April 11th, 2005
WASHINGTON – Rep. Christopher Shays said Sunday that fellow Republican Rep. Tom DeLay should step down as House majority leader because his continuing ethics problems are hurting the GOP.
“Tom’s conduct is hurting the Republican Party, is hurting this Republican majority and it is hurting any Republican who is up for re-election,” Shays told The Associated Press on Sunday.
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“My party is going to have to decide whether we are going to continue to make excuses for Tom to the detriment of Republicans seeking election,” Shays said.
AP – Sun Apr 10, 5:01 PM ET
Crawford, Texas (AP) — President Bush considers House Majority Leader Tom DeLay a friend and hopes to keep working with him, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Monday.
McClellan was asked if Bush was among those who believe the embattled Texas Republican should resign, or at least answer allegations of ethical misconduct.
“Majority Leader DeLay is someone the president considers a friend. And he is someone he has worked closely with to get things done in Washington,” McClellan said.
AP – Monday, April 11, 2005
April 9th, 2005
Republicans, drunk with power, aim to remake the entire federal government into a tool serving conservative interests. As we’ve seen, since the conclusion of Mrs. Schiavo’s tragedy, Republicans are mounting an attack on courts, vilifying and even making veiled threats against judges. Tom DeLay, the majority Republican leader, released this statement regarding judges recently: “The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior, but not today.” Of course, we’ve also seen other Republican elected officials following Tom DeLay’s cue, and making similar threats of their own; and, now, it looks like we’re about to see an escalation of the attacks against judges and courts — that is, against the Constitutional principle of Separation of Powers.
According to the Washington Post (article -April 9, 2005), the Judeo-Christian Council for Constitutional Restoration recently organized a panel to discuss “Remedies to Judicial Tyranny” and to explore charges leading to the impeachment of Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy :
This was no collection of fringe characters. The two-day program listed two House members; aides to two senators; representatives from the Family Research Council and Concerned Women for America; conservative activists Alan Keyes and Morton C. Blackwell; the lawyer for Terri Schiavo’s parents; Alabama’s “Ten Commandments” judge, Roy Moore; and DeLay, who canceled to attend the pope’s funeral.
The Schlafly session’s moderator, Richard Lessner of the American Conservative Union, opened the discussion by decrying a “radical secularist relativist judiciary.” It turned more harsh from there.
I suppose that Dana Milbank, the author of the Washington Post article, was recalling this:
[L]awyer-author Edwin Vieira told the gathering that Kennedy should be impeached because his philosophy, evidenced in his opinion striking down an anti-sodomy statute, “upholds Marxist, Leninist, satanic principles drawn from foreign law.”
And this:
Ominously, Vieira continued by saying his “bottom line” for dealing with the Supreme Court comes from Joseph Stalin. “He had a slogan, and it worked very well for him, whenever he ran into difficulty: ‘no man, no problem,’ ” Vieira said.
The full Stalin quote, for those who don’t recognize it, is “Death solves all problems: no man, no problem.”
When he wrote that things “turned more harsh from there.”
Conservatives and their Republican minions are growing tired and desperate at their in inability thus far to fast track the implementation of their socially conservative agenda; and, therefore, their wails and veiled threats against judges are likely to grow louder over the upcoming months. Sure, the base of the socially conservative movement welcomes the attacks on judges, and don’t mind being portrayed as extremists — even radicals — because they believe that they’re doing it all for a good cause. However, moderate Republicans are, I think, beginning to realize that they made a deal with the devil when when they partnered with the fundamentalist faction of their party. So, the question for us is, how do we exploit this? How do we reach out to these so-called moderates, while simultaneous underscoring that while the Republican leadership sides with the extremist base of their party, the issues that we all care about — Iraq, Social Security, etc. — are ignored and pushed off of the Congressional agenda?
As Kos has already pointed out, I believe that our talking point on this issue is the principle of “Separation of Powers,” something we all learned about in high school history and understand from those days. We, Democrats and Progressives, stand in defense of the principle of “Separation of Powers,” while Republicans work to destroy the Constitution with their attacks on Senatorial proceedings (i.e., ending the long history of debate on the Senate floor) and, now, with their frontal attacks against the courts — a co-equal branch of government.
