The Constitution and Reading Aloud

Posted on January 6, 2011 by David S. Meyer

My first grader is starting to get bored of reading aloud in class.  Like most members of Congress, she can read faster than she can listen, and having to slow down as every reader stumbles through the words gets tiresome.  But, in minimal deference to promises to Tea Party groups, the members of the House are devoting a little time to the text.

Of course, members of Congress must have been exposed to the Constitution some time in law school or college or middle-school civics.   Still, going back again to the words can’t be a bad thing.  As a veteran teacher of American government 101, I’m all for it.

Tea Party activists hauled out images of the Constitution to represent an imagined past in which political life is better.  Opening the little document, however, and actually reading the words, is the best way to understand why our political life is the way it is.

[Note: The first chapter of The Politics of Protest: Social Movements in America, explains how the US Constitution sets the terrain for protest politics.]

Like most texts (e.g., a prayer, a pledge) imbued with mystical importance, the actual words (of the Constitution, not my book) are less inspiring than the object as an imagined whole. [ “Read it and Weep,” Dahlia Lithwick writes, in a fascinating piece at Slate.]

The Republican leadership has, wisely, decided to read the amended version of the document, omitting the 3/5ths compromise and the mandate to return escaped slaves (obviously, not divinely inspired parts of the original).

Members of Congress jockeyed to get better pieces of the text.  The leadership reserved the 13th amendment, abolishing slavery, for civil rights hero, Rep. John Lewis (Democrat, Georgia), prompting bipartisan applause.  I’d like to think this reflects not only consensual disapproval of slavery 150 years later, but also appreciation for Lewis’s efforts, as activist and legislator, to force the federal government to deliver on the promises of citizenship for all Americans.

During the electoral campaign, Tea Partiers demanded that the Federal government respect the Constitution by avoiding action on anything not specifically mentioned in the Constitution.  They will, no doubt, feel affirmed when they don’t hear mention of health insurance in the Constitution.  Like railroads, abortion, television, nuclear power, and the internet, it escaped the framers’ attention.

The Republicans have promised to legislate only on issues where the Congress has some Constitutional authority.  In real life, this provides virtually no limits.  Back in the days when I taught American government, I would give groups of students a list of potential issues and a copy of Constitution, asking them to find authority.  Even without legal training or familiarity with Justice Marshall’s pronouncements in McCullough v. Maryland or the history of jurisprudence on the commerce clause, they were able to find their way, quickly, to the “necessary and proper” clause of Article I, Section VIII, and the Supremacy clause in Article VI, which afforded the government flexibility to respond to new issues the framers knew they couldn’t imagine.  (Listen to Charles Fried, Solicitor General under Ronald Reagan, rail against the ignorance of those who hope to find protection from health care in the text of the Constitution.)

So, the text of the Constitution doesn’t actually forbid many things Republicans don’t want.  More striking is that many Republican legislators haven’t been warned off from policies that actually violate the plain language of the Constitution.  Even as members read the sacred words on the floor of the House, Rep. Steve King, the incoming chair of the House Judiciary subcommittee on immigration, promised to introduce a bill revoking “birthright citizenship.”

You’ll recall from today’s reading that the 14th amendment to the Constitution states:

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Our Constitution, of course, is amendable, but this is a tough road.  Representative King explained that he opted for a statutory approach because it was easier.

So much for Constitutional constraint.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Who’s Serving the Tea?

Posted on January 5, 2011 by David S. Meyer

The Tea Party hit institutional politics early, and now activists have to grapple with the realities of politics indoors.

This is, of course, a common story for social movements in America.  Activists mobilize for broad, often-ill-defined, goals, and then have to deal with allies working with real policies, numbers, and political constraints.  It’s particularly difficult for the Tea Party, which became a catch-all label that included virtually all opposition to President Obama’s administration, based around a tenuous coalition between populist conservatives at the grassroots and big business interests.

Of course, mainstream media is filled with stories about how Tea Partiers assess their current situation.

The New York Times‘s Kate Zernike interviewed notable Tea Party leaders, and found them disappointed by the lame duck session.   Mark Meckler, co-founder of Tea Party Patriots, a grassroots-oriented clearinghouse, was angry at Republicans as well as Democrats for legislating, rather than going home and letting the new Congress work:

We sent them a message that we expect them to go home and come back newly constituted and do something different.  For them to legislate when they’ve collectively lost their mandate just shows the arrogance of the ruling elite. I can’t imagine being repudiated in the way they were and then coming back and saying “Now that we’ve been repudiated, let’s go pass some legislation.”  I’m surprised by how blatant it was.

