Memo to Time: The Far Right Knows the Supreme Court Matters

Talk about bad timing! Time magazine's cover story telling Americans the Supreme Court isn't relevant to their lives appeared the very same week that every major Republican presidential candidate will appear before the right-wing leaders at the so-called "Values Voter Summit" and pledge more Supreme Court justices in the Roberts-Alito-Scalia-Thomas mold.

The premise of the article is dead wrong, as People For the American Way Foundation's Legal Director Judith E. Schaeffer made clear in her response. The Court's decisions have a huge impact on Americans' rights and liberties - and their ability to count on the courts to uphold the protections guaranteed by our Constitution. That's especially true when the President asserts his ability to ignore those protections and has too often bullied Congress into going along.

Not only is the Roberts Court creating new legal hurdles that will keep people hurt by corporate or government wrongdoing from seeking justice in the federal courts, it is tripping down the ideological path cleared by the Federalist Society to reverse many of the legal and social justice gains of the past few decades and erode Americans' legal rights and protections.

The radical right is thrilled that Bush's nominees - Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito - have joined the Court's far-right voting bloc anchored by Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. And they're keenly focused on the impact that the next president will have as additional vacancies likely occur. They see 2008 as their chance to cement a reactionary Court in place for a generation.

That's why the GOP presidential candidates are going out of their way to prove their right-wing credentials regarding the Court.

Rudy Giuliani has made his pledge to appoint more far-right judges justices the linchpin of his appeal to social conservatives dubious about his past support for gay rights and reproductive choice. He seems unconcerned that such justices might overturn Roe v. Wade. Giuliani's "Justice Advisory Committee" is chaired by former Solicitor General Ted Olson, and features failed judicial nominee Miguel Estrada, Federalist Society co-founder Steven Calabresi, Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Walter Olson - and initially included Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey.

Mitt Romney has his own collection of right-wing legal activists serving as his campaign's "Advisory Committee on the Constitution and the Courts," including Jay Sekulow, who heads the Pat Robertson-founded American Center for Law and Justice, the Judicial Confirmation Network's Wendy Long, and folks like Douglas Kmiec, Bradford Berenson, and James Bopp.

Fred Thompson, trying to position himself as the only true conservative among the top tier, has also made a right-wing Court part of his pitch, made this a part of his pitch, telling the National Review, "I like Roberts and Alito and Scalia and Thomas."

And while James Dobson and other Religious Right leaders are engaged in a high-stakes threat (or bluff) to abandon the GOP if Rudy Giuliani is the nominee, others are saying "It's all about the judges" and warning that conservatives can't afford the risk of letting Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama be the one nominating judges.

Of course, the Supreme Court won't be the only thing on the minds of attendees at this week's "Values Voter Summit." There'll be plenty of time for spreading the lie that gay people want to throw Christians in jail, strategizing about turning your church into a conservative political machine, and working to criminalize abortion, all as a lead-up to the gala celebration of James Dobson, the reigning godfather of the Religious Right. And, of course, being courted by every major Republican presidential nominee. You can follow the fun here.

Comments

[newshound1]

I am a Christian. Dobson's political activists do not speak for me and I do not believe that there values are all Christ's values. I believe he would be calling them out just like he did the Pharisees.

[dadw5boys]

NAFTA. Cost $290 billion in jobs.
CAFTA. Cost $460 billion in jobs.
Getting RELIGIOUS ZEALOTS LIFETIME SEATS on the Supreme Court of the USA.
PRICELESS

[sdskelton03]

Nafta was enacted during the Clinton administration. So you are calling Ginsburg and Breyer RELIGIOUS ZEALOTS?

[OrvilleHLarson]

The United States Extreme--er, Supreme Court can be dangerous to Americans. Its members are essentially ideologues in black robes. You've got the "left wing" (Breyer, Souter, Ginsburg, Stevens) and there's the "right wing" (Alito, Roberts, Thomas, Scalia, Kennedy). All of 'em have trouble leaving the ideological whims behind
while "interpreting" the law and Constitution.

Personally, I want judges who are firmly committed to civil liberties. These Federalist Society types favor strong central government, and they think the President's above the law.

[HollywoodBill]

This needs to be shouted from the roof tops. The author gets it. The 2008 election is all about the SCOTUS and lower court judicial appointments. With the appointment of the stealth candidates, Roberts and Alito, the theocratic goals of the Revival Tent Republicans are within their grasp.

Romney is a lost cause and has already officially changed his positions to be more aligned with the snake handling brigade of the Republican Party. But worse, front leader Rudy Giuliani who is attempting to represent himself as more of a moderate in an attempt to gain Independent and Goldwater/libertarian Republicans, has already promised the store to these moralizing busybodies. Rudy has stated that he will appoint strict constructionists in the mode of Thomas and Scalia to the SCOTUS--which is 100% unacceptable.