Senator Harry Reid, of course, has already framed the situation along the lines of protecting the principle of “Separation of Powers,” when the Democratic leader announced that Senate Democrats would vigorously defend the system of “checks and balances.” With that in mind, whenever there’s an opportunity the “Separation of Powers/Checks and Balances” meme should be repeated to reinforce Senator Reid’s point; because this is a way of presenting the fight over the judges in a way that people understand and get.
April 8th, 2005
One has to give it to Republicans, they sure do stick by their man — even when everyone else around’em knows that he’s a no good two timing looser. The Hill reports:
Reps. Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.), Dave Weldon (R-Fla.) and Bob Ney (R-Ohio) spoke in support of DeLay at yesterday’s morning conference meeting and called on their colleagues to back him.
At a press briefing after the conference meeting, House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) dismissed suggestions that leadership or the conference had lost confidence in DeLay.
“I don’t see any wavering of support for the leader,” Blunt said. Speaking at a briefing to tout the Republicans’ legislative victories in the 109th Congress, Blunt said, “The support for the leader is strong.” [Article - April 7, 2005]
In the second to last paragraph of the article The Hill gives an extremely brief summery of DeLay’s alleged corruption:
[T]wo stories are the most recent in a long string of negative reports about the majority leader, many of which link him indirectly to former lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who is under investigation by the Justice Department and the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs for his lobbying activities on behalf of two Indian tribes.
Jerome Armstrong of MyDD has more to say on DeLay, and how Bush’s White House may have turned on DeLay, given how the congressman has become a liability.
March 29th, 2005
As the author points out below, in contemporary America we’re adverse at confronting extremists and don’t belive that our homegrown fundementalists present a danger; however, as you’ll read below, at the very least, the exploitation of Mrs. Shiavo’s tragedy should serve as a warning to pay attention.
March 29, 2005
What’s Going On?
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Democratic societies have a hard time dealing with extremists in their midst. The desire to show respect for other people’s beliefs all too easily turns into denial: nobody wants to talk about the threat posed by those whose beliefs include contempt for democracy itself.
We can see this failing clearly in other countries. In the Netherlands, for example, a culture of tolerance led the nation to ignore the growing influence of Islamic extremists until they turned murderous.
But it’s also true of the United States, where dangerous extremists belong to the majority religion and the majority ethnic group, and wield great political influence.
Before he saw the polls, Tom DeLay declared that “one thing that God has brought to us is Terri Schiavo, to help elevate the visibility of what is going on in America.” Now he and his party, shocked by the public’s negative reaction to their meddling, want to move on. But we shouldn’t let them. The Schiavo case is, indeed, a chance to highlight what’s going on in America.
One thing that’s going on is a climate of fear for those who try to enforce laws that religious extremists oppose. Randall Terry, a spokesman for Terri Schiavo’s parents, hasn’t killed anyone, but one of his former close associates in the anti-abortion movement is serving time for murdering a doctor. George Greer, the judge in the Schiavo case, needs armed bodyguards.
Another thing that’s going on is the rise of politicians willing to violate the spirit of the law, if not yet the letter, to cater to the religious right.
Everyone knows about the attempt to circumvent the courts through “Terri’s law.” But there has been little national exposure for a Miami Herald report that Jeb Bush sent state law enforcement agents to seize Terri Schiavo from the hospice – a plan called off when local police said they would enforce the judge’s order that she remain there.
And the future seems all too likely to bring more intimidation in the name of God and more political intervention that undermines the rule of law.
The religious right is already having a big impact on education: 31 percent of teachers surveyed by the National Science Teachers Association feel pressured to present creationism-related material in the classroom.
But medical care is the cutting edge of extremism.
Yesterday The Washington Post reported on the growing number of pharmacists who, on religious grounds, refuse to fill prescriptions for birth control or morning-after pills. These pharmacists talk of personal belief; but the effect is to undermine laws that make these drugs available. And let me make a prediction: soon, wherever the religious right is strong, many pharmacists will be pressured into denying women legal drugs.
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The closest parallel I can think of to current American politics is Israel. There was a time, not that long ago, when moderate Israelis downplayed the rise of religious extremists. But no more: extremists have already killed one prime minister, and everyone realizes that Ariel Sharon is at risk.
America isn’t yet a place where liberal politicians, and even conservatives who aren’t sufficiently hard-line, fear assassination. But unless moderates take a stand against the growing power of domestic extremists, it can happen here.
[For the complete column click here - free subscription required]