The Tea Party Patriots announce their priorities for the new Congress:

defund Obamacare

cut spending

tax reform

entitlement reform

devolve power to state & local governments

greater transparency & accountability

Whether Meckler and other TP Patriots can mobilize the grassroots again on these issues remains an open question.  All of these issues sound more attractive in general terms than they end up playing out in grassroots politics.  Entitlement reform, for example, means cutting Social Security and Medicare, which doesn’t poll nearly as well.  Devolving authority to local governments?  It’s exactly what new California governor Jerry Brown is promising to get the state government off the hook in funding public schools.

Perhaps more significantly, the Tea Party Patriots presents as a collection of more than 2,500 local groups.  Before the election, the Washington Post found that fewer than 1/3 were actually in existence in any way.

Zernike also interview Judson Phillips, leader of a group with far less visible support at the grassroots, Tea Party Nation.  Phillips responded that the Senate’s ratification of the new START Treaty, an agreement that reduced US and Russian strategic nuclear arms, showed that “the GOP had caved.”  This is not an issue with traction at the grassroots.

The Washington Post published a fascinating profile on Gena Bell, a new Cincinnati-area tea party activist who has taken a job as the chief of staff for a member of the Hamilton County (Ohio) Board of Commissioners.  (Thanks to Amy Hubbard for the reference.)

Bell’s commitment and organizational skills had led to her being recruited by Americans for Prosperity (AFP), a conservative group funded by the Koch Brothers.  Treated to a conference at a resort in Cancun, Bell was frustrated that AFP wanted to channel her efforts–or at least her image–to fight against regulation to prevent climate change.   Obviously, this is a salient issue for the Koch brothers, whose business interests include oil refineries, but Bell herself believes in clean energy and environmental efficiency.

So Gena Bell has taken the passion of the Tea Party to try to make government work effectively and efficiently–at the grassroots, and, as Amy Gardner reports, to put her ideas to the test.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Contested Conservatism

Posted on January 4, 2011 by David S. Meyer

As the Republicans take control of the House of Representatives and try to flex new muscle in the Senate–and in politics more generally–the conflicts within modern conservatism will become more visible.

The label “conservative” has always included contradictory positions, and pragmatic politicians have to work hard to paper over differences. Contemporary conservatives divide over their optimism about radical change and their reverence for markets.   Edmund Burke (to the right, of course), defined conservatism as a kind of pragmatism: suspicion of grand schemes of any kind–and ideology more generally, tempered respect for tradition, and caution about change.  Burkean conservatives bargain, stall, and compromise. Some of them remain in American politics.

More visible these days are more ambitious conservatives, like Rush Limbaugh (on the left).  Unlike Burke, Limbaugh is not an elected official or a philosopher, but a prolific and engaging talker who makes a living as an entertainer.  Contemporary activist conservatives vigorously reject the compromises inherent in normal politics, and press for bold action in line with what they see as moral imperatives: enhancing human freedom by limiting government at home, and revolutionary activism to promote democracy and capitalism abroad.   Massive tax and service cuts, abolition of longstanding programs, and global wars for ideological goals are violent departures from classic conservative positions.

And conservatives differ about whose authority to put in the driver’s seat.  Although Tea Partiers like to point to the Constitution, they also extol the will of the people.  (The founders, however, as any veteran of American government 101 knows, were deeply distrustful of the people.)  Libertarians trust the market; populist conservatives often trust a church, somewhat shared values, or the race much more.

The rump end of the last year’s lame duck Congress pointed out these conflicts pretty clearly.  Repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was a classic market-conservative move.  We want our armed forces to be able to recruit soldiers and sailors from the broadest possible population, and think primarily about how well they do their jobs (shoot guns, translate conversations, drive trucks, etc.  As conservative icon, Sen. Barry Goldwater put it: shoot straight rather than be straight.).  Discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation limits the talent pool by an arbitrary criterion not associated with the job.  Newly elected Pennsylvania Republican, Sen. Pat Toomey, a market-oriented conservative by any measure, expressed this view pretty clearly:

As I’ve said previously, my highest priority is to have the policy that best enables our armed services to do their job…Our civilian and professional military leadership have now spoken and said we should repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. I would support a free-standing measure to do so.