Strict construstionism and original intent are code words to the Revival Tent Republicans. They indicate that he will give them the kind of Justices and Court appointees that will give them the theocracy that they believe will save the country. It is a view that must be stopped.

Rudy's behavior this weekend will be telling. He could have a Sister Souljah moment and tell them to take a hike. More than likely he will promise strict constructionist Judicial appointment.

The 2008 Election is all about the courts. Make no mistake about that.

[Giglawyer]

No, no, no. Strict constructionism and original intent are valid legal theories of how the Constitution is to be read and interpreted.

We must, as a society, have consistentcy in the law. That doesn't mean that the law can't change, because we do pass bad laws. And that does not mean that we can't "interpret" the Constitution, becuase we deal with issues that our forefathers never dreamed of. But don't be so eager to praise those who loosely interpret the Constitution, and don't be so eager for an activist Court. Once the Supreme COurt takes an action, it is very hard (not impossible, but hard) to undo that action.

[StephenSmoliar]

It's not as if TIME has ever been a quality standard for either news or analysis! (Back in my undergraduate dorm, the motto was, "LIFE is for people who can't read; TIME is for people who can't think!" Yes, I know that dates me!) The only thing that matters is that TIME is now being as blatant as THE NEW YORK TIMES (under Judith Miller) was in providing the Ruling Class with a tool for producing beliefs about reality, a concept that was developed in Antonio Gramsci's PRISON NOTEBOOKS. What I have yet to figure out is why a values-based agenda provides such an advantage to that Ruling Class; and I think the answer is that it is easier to enslave a population by keeping them focused on values, rather than more substantive issues like getting medical care and having jobs.

[Misanthrope2]

Antonio Gramsci? My god, I haven't heard of him in years. For those not familiar with obscure Marxists, Antonio Gramsci was a small and hunchbacked man who helped found the Italian Communist Party, and was imprisoned by Mussolini.

Amongst the various tactical debates that took place within the Communist party, Gramsci's group was mainly distinguished by its advocacy of workers' councils, which had come into existence in Turin spontaneously during the large strikes of 1919 and 1920. For Gramsci these councils were the proper means of enabling workers to take control of the task of organising production. Although he believed his position at this time to be in keeping with Lenin's policy of "All power to the Soviets", his stance was attacked by Bordiga for betraying a syndicalist tendency influenced by the thought of Georges Sorel and Daniel DeLeon. By the time of the defeat of the Turin workers in spring 1920, Gramsci was almost alone in his defence of the councils.

The failure of the workers' councils to develop into a national movement led Gramsci to believe that a Communist Party in the Leninist sense was needed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Gramsci

In the world of Marxist theory, however, Gramsci is known for emphasizing the ideational over the material, a reversal of the orthodox primacy of the material as in most of the writings by Marx and Lenin. Some say Gramsci inspired neo-Hegelian Marxists like Habermaas and Marcuse.

Wiki puts his theoretical discoveries this way:

* Cultural hegemony as a means of maintaining the capitalist state.

* The need for popular workers' education to encourage development of intellectuals from the working class.

* The distinction between political society (the police, the army, legal system, etc.) which dominates directly and coercively, and civil society (the family, the education system, trade unions, etc.) where leadership is constituted through ideology or by means of consent.

* 'Absolute historicism'.

* The critique of economic determinism.

* The critique of philosophical materialism.

Gramsci died at 46 shortly after his release from prison.

[oldpotsmuggler]

Thanks for the clarity. It's now clear to me that the BUSCO machine is squarely behind Guiliani, and I wasn't really sure of that before. There is no way they pick a member of his group to be A.G. as just a coincidence. For him to have his own guy in place from day one would let him hit the ground running in ways that anyone else could not. Mukasey will establish a Guiliani Justice Dept. and any different President would want to put there own team in place at such a critical location.

Guiliani would be the worst of the Reps as far as SCOTUS goes. I followed his career at a distance back when he was a Federal prosecutor in NYC. Quite simply, he was dirty, and everyone knew it. At a minimum he entered office with an agenda that was far from matching the old slogan of "The People win whenever Justice is done".

Rudolph knows the system and the players well enough to be dangerous, and it's clear that that is exactly where his inclination is at, also. With him it's not going to be even Roberts and Alito types. It's going to be all Scalia all the time and a clear upswing in the primacy of the government over the individual. You let him appoint three or four Justices (a very realsitic number for the next Prez) and we would need something revolutionary to recover.

Blessedly, 2008 is shaping up to be the perfect storm of bad war, bad eceonomy, and right wing overreaching/scandals so the whole topic is likely academic.