Those Activist Judges Have Been Active

The right-wing seem to consider the phrase “activist judge” to be a derogatory phrase. Do they feel the same way when Bush appointees are the ones being active?

From Appeals Courts Pushed to Right by Bush Choices by Charlie Savage:

Republican-appointed judges, most of them conservatives, are projected to make up about 62 percent of the bench next Inauguration Day, up from 50 percent when Mr. Bush took office. They control 10 of the 13 circuits, while judges appointed by Democrats have a dwindling majority on just one circuit.

Appeals courts tend to change the law incrementally rather than in rapid shifts. They are constrained to follow Supreme Court precedent, and most of their work consists of unanimously disposing of routine cases.

Still, every year courts encounter some controversial cases in which they have greater discretion. In such circumstances, several studies have shown that judges appointed by Republican presidents since Reagan have ruled for conservative outcomes more often than have their peers.

They have been more likely than their colleagues to favor corporations over regulators and people alleging discrimination, and to favor government over people who claim rights violations. They have also been more likely to throw out cases on technical grounds, like rejecting plaintiffs’ standing to sue.

It appears that our judicial system has become nearly as fair and balanced as Fox News.

It also seems that conservative judges have some contempt for the law. How weird is that?

The consequences of the evolving judiciary are only beginning to play out.

In the case of the 2005 South Dakota abortion law, the dissenters — including two Democratic appointees, a Reagan appointee, and a Bush appointee — portrayed the court’s decision as a sharp change in direction.

The majority, they contended, had not only bypassed “important principles of constitutional law laid down by the Supreme Court” but also violated the appeals court’s established standards for issuing preliminary injunctions.

Even though Halloween is dead and gone, at least for this year, the land of the judiciary remains a scary place. Especially if you believe in the Constitution, which apparently many conservative judges do not. How weird is that?

From Invasion Of The Constitution Snatchers: Bush Judges Scare The Halloween Out Of Me by Joseph L. Conn:

* Judge William Pryor, U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. A former Alabama attorney general, Pryor went to court to defend notorious Chief Justice Roy Moore’s 2.5-ton Commandments monument in the state judicial building, telling a rally that God had chosen Christians “to save our country and save our courts.”

* Judge Janice Rogers Brown, U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Brown says the United States is in a religious battle of Civil War proportions, has questioned whether the Bill of Rights applies to the states and has criticized the Supreme Court for relying on that “rather uninformative metaphor of the ‘wall of separation of church and state.’”

* Judge Michael W. McConnell, U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. Described in The New York Times after his nomination as “an important architect of a shift in American law away from strict separation of church and state,” McConnell has expressed support for tax aid to religion, bitterly opposed reproductive rights and called for more religious influence in public schools and public life.

I want my country back. I want our Constitution back. I want our collective sanity back.

Perhaps we never were truly collectively sane, but we seem to have gone further and further off the deep end with each passing day of the last eight years.

Religious Display

From Capitol to display Nativity scene, atheist sign:

State officials have authorized permits for two holiday-season displays this year.

One is a Nativity scene from Olympia-area realty agent Ron Wesselius, who sued last year over the issue and then won a legal settlement allowing his display.

The other is a 30-by-30 inch placard from the Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Coalition, which plans to offer a nonreligious perspective.

The placard will carry a message similar to one put up in the Wisconsin statehouse the past 12 years, AnnieLaurie Gaylor, co-president of the organization, said Monday

That placard said: “At this season of the Winter Solstice, may reason prevail. There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell.

“There is only our natural world. Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds.”

Read the rest here.

"Pick boogers and of course, pray if they choose"

In boogers we trust.

From Atheist Family in Texas Challenging Neutrality of a 'Moment Of Silence' by Nikki W:

The neutrality of a mandatory Texas law that requires all students take a minute of silence every morning to reflect, meditate, pray or engage in whatever silent activity they wish is under attack. This time, its round 2 by a family of Atheists.

Created to allow all individuals an opportunity to do what it is they want to do, quietly, during that mandatory "one minute" time frame following the Pledge of Allegiance, the 2003 legislature is once again under attack for what is said to be a waste of time.

A family who lives in a suburb of Dallas, TX has filed an appeal to a lawsuit they actually filed but failed at victory back in January of this year. The judge presiding over the case found no evidence that the minute of silence, required in all Texas public schools, had any kind of religious foundation.

Read the rest (including the part about the boogers) here.