A classic conservative would also easily support the Dream Act, which would (rather pragmatically) normalize and regulate the legal status of hundreds of thousands of young people in college and military service.  Again, employers should have access to the widest talent pool possible.  (Freedom Works, one of the most powerful Tea Party organizations, urged activists to avoid the immigration issue, and supports a guest worker program).   And there’s little economic sense in denying legal, visible, and taxed employment to a group of people who, for the most part, have no options outside the United States.

But the Republican caucus in Congress couldn’t embrace these conservative positions, because it was constrained by other conservatives who saw open acknowledgment of homosexuals in the military as a moral slight and establishing a path toward citizenship for people who broke the law (albeit, unwillingly and as children) as dangerous and immoral pandering.  (For some, race and ethnic diversity are also threatening.)

It’s relatively easy for conservatives of all sorts to unify in opposition to Obama initiatives.  For many different reasons, they can agree to try to stop change.  Taking initiative, however, is another matter, and Republicans now have to discover what sorts of conservatives they are:

Abroad, they can be ambitious democratic ideologues who use the military aggressively to promote their morality–at great cost, or tempered practitioners of realpolitik, who make deals with unfamiliar or unpleasant people to promote American “interests.”

At home, they can be sharp-eyed deficit hawks who scrutinize spending and promote spending cuts and tax hikes as necessary–or ideologically oriented tax cutters who trust the ensuing chaos will promote some sort of desirable outcome.

Whichever vision of conservatism triumphs, we can count on conservative discontents to mobilize in opposition.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Painted Grassroots

Posted on December 22, 2010 by David S. Meyer

Reading the sports section of the Sunday New York Times, I was surprised to find a full-page ad attacking the Humane Society of the United States and its president, Wayne Pacelle.

The ad reported that HSUS was soft on quarterback/dog fighter Michael Vick, who has served a prison sentence and renounced the latter identity.   Sponsored by HumaneWatch.org,  the ad urged supporters of the Humane Society to withdraw their donations and support local shelters instead.

I often hear criticism of the Humane Society from Animal Rights activists, who say that HSUS focuses its efforts on moderate policies that have little effect on animals’ lives.  But where would more radical animal rights activists get the money for a full-page ad?  They didn’t.

HumaneWatch is out to discredit HSUS in any way, but it’s certainly not sympathetic to the animal rights cause.  Rather, it’s a project of the Center for Consumer Freedom, a group that describes its sponsorship as:

restaurants, food companies and thousands of individual consumers. From farm to fork, from urban to rural, our friends and supporters include businesses, their employees, and their customers.

Looking at the websites and reading the rhetoric, we can see an effort to look like grassroots activism, but this is clearly an example of well-heeled interests cloaking their efforts to make them look like something different.  They represent the interests of their business funders, rather explicitly, and resist government regulation of any kind.  As they explain:

A growing cabal of activists has meddled in Americans’ lives in recent years. They include self-anointed “food police,” health campaigners, trial lawyers, personal-finance do-gooders, animal-rights misanthropes, and meddling bureaucrats.

Their common denominator? They all claim to know “what’s best for you.” In reality, they’re eroding our basic freedoms—the freedom to buy what we want, eat what we want, drink what we want, and raise our children as we see fit. When they push ordinary Americans around, we’re here to push back.

So what’s the right description?  A chef (or chief?) in sheep’s clothing?

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Defeats and Victories

Posted on December 21, 2010 by David S. Meyer

Movements don’t disappear after a legislative verdict.  Victories and defeats change calculations about what’s possible and how to go about getting it, but they virtually never–at least in the United States–provide a decisive resolution to the sorts of issues that animate movements.

This weekend’s Senate session handed a major victory to the groups working to repeal the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy in the American military.  The same Senate dealt advocates of the DREAM Act a staggering defeat.  The weekend drama was heightened by the sure knowledge that the Congress that will take office in January will be less sympathetic to either cause.

[The Senate drama included the first sighting of the new bullet-proof Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), the only Republican to vote for the DREAM and for the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.  Having defeated a strong Tea Party challenge in winning reelection, she’s brought herself the space to be the sensible patronage-oriented Republican she’s always wanted to be.  She can work to bring federal dollars back to Alaska and vote for policies she deems practical.)

