itself on being unconventional--and last month's "gay prom" proved it. School officials said they wanted to have an "open dialogue" on homosexuality--but what they really had was a party. Unfortunately, this is America's new military. When the President wanted to overturn "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," he didn't talk about flying rainbow flags at Afghan bases or asking chaplains to perform gay "weddings." He didn't mention banning Christian speakers at military academies, tearing down crosses at Camp Pendleton, or pulling Scripture out of Army curriculum. What he said was it's time to let homosexuals be true to who they are. And who they are is a community that thinks promiscuity is something to celebrate. Norwich's "free love dance" and "condom Olympics" aren't tolerance. They're deviance. And a school of young, strong cadets deserve better.
Brian Tashman's blog

Ninth Circuit upholds voter ID, rules against proof of citizenship

Tue, 04/17/2012 - 5:35pm — Jen
The full Ninth Circuit followed Tuesday on a 2010 ruling by a three-judge panel upholding Proposition 200 voter ID provisions but striking down proof of citizenship for voter registration.
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Fischer: 'Capitalism is Built on the Teaching of Jesus Himself'

Yesterday, NPR's "Morning Edition" ran a story about the practice, especially among conservatives, to use Biblical passages as justification for their right-wing economic agenda. 

This is something we have been writing about for a while and our colleague Peter Montgomery was even quoted in the NPR piece, so it was pretty interesting to see Bryan Fischer suddenly join the movement today on his radio program when he declared that the "secret of capitalism" came right out of Mark 10:45, which says that "For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many."

In fact, said Fischer, the entire concept of capitalism "is built on the teaching of Jesus himself" and this passage is even the source for the idea that the customer is always right:

Kyle Mantyla's blog

PFAW Vows Continued Vigilance as ALEC Attempts to Whitewash its Extreme Agenda

In response to public outrage, the American Legislative Exchange Council has announced that it is disbanding the “Public Safety and Elections Task Force,” the working group responsible for advancing model legislation like the controversial Voter ID and “Shoot First” gun laws that have proliferated around the country.

“ALEC’s latest move is a transparent effort to stem the recent hemorrhaging they’re facing after the outpouring of grassroots anger over their role pushing extreme legislation that endangers the safety and lives of Americans.” said People For the American Way president Michael Keegan. “They’re right to be worried about public outrage of their support of laws that promote vigilantism, suppress citizens’ right to vote and criminalize immigrants, but this is an empty gesture unless ALEC and its members work to overturn the draconian measures that have caused so much harm to the American people. Their claim that in the future they will only focus on legislation that will ‘put the economy back to work,’ begs the question of how they can use a ‘jobs agenda’ to justify laws that undermine workers’ rights, privatize public education, and make it harder to hold corporations accountable for poisoning our air and water or selling us dangerous and defective products. We will continue to work with our friends to shine a light on ALEC’s agenda and hold members accountable for supporting that agenda.”

Eleven companies, including  McDonalds, Coca-Cola and Kraft Foods severed ties with ALEC under increasing public scrutiny from a number of organizations including People For the American Way, Color of Change, Center for Media and Democracy, Common Cause, and Progress Now. Just this afternoon, Color of Change announced that Blue Cross Blue Shield had also severed its ties with ALEC.

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