"It's wrong and it's dangerous"

From Atheists: The Last Political Outcasts by Sally Quinn:

Bob Tiernan is an agnostic. "I'm not a hard-core atheist", he says. He was raised a Catholic and went to Jesuit College and law school. He is a practicing lawyer who specializes in issues involving separation of church and state. He is also a Democrat. This week he was in Denver to protest what he sees as the dangerous mixing of religion and politics, and the sad exlusion of non-believers in a party known for its inclusiveness.

On Sunday, Tiernan attended the first event at the Democratic National Convention, an Interfaith Gathering attended by some 2,000 people at the Colorado Convention Center. Speaking were distinguished priests, rabbis, imams and religion scholars. "I sat through, I guess I'd have to call it, a service," says Tiernan. "People were responding in unison. In the middle, Leah Daughtry (a pastor and CEO of the Democratic National Convention Committee) spoke and said that despite what the media says, Democrats are people of faith."

Tiernan says he couldn't stand it any more. "I stood up and said, 'I'm a democrat but I'm not a person of faith.' I said, 'This looks like a church service to me and I never thought I would see the Democrats doing something like this." At that point, the police came and escorted Tiernan from the hall. They told him he could leave or stay and see what the Democrats wanted to do with him, so he stayed but nobody did anything so he left.

"The thing is," says Tiernan with a chuckle, "I'm not a career protester. I just don't like religion mixed with politics. It's wrong and it's dangerous."

Read the rest here.

Governor Blagojevich

Here is more information concerning my previous post about Governor Blagojevich and the Pilgrim Baptist Church in Chicago.

From Lawsuit Lesson: Illinois Atheist Teaches Baptists About Their Heritage by Joseph L. Conn:

Does it take an atheist to teach Baptists about their own heritage?

Apparently so.

Atheist activist Rob Sherman has filed a lawsuit in Illinois state court seeking to block a $1 million government grant to Pilgrim Baptist Church. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, Gov. Rod Blagojevich promised the money to the Chicago congregation after a fire damaged the church building.

But why is a church getting government money? What about the separation of church and state? Shouldn’t houses of worship be built and maintained with the voluntary donations of the faithful, not the hard-earned dollars of the taxpayers?

Well, yeah. But Blogojevich, a Democrat, was running for re-election at the time, and the promise seemed like a good idea - a little walking-around money for members of a prominent religious community.

“We all know Rod did this two months before his primary election victory over Edwin Eisendrath,” Sherman told the newspaper. “January 2006, when the fire happens, and he’s in the March primary against Eisendrath, Rod was pandering for black votes. I understand that. But you can’t have the state donating $1 million to a church. You can’t do that with tax dollars.”

Read the rest here.

Still In First Grade

Do you remember being in the first grade at school? It wasn’t that long ago that you can’t remember, was it? First grade is a very early step in that process of learning how to fit in with the rest of the world. How to be a social animal, if you will. For some, as part of that learning process, it is a time of calling some of your classmates names if you disagreed with them or didn’t like them. I remember classmates calling each other “retard” and other derogatory names. Then we move on and graduate from elementary school, some of us graduate from high school, and some from college. Most of us as adults have moved past the mental and emotional level that we had when we were in the first grade. We stop calling others “retards.” We see it as childish and immature behavior that is uncivilized. Most adults want to at least try to behave as adults.

Most, but not all. If you are John Lillpop and write for The Conservative Voice you still call people names if you disagree with them and don’t like them. If you are John Lillpop you still are at the mental and emotional level of a first grader. So you write childish and silly things because you don’t know about things like facts, substance, and context.

From Obama Finds God: Far Left Fumes! by John Lillpop:

In another monumental departure from the mental disorder known as liberalism, Barack Obama has seen the light and is ready to embrace God, and or Allah, as an integral part of his campaign for the Oval Office.

This dilly is sure to send retards at Daily KOs and Moveon.orgy into self-administered (and illegal) drug therapy.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0702/p25s10
-uspo.html

So, if elected, not only will Obama not dismantle President Bush's program for supporting faith-based initiatives, but now the flaky Democrat has pledged to expand the God thing.

With this latest change of heart, Obama has once again abandoned the far left and its kooky communist atheist agenda.

The first thing I must point out is the reference to a source with no linking code in the HTML. Obviously, that far-left commie inventor of the internet, Al Gore, has very wisely chosen not to share very much of his infinite wisdom of all things web-like with all those far-right fascists.

