Replies to post #28269 on Zeev's Turnips Talk Politics (ZTTP)

[harrypothead]

The Constitution of the United States, for instance, is a marvelous document for self-government by Christian people. But, the minute you turn the document in to the hands of non-Christian people, they can use it to destroy the very foundation of our society. And that's what's been happening.

-- Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Coalition
http://www.loudoun.net/mainstream/quotes.htm

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NEW YORK TIMES Editorial, September 28, 2003

The Right's Grip on the Capitol

The big Congressional stories this year have been big-ticket legislation, like Medicare prescription drugs and the pork-layered energy bill. But barely under the political radar, a long-sought, hard-right G.O.P. agenda has been quietly progressing. Proposals dear to the Republican leadership that would undermine gun controls, women's reproductive freedom, a citizen's right to seek court redress, and a vital array of other constitutional bulwarks are moving slowly toward what in some cases seems like almost certain passage.

In past years of split-party control of the Capitol, such a wish list represented the dark side of political grandstanding, scraps of meat for the conservative electoral base more than imminent possibilities. This year, however, the G.O.P. wields majority power, along with an intense desire to rally that base for the 2004 elections.

The Senate seems close to a vote on final approval of the egregious House bill that would grant the gun-making industry unprecedented protection from liability suits by state and local governments and victims of gun violence. Custom-tailored for the donation-rich gun lobby, the bill was strategically delayed during the sniper murders last year around Washington. Now it is moving again, and some Democrats who in the past might have helped to derail it are wavering, frightened by polls that show gun control as a losing issue in some swing states. G.O.P. leaders also are angling to let the federal assault weapon ban expire next year, and to protect the lethal loophole that exempts weapon sales at gun shows from background checks.

Under the guise of "tort reform," Senate leaders, prodded by corporate lobbyists, are just a handful of votes away from skewing the basic rules of class-action lawsuits. The bill they are considering would circumvent state jurisdiction and hobble federal courts to make it significantly harder for citizens to sue big polluters, securities cheats and other institutional powers. Senator John Breaux's alternative plan to address genuine class-action abuses is far preferable.

Final Capitol approval seems virtually certain soon for the federal ban on so-called partial-birth abortion. The deceptively broad measure, which President Bush is ready to sign, strikes at the heart of Roe v. Wade by criminalizing many midterm abortions and omitting exceptions for a mother's health. Beyond this, Republican leaders are working to enshrine in law the concept of "fetal rights." They want to turn assault on a pregnant woman into two separate crimes, a device to establish that the fetus is a "child" at any stage of gestation.

Another hard-right chestnut, a so-called victims' rights amendment to the Constitution, was forestalled in the past as critics warned it would go beyond legitimate concerns about crime victims to complicate prosecutions and undermine defendants' rights. But it has gotten a new lease on life this year, given the constitution of the House and Senate, and the new power of the Republican Party's right wing to have its agenda passed, especially with a kindred spirit in the White House. Pressure is also growing on Senate leaders to finally pass another perennial, the House's ban on flag desecration. Approval of that would be an attack on an important Supreme Court free-speech ruling. It would also add a triumphalist exclamation mark to a banner session for the hard-right agenda.

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What is that saying? People deserve the government they get??????

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History:

The Political Mobilization of the New Christian Right

http://are.as.wvu.edu/lebeau1.htm

"Get 'em saved; get 'em baptized; get 'em registered."
--Slogan at an evangelical workshop on political action 1

In the nineteenth century the Christian Right was an animating force in American political life. It battled deism and then went on to champion causes such as temperance and immigration restrictions, especially on Roman Catholics. It contributed greatly to the growth of antislavery sentiment in the North, and, paradoxically, reinforced the commitment of Southerners to the maintenance of the slave economy (Carwardine 1993). In the half-century following the Civil War, the Christian Right launched a conservative cultural crusade to defend its values against the forces of liberalism and modernism, siding with a variety of movements designed to purify American politics of various corrupting influences. Embodied in the national arena by William Jennings Bryan, the Christian Right was a driving force behind such disparate movements as currency reform, regulation of corporate abuses, and adoption of direct democracy through initiative, referendum, and recall (Levine 1975). Their widespread adoption attested to the central place of the Christian Right in American politics and culture.

[Ace Hanlon]

I agree 100% with your comments re: the Democrats. A truly pathetic bunch for the most part. Unfortunately they get a lot of their funding from people who share most of the Bushie goals -- only differing in tactics to a certain extent.


Perhaps the best thing the Democrats have going them is that the Bushies have deeply alienated the CIA.. The CIA has a way of bringing down Presidents who screw with them.