American Terrorists
Via Atrios, go check out Max Blumenthal's scary article in The Nation recounting his undercover experience at the "Confronting the Judicial War on Faith" conference:

The threatening tenor of the conference speakers was a calculated tactic. As Gary Cass, the director of Rev. D. James Kennedy's lobbying front, the Center for Reclaiming America, explained, they are arousing the anger of their base in order to harness it politically. The rising tide of threats against judges "is understandable," Cass told me, "but we have to take the opportunity to channel that into a constitutional solution."

Cass's "solution" is the "Constitution Restoration Act," a bill relentlessly promoted during the conference that authorizes Congress to impeach judges who fail to abide by "the standard of good behavior" required by the Constitution. If they refuse to acknowledge "God as the sovereign source of law, liberty, or government," or rely in any way on international law in their rulings, judges also invite impeachment.

What have I been saying? These people are fucking nuts, they are beyond extreme, they are the American Taliban, our own little theocratic terrorists.

Interestingly, Blumenthal's article notes the influence of David Barton, the fundie whackjob who for years has been pushing the idea that separation of church and state is a "myth" because the phrase doesn't appear in the Constitution:

The recent right-wing fixation on impeaching judges was conceptualized by David Barton, Republican consultant and vice chairman of the Texas GOP. In 1996 Barton published a handbook called Impeachment: Restraining an Overactive Judiciary, which was timed to coincide with Tom DeLay's bid for legislation authorizing Congress to impeach judges. "The judges need to be intimidated," DeLay told reporters that year.

In 1989 Barton published a book titled The Myth of Separation, which proclaims, "This book proves that the separation of church and state is a myth." The Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs, in a critique of his 1995 documentary America's Godly Heritage, stated that it was "laced with exaggerations, half-truths, and misstatements of fact." Barton is on the board of advisers of the Providence Foundation, a Christian Reconstructionist group that promotes the idea that biblical law should be instituted in America. In 1991 Barton spoke at a Colorado retreat sponsored by Pastor Pete Peters, an adherent of racist Christian Identity theology with well-established neo-Nazi ties. During the 2004 presidential campaign, the Republican National Committee hired him as a paid consultant for "evangelical outreach." The RNC sponsored more than 300 events for him.

Back when I still lived at home and was forced to attend a Southern Baptist church by my religious freak of a mother (for more on that, check out The Rude Pundit's "Christ Weary" series, where I earned the dubious distinction of submitting one of the "most stunning" stories), I have a vague recollection of meeting Mr. Barton, when his Wallbuilders group came to give a presentation. A mental giant, he is not. This so-called constitutional scholar is a former schoolteacher who has a BA from Oral Roberts University (don't laugh. well, okay, go ahead) and no graduate education whatsoever (check out his bio here), yet Republican leaders rely on his "exhaustive research" to support their theocratic agenda. He is responsible for "exclusive Congressional Pastors’ Briefings on Capitol Hill where hundreds of clergy have been impacted by some of the country’s top conservative political leaders in these educational and informative sessions." Isn't that comforting to think about? Why are these churches tax-exempt again? The Wallbuilders website includes a testimonial from Senator Sam Brownback, (R-Kansas):

"While watching [your] tape The Spirit of the American Revolution, I wept thinking how far our nation has moved away from the concepts of the Founding Fathers . . . . What can we do to get back to the founding concepts and blessings that our forefathers received?"

I don't know, Senator. Why don't we follow the advice of Founding Father Thomas Paine in The Age of Reason (with props to James Wolcott):

"I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.

"All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.

"I do not mean by this declaration to condemn those who believe otherwise. They have the same right to their belief as I have to mine. But it is necessary to the happiness of man, that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving: it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe."

Or Founding Father George Washington, in an October 20, 1792 letter to Edward Newenham:

Of all the animosities which have existed among mankind, those which are caused by difference of sentiments in religion appear to be the most inveterate and distressing, and ought most to be deprecated. I was in hopes that the enlightened and liberal policy, which has marked the present age, would at least have reconciled Christians of every denomination so far that we should never again see the religious disputes carried to such a pitch as to endanger the peace of society.

Or Founding Father Thomas Jefferson, in his famous explanation of the Establishment Clause in a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association (it's always the friggin' Baptists who have to pull this shit):

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man & his god, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state.

Fuck you, David Barton. I don't give a shit if you want to worship goats, but keep your religious beliefs out of my government.
- posted by TJ @ 9:43 AM