Next, let’s take a look at Mr. Lillpop’s writing style and his presumed thought process. I imagine that, while writing, this is what was going on in Mr. Lillpop’s synapse-challenged brain:

“Hmm, I don’t like liberalism. I’ll call it a ‘mental disorder.’ Hmm, I’ll put Barack Obama and Allah in the same sentence, even though I know Obama’s not Muslim. Dilly sounds silly, so I’ll stick it in somewhere. Hmm, I don’t like those two websites dailykos.com and moveon.org because they get more readers than I do. I’ll call them ‘retards.’ And to top it all off I’ll type them like this: ‘Daily KOs and Moveon.orgy.’ I won’t link to them because I know nothing about internet protocol, I’m afraid people might actually learn the truth at them, and… Oh yeah, I don’t know how to! Just to show how much I don’t like those two websites dailykos.com and moveon.org I’ll say something about how this ‘dilly’ will send them into ‘self-administered (and illegal) drug therapy.’ I know Rush would never do anything like that. I know Bush would never do anything like that. Only those damn commie lefties abuse drugs. Next, I’ll prove my point (that I hate those damn commie lefties) by putting up a link that nobody can get to unless they copy-and-paste it. Now it’s time to call Obama ‘flaky’ and not tell anybody why I’m calling him ‘flaky’ in a sentence in which I explain that Obama has just done something that I wanted him to do. He’s still ‘flaky’ even though he ‘has once again abandoned the far left.’ Uh-oh, I’m starting to feel confused, I better call somebody a name. OK, I’ve got it. The far left is ‘kooky’, it’s ‘communist’, it’s 'atheist.' Whew, I feel better now, and I didn’t even have to check any facts to do that. Now what? Oh yeah, the big questions and the big zing at the end. And I still need a title for the whole thing. I know, I’ll call it Obama Finds God: Far Left Fumes! It doesn’t matter that Obama has believed in God for over twenty years, and it doesn’t matter that the reason the left is upset is for an entirely different reason. I’ve got my title.”

Here are the big questions:

Who is going to take the lead in amending the US Constitution to remove all that verbiage about "separation of church and state" in order to conform to Obama's latest fancy?

Say what? No amendment is required since there is nothing in the Constitution about separation of church and state to begin with?

Obviously Mr. Lillpop thinks that Chuck Norris is a Constitutional scholar and deep thinker.

I would like to suggest to both Mr. Lillpop and Mr. Norris that they go find that big fat book on the bookshelf (no, not the Bible!) and look up the word “context.” Now go study the history of the beginnings of the United States. Learn all that stuff about the Founders wanting to be free of the tyranny of the King of England, about the dangers of a state religion (the Church of England), and about how they believed more in the Enlightenment than Christianity. Maybe even read The Federalist and some Tom Paine. Then go reread the Constitution.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

And maybe consider this:

In 1802, President Jefferson wrote a letter to a group of Baptists in Danbury, Connecticut, in which he declared that it was the purpose of the First Amendment to build ''a wall of separation between Church and State.”

And here is the big zing (in bold type, too) Mr. Lillpop chose to use at the end:

"Praise be to Allah!"

Thanks to John W. Lillpop I now have an answer to my question: “Why does the president frequently sound like he is addressing a class of first graders?”

And of course the answer is: Most Bush supporters remain stuck at the mental and emotional level of first graders. People like Rush "Have your way with me" Limbaugh and Bill "Shut Up" O'Reilly. Not to mention Ann Coulter, Mary Matilin, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, Michelle Malkin, and on and on, ad nauseum…

Praise be to John W. Lillpop! Because of him I've seen the light.

And finally, so you don’t have to copy-and-paste, this is what set Mr. Lillpop off on his tirade against liberals. And all that is required to do this are a few symbols put into the proper context. Yet another reason for Mr. Lillpop to learn the meaning of the word “context.”

Bush Like To Screw Everybody, So Do Your Penance

From The Idolatry of America by Damon Linker:

While the shelves of our bookstores sag under the weight of tracts arguing the political case for church-state separation, surprisingly few authors have undertaken the task of reminding us, in light of the Bush administration's faith-based policies, why religious believers should think twice before plunging into partisan politics. Until recently, David Kuo's Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction was the only prominent example. A deeply pious evangelical, Kuo was brought on board by the Bush administration to oversee the implementation of the president's program in Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. He quickly discovered that his high hopes for synthesizing religion and politics would be disappointed. Not only did Bush show little interest in fighting for the chronically under-funded program in Congress, but high-level White House staffers repeatedly expressed contempt for the evangelicals who were the president's strongest supporters. In Kuo's view, the faith of devout Christians had been manipulated by the Bush administration for the sake of political gain. Kuo himself was so certain--and so ashamed--of such manipulation that he concluded his book with the suggestion that evangelicals refrain from political engagement for two years as an act of penance for their recent overindulgence in power politics.