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Senate dispute turns unsettling

By Denver Post Editorial Board
Article Published: Saturday, April 23, 2005

The battle in the U.S. Senate over judicial nominations has taken an unsettling turn with the invocation of religious correctness. It's time for the combatants to take a deep breath and retreat from their overheated rhetoric.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist has been threatening to eliminate filibusters if that's what it takes to prevent Democrats from stalling seven of the president's judicial nominees who were blocked in the last Congress. It would be such a dramatic step that it's known as the nuclear option.

Hardball politics is one thing, but anti-filibuster activists have taken the debate to another level, claiming the Democrats' opposition is essentially anti-Christian.

Frist is in the thick of it. The 2008 presidential hopeful has agreed to join a Sunday telecast sponsored by conservative religious organizations that want to build support for his anti-filibuster gambit. The press release for the event states that some nominees are being opposed "because they are people of faith and moral conviction."

That's preposterous, and officials of several major Protestant denominations have accused Frist of violating the principles of his own church by aligning with such a view. He's been urged to drop out of Sunday's telecast.

The Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick, a top official of the Presbyterian Church USA, of which Frist is an active member, said the senator's participation undermined "the historical commitment in our nation and our church to an understanding of the First Amendment that elected officials should not be portraying public policies as being for or against people of faith."

The Rev. Bob Edgar, general secretary of the National Council of Churches (and a former Democratic congressman), said: "To say that some group of Christians has a monopoly on the ear of God is especially an outrage to Presbyterians."

Colorado is in the midst of the squabble. Focus on the Family leader James Dobson of Colorado Springs said in a letter to Sen. Ken Salazar, "It is clear that liberals in the Senate are blocking judicial nominees with strong religious convictions precisely because of those convictions."

Salazar, who is Catholic, returned fire, sharply criticizing Dodson's tack and describing faith as "the cornerstone of my values."

Lost in all of this is that the Senate has already approved 204 of President Bush's judicial nominees - and most surely are religious people. The filibuster fight should not be waged on the pretense of spiritual correctness.

Copyright 2005 The Denver Post

http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~74~2831364,00.html