Both movements have spent many years working to get to these historic votes, and neither will disappear any time soon.  The GLBT movement now faces a different field, as do champions of immigration reform.

Gay and lesbian activists have been working to provide for open service in the military since, at least, the 1980s.  Bill Clinton touted the crazy Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, early in his administration, as a response to the movement, and as a step forward; after all, the military was enjoined from investigating the sexual orientation of soldiers, sailors, and marines.  More than 14,000 discharges later, no one was happy with the policy.  More importantly, both multi-issue gay rights organizations, and specialist groups like Servicemembers Legal Defense Network had been working the issue–and others–winning judicial victories and pushing massive changes in public opinion.

When the policy finally disappears, activists will shift their targets.  I’m sure a few people will savor the victory and go home.  Most, however, saw open service as part of a larger social and political agenda.   Some, no doubt, will work to protect military personnel who come out or seek to rejoin the military.  (They should be aided in this quest by the leadership of the services!)  Others will shift their attention to other key issues for gays and lesbians.  The battles across the country for same sex marriage will surely take a lot of their efforts.  Over time, the military policy will give activists seeking social and political equality a stronger foundation for their claims.

The DREAM Act was also a narrow slice of a broader policy agenda which includes comprehensive immigration reform.  DREAMers saw this small step as the most politically viable path toward larger policy reforms and, perhaps more importantly, a practical and humane approach to a slice of the undocumented immigrant population.

This path shut down, activists can’t really go home.  (The students and servicemembers affected really are home.)  Instead, they will shift their attention to other venues, and play defense against the growing nativist movement.  Much of this, like the gay marriage debates, will be at the state level.  Activists will challenge harsh anti-immigrant policies like that adopted by Arizona.  They will also work for more modest accommodations in the states, including access to state university systems or driving licenses, which will make undocumented lives marginally more livable–and building support for larger reforms.

It’s important to remember that the DREAMers’ defeat was a victory for an anti-immigration movement now poised to push harder for policies that will make life more difficult for workers, students, and families in the United States without documentation.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Still a Dream?

Posted on December 17, 2010 by David S. Meyer

When we listen to the young people who have come forward about their undocumented legal status, we hear them express unvarnished optimism about the passage of the DREAM Act.  (Listen, for example, to the testimony on NPR’s Talk of the Nation, this week.) After all, the House passed the Act a few days ago, and Senate leaders continue to press for a vote.  More significantly, it’s the best hope for these people to make some kind of decent life for themselves.  Their evaluations aren’t based on counting votes in the Senate so much as hoping for a way forward for themselves–and for the country.  As a college senior who came to the US from Korea at age 9 said:

And I know it will pass next week because it is the only immigration legislation right now that has some kind of chance to actually fix our broken immigration system. And it will happen.

Virtually all the political pundits actually counting votes suggest otherwise.  And, unlike Don’t Ask Don’t Tell repeal, the DREAMers can’t count on the courts to intervene on their behalf.  The next Congress is likely to be far less sympathetic to the DREAM.

Activists virtually always have undue optimism about their prospects for influence.  It’s the kind of suspension of disbelief that helps the successful salesman pitching after hearing no a few times, and it’s virtually necessary to help change the world.

I suspect, however, that the fallout will be much greater here.  The activists don’t have homes in Korea or Pakistan or Mexico to go to. Rather, they will find ways to continue, as best they can, to find ways to support themselves and continue the political struggle (now more than a decade old) to find a way to create real opportunities for themselves.  All will depend upon how the rest of America responds to the efforts to keep the DREAM alive.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Resistance in the Military

Posted on December 16, 2010 by David S. Meyer

Birther Lt. Col. Terrence Lakin outside his court-martial

Governments fall when their leaders lose control of the armed forces.   When the soldiers lay down their swords and shields and take the hands of the people in the streets, their leaders get on planes and look for somewhere else to land.  For this reason, resistance in the military is generally the last–and most important–site for organized political action.

In the United States, and in every democracy or Constitutional government, the military is supposed to be responsive to the government.  Like any other bureaucracy, its members are supposed to take orders from civilian authority, executing them as if they were their own idea.  Soldiers smartly salute the Commander-and-Chief whether they voted for him or not.  Respect and obedience carries all the way through the chain of command, regardless of the soldiers’ judgments about the wisdom or ethics of any order.

This ethos informs the way a professional military works at its best, but also explains why soldiers charged fortified encampments at Gallipoli during World War I, marching to their deaths in waves.  It also explains why American soldiers followed orders and massacred unarmed civilians at My Lai during the Vietnam war.

Is there a place for individual conscience?

Since World War II, there has been wide acknowledgment that soldiers should not carry out illegal orders.  Lieutenant Colonel Terrence Lakin, a physician in the Army, refused to deploy to Afghanistan because he does not believe that President Obama has the legal authority to send him there.  It’s not about international law or the War Powers Act, but Obama’s birth.  Lakin doesn’t think Obama was born in the United States; in his view, the Commander in Chief serves illegally, and Lakin himself is duty-bound to refuse orders.  Lakin explains:

I feel I have no choice but the distasteful one of inviting my own court martial…I disobey my orders to deploy because I, and I believe all services’ men and women and the American people, deserve the truth about President Obama’s constitutional eligibility to the office of the presidency and commander in chief.

Colonel Lakin’s beliefs can fairly be described as unpopular and marginal.  A military court found him guilty of refusing to follow a lawful order.  He can be sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison and discharged from the service.  At his trial, however, he announced that he was sorry, and would keep his politics out of his job, and follow orders.  Whoops.

Unsurprisingly, the birthers have championed his case/their cause.  Lakin got the attention they seek, and displayed courage in the service of their beliefs.

Such resistance in the American military is relatively rare, but it has run across the political spectrum.

First Lieutenant Ehren K. Watada refused to follow orders to deploy to Iraq in 2006.  Watada explained that when he studied his mission, he concluded that the Iraq war violated international law.  Citing the Nuremberg precedents, Watada explained that he was duty-bound to refuse to follow such orders.  (He offered to go to Afghanistan, but American soldiers don’t get to pick their wars.)

Watada’s court-martial ended in a mistrial, and after several failed efforts to retry him, the Army negotiated his discharge in 2009.

Watada’s case became a celebrated cause for antiwar activists, who applauded both his judgment and his willingness to follow his conscience.  Activists have encouraged others to follow his lead.  Note the efforts of Courage to Resist, an antiwar group focused on the servicemen and women who refuse to deploy.

Their cases are rarely so simple as Watada’s, who had grievances with the military only on matters of policy.  Other resisters have registered their objections on the basis of their own experiences of mistreatment in the military.

The group has recently taken up the case of Private Bradley Manning, the soldier accused of leading all those documents to Wikileaks.

I suspect that many readers would want to applaud one of these Army officers, but would see the necessity for civilian control of the armed forces in the other case.  (Even if you agree with Private Manning’s judgments about American foreign policy, do we want to have the judgment of a high school dropout supplanting that of a government that, after all, has to answer to an electorate?)

The American military provides yet another complication: everyone in the service is a volunteer who signed a contract, effectively letting the rest of the country off the hook.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Diluted Tea

Posted on December 15, 2010 by David S. Meyer

Sharron Angle, the failed Republican/Tea Party Senate candidate in Nevada, has just announced that she’s forming a PAC to advance Tea Party ideals and Tea Party candidates.  Angle, whose candidacy was buoyed by Sarah Palin and the Tea Party Express, lost the Senate race to Harry Reid, a seat widely viewed as winnable for Republicans.

The Tea Party Express made Angle’s candidacy possible, and also invigorated other problematic Senate campaigns, including those of Christine O’Donnell (Delaware), Joe Miller (Alaska), and Ken Buck (Colorado).  In fact, the Tea Party Express may well have cost the  Republicans control of the Senate.

Conservative political consultant Sal Russo renamed his PAC  (originally, “Our Country Deserves Better”) “Tea Party Express” when conservative activism under the Tea Party label promised better fundraising.  It worked.  If his Tea Party group sometimes made different choices about candidates and issues than other Tea Party groups, well, that’s just movement politics.

Of course, Sharron Angle has as much right to claim the Tea Party brand as anyone else, including Christine O’Donnell, who is also starting a PAC.  It’s not only a vehicle for employment and raising money, but also a way to cultivate political ties that could help in future campaigns.  Joe Miller is going to need something to do when the Alaska Senate race is finally declared as well.

More PACs under the Tea Party brand creates competition for defining the movement and its efforts.  If the new PACs track their sponsor, they need to find new sources of funding, or else undermine the  older Tea Party groups.  And each will offer its own definition of what it means to be a Tea Partier.  They’ll distinguish themselves on the basis of prioritizing particular issues: taxes or immigration or abortion or the deficit.  Every priority carries strong supporters and opponents.  In effect, there is a looming battle over defining just what the Tea Party is.

The battle for definition is recurrent in movement politics, and the populist elements in the Tea Party make it particularly likely to be messy and contested.

And opponents will point to the craziest people and ideas to define the Tea Party.  The latest news suggests there will be plenty of  them.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Strong Tea

Posted on December 14, 2010 by David S. Meyer

Rep. Michele Bachmann, founder of the Tea Party Caucus in the House of Representatives, promised that she would provide classes on the Constitution for her colleagues, particularly her newest colleagues.  And there are plenty of them in the next Congress.  Bachmann is one Tea Partier who aims to deliver on her promises, and apparently, she’s positioned to deliver in a big way:

Justice Antonin Scalia has agreed to deliver the first lecture, ironically on the topic of the separation of powers.

This development is odd and interesting for all kinds of reasons.

First, there is this whole SEPARATION OF POWERS THING.  The Court and the other branches aren’t supposed to coordinate behind the scenes or lobby each other.

Chief Justice Earl Warren reported, years later, that he was invited to dinner at the White House when Brown v. Board of Education was on the docket, and resented being lobbied, ever so gently by contemporary standards, to consider the well-being of the white children in the South.  President Johnson worked to keep his consultations with Justice Abe Fortas secret, expecting (correctly) controversy if the meetings were ever public.  Much more recently, Justice Alito, taken to task for muttering “not true” during President Obama’s State of the Union address, announced that he thought it inappropriate for the President to chastise the Court at the occasion, particularly when protocol demanded that the Justices sit on their hands and take it all stoically.

It’s hard to imagine Justice Scalia coaching one faction in Congress on arguments or policies that would pass his Constitutional muster.  It’s also hard to imagine Justice Scalia refusing to allow members of Congress who weren’t members of the Tea Party to benefit from his Constitutional lessons.

Second, there is the matter of maintaining an appearance of objectivity.  In addition to wearing those basic black robes, sitting Justices generally refrain from explicit political activity.  Virginia Thomas’s recent announcement that she was curtailing her Tea Party activities seems much less likely to be about her loss of political faith or energy than about maintaining some appearance of propriety for her husband, Justice Clarence Thomas.

Third, it’s kind of amazing that Michele Bachmann has that kind of pull.  The other instructors mentioned for the course are renowned for their seriousness and expertise only among the true believers, not among professional historians or legal scholars.  Justice Scalia is a major get.

Question: Does all of this undermine any notion of a legal system in which rulings are based on law rather than exclusively political orientation?  (By the way, other recent decisions play into this vision.  It’s been widely observed that a Bush appointee to a Federal Court has invalidated the insurance mandate provision of President Obama’s health care reform, while two Clinton appointees have rejected that argument. ) Our textbooks, judicial nominees’ testimony before Congress, and our Constitution would have us believe that at least some of these judges think about the law and the Constitution in making such decisions.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Phelps Family Flop? Not quite.

Posted on December 12, 2010 by David S. Meyer

Elizabeth Edwards’s funeral in Raleigh, North Carolina, was another occasion for the Westboro Church (read: Fred Phelps and family) to get attention.

As discussed here, the tiny hyperconservative church has succeeded in gaining national attention by picketing military funerals and displaying provocative and hateful placards about gays.   Reverend Fred Phelps’s story is simple: soldiers are dying because of the moral degradation of the United States.  It’s not the war, however, that represents the slippery slope toward sin so much as tolerance of homosexuality.

Elizabeth Edwards’s funeral provided another opportunity for the Westboro Church.  The Phelps family announced a planned picket, and locals responded by organizing a counterprotest–a Line of Love–outside the funeral.  Coordinated by a Facebook group, the Line of Love drew an estimated 300 people–countering a Westboro presence estimated at five stalwarts.

Surely, just the presence of the counterprotesters, in large numbers and holding signs indicating admiration of Elizabeth Edwards and sympathy for her family, must have provided some comfort to the mourners, to the citizens of Raleigh, and to everyone who takes offense at Westboro’s views and/or tactics.

The flip side, however, is that it once again draws national attention to a group that virtually defines the lunatic fringe.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment