Kim Davis: Conservatives usually support theocracy - part 4

When citizens of this country approach their government, they do so only as Americans, not as a members of one faith or another. And that means that even in a partly legislative body, they should not confront government-sponsored worship that divides them along religious lines." - Associate Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, in a dissenting opinion

The Kim Davis controversy is like other right-wing efforts to support theocracy and to undo the decisions of the SCOTUS which are mandated by our Constitution as the ultimate arbiters of what is and is not constitutional.  We saw it in the Hobby Lobby decision, we have seen it in other attempts at challenging marriage equality.  When conservatives dislike a ruling, they attempt a do-over and use the litigation as a delay to social justice.

The dissenting decision quoted above came from a court case where the conservative Christian majority on the Supreme Court upheld specifically Christian prayer in city council meetings, asserting that they could open council meetings in the name of Jesus. Previously the town council had a long tradition of opening with a simple moment of respectful silence, prior to 1999.  Further, before making it to the SCOTUS, lower courts found the prayer to be preferential treatment violating the establishment clause. From CNN:

"The faith of the prayer giver does not matter at all," said John Auberger, Greece's board supervisor, who began the practice shortly after taking office. "We accept anyone who wants to come in and volunteer to give the prayer to open up our town meetings."

A federal appeals court in New York found the board's policy to be a violation of the Constitution's Establishment Clause, which forbids any government "endorsement" of religion. Those judges said it had the effect of "affiliating the town with Christianity."

What should be concerning to ALL citizens however is the larger push against secularism that seeks to install a radical religious control of government.  Kentucky is not the only location with such a conflict.  It is a truism that all politics are local - and in equally if not more conservative Arizona, a local city council just did this, more of the same kind of action as Kim Davis effectively interfering with same sex couples getting married, under the name of individual freedom of religious expression, from If You Only News:

Arizona City Council Passes Resolution To Discriminate Against Non-Christians During City Prayer

...On Monday, a resolution that would allow all religious groups the ability to open city council meetings with prayer was put before the city council of Coolidge, Arizona.
This wasn’t good enough for Councilman Rob Hudelson, though. The Baptist pastor, either oblivious to the SCOTUS ruling or deliberately ignoring it, asked for a change to the resolution, restricting the right to pray before city council meetings to Christians only.
The modified resolution, discriminating against other religions, passed by a 4-2 vote.
So the solution is not to have any prayers at all, regardless of religion. But that never set in with the city council, even though they’re being warned that this will lead to lawsuits if approved.
City Attorney Denis Fitzgibbons said of the resolution, “As long as they all have a fair opportunity to come and give an invocation, then it’s going to be legal.” But that’s not the case here, and when Fitzgibbons warned of the inevitable lawsuit, Hudelson bunkered down, telling Fitzgibbons the city paid him “to avoid us getting into these problems.”
Hudelson insisted that it was our “heritage” and that we shouldn’t “be ashamed:”

That’s our heritage, we should not be ashamed of it, nor should we be pushed into a corner because Supreme Court decisions. The first prayer in Congress ended by saying thy son, our savior, based on the merits of Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior Amen.

The Arizona ALCU has already stepped into the fight, sending the city a letter warning that it was in violation of the First Amendment if it approved the rule.
The legal director, Victoria Lopez, told AZCentral, “There isn’t a legal question. It’s problematic on First Amendment grounds, certainly, and it seems like a really bad policy position to take” and “They are creating a policy that will advocate for a particular religion” which sends the message that other religions aren’t welcome in government affairs.

We are not Christian or non-Christian; we are all Americans.  We should not be giving preferential treatment in or by government to any sect or faith to act against the civil rights of others, or to be otherwise discriminated against in government.

Ask yourself, if you held a different faith than the city council member here, Hudelson, do YOU feel you could expect fair treatment?  Consider if for example, you had previously disagreed with Hudelson about the location of a fundamentalist church parking lot.......or some other petty local issue.  Would you expect an unbiased vote from this man? I would not.  If you are a known Muslim or Jewish, or Hindu or Buddhist, or atheist? How about if you are openly gay? Then I think it would be even worse for you in that Arizona town in front of that city council.  You could not expect fair treatment, free from religious prejudice and creeping theocracy.  THIS is the real issue, one that is being fought on many fronts at many levels of government, fair and equal treatment.

And THAT is the essential battle being waged over Kim Davis, that has been cynically used by the radical religious right to try to take over the state of Kentucky.  They DO want such preferential treatment, they DO want the authority to strip you of YOUR religious AND civil rights if you DARE to disagree with them -- and they are usually wrong, so you should be expecting to disagree with them.  But to disagree effectively, you have to learn to think independently and to look at the issues pragmatically, rather than taking them as defined at face value.

"First amendment ONLY protects Christians", Alabama State Supreme Court Justice

There are times when I think we would have been better off if we let the idiots in Alabama secede; but the reality is we should just throw those who are so offensively anti-American out of the country, revoking their citizenship.

The latest evidence for that argument comes from the deep south, from 'Bama, where they elect their nutjobs to the State Supreme Court rather than to Congress, like we did repeatedly in MN CD-6.  At least, in the past, Moore was removed from office; and he seems on track to repeat that dishonor.

To provide a little context, Moore is openly a racist as well as a religious bigot and homophobe; per the SPLC:

This coming Saturday, the Foundation for Moral Law (FML) in Montgomery, Ala., will be the site of the 2010 Alabama Secession Day Commemoration, featuring speakers tied to the League of the South, a neo-Confederate hate group that considers slavery “God-ordained” and advocates for “the cultural dominance of the Anglo-Celtic people and their institutions.” The Foundation for Moral Law’s president is defrocked Alabama Chief Supreme Court Justice Judge Roy Moore, who is more commonly known as the “Ten Commandments judge.” In the dead of night on July 31, 2001, Moore placed a 2½-ton stone monument with the Decalogue carved on it in the rotunda of the Alabama Supreme Court building, where he then presided. Moore was thrown out of office in 2003 by Alabama’s Court of the Judiciary after refusing to remove the monument, as he was ordered to do as the result of a federal lawsuit brought by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The event is being organized by Patricia Godwin, a racist neo-Confederate from Selma who annually holds a birthday party to honor Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, a wealthy slave trader who became the first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. Godwin, who often refers in E-mails to her majority-black hometown as “Zimbabwe on de Alabamy,” has lately crusaded to block any acknowledgement on the Capitol grounds of the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery civil rights march. Godwin has railed at “the trash that came here in 1965,” complaining that those who honor the civil rights movement “are aiding and abetting the ultimate goal of the ONE WORLD ORDER — to BROWN AmeriKa and annihilate Anglo-Celtic-European culture!”
Another league favorite, John Eidsmoe, is on the bill. Eidsmoe is a former law school professor and close friend and one-time legal adviser to Roy Moore. A theocrat, Eidsmoe has suggested that the government “may not act contrary to God’s laws.” In 2005, Eidsmoe spoke to the national conference of the Council of Conservative Citizens, a hate group that routinely denigrates blacks as “genetically inferior,” complains about “Jewish power brokers,” calls homosexuals “perverted sodomites,” accuses immigrants of turning America into a “slimy brown mass of glop,” and named Lester Maddox, the now-deceased, ax handle-wielding, arch-segregationist former governor of Georgia, “Patriot of the Century.”

And like our own dippy Congresswoman Bachmann, this nutjob also wanted - maybe still wants - to be president, as well.  Apparently GOD doesn't want them to be, looking the outcome.  America sure doesn't want any part of either of them in the presidency. 




from Raw Story:

Alabama’s chief justice: Buddha didn’t create us so First Amendment only protects Christians

Speaking at the Pastor for Life Luncheon, which was sponsored by Pro-Life Mississippi, Chief Justice Roy Moore of the Alabama Supreme Court declared that the First Amendment only applies to Christians because “Buddha didn’t create us, Mohammed didn’t create us, it was the God of the Holy Scriptures” who created us.
“They didn’t bring the Koran over on the pilgrim ship,” he continued. “Let’s get real, let’s go back and learn our history. Let’s stop playing games.”
He then noted that he loves talking to lawyers, because he is a lawyer who went to “a secular law school,” so he knows that “in the law, [talking about God] just isn’t politically correct.” He claimed that this is why America has “lost its way,” and that he would be publishing a pamphlet “this week, maybe next” that contained copies of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, thereby proving that all the people “who found this nation — black, white, all people, all religions, all faiths” knew that America was “about God.”

The Founding Fathers were very articulate.  If they intended the Constitution to apply only to Christians, they would have said so; and they would NOT have put into the Constitution that there be no religious test. They would not have included religious freedom in the first amendment either.

Even the internal logic here is flawed; so if the Christian God that this jerk worships made all human beings...........why would the 1st Amendment - the one that guarantees freedom of speech AND freedom of religion, include BOTH of those, if both did not reference everyone?

Conservatives, like this guy, who by every means of assessment is an extremist idiot, and who was apparently elected by like-minded pro-discrimination, anti-Constitution, anti-American citizens of 'Bama, should not be sitting on any judicial bench anywhere, much less the Supreme Court of one of the 50 states.

This man is an embarrassment and a stain on our nation.  He should be removed from office for dereliction of duty, failure to uphold the oath of office, and for attempting to violate the rights of the citizens of the United States who ARE protected by the U.S. Constitution. 

We are NOT a Theocracy - and it is not like there is any consensus within Christianity as to what defines a Christian.

If anyone, anywhere, ever doubted that the membership of the radical right, including the teabaggers, were anti-American, I offer this as just one MORE piece of evidence. 

These people, like Roy Moore, and those who elected Roy Moore, all across the spectrum of the extreme religious right and the radical political right, are ANTI-American.  They give lip service to loving the Constitution while attempting to trample it with bigotry.


These people, like Roy Moore, and those who elected Roy Moore, all across the spectrum of the extreme religious right and radical political right, are attempting to make us less free, and are attempting to deny human and civil rights.

These people, like Roy Moore, and those who elected Roy Moore, especially but not exclusively in the south, are dumbing down America.

These people whine and whinge on and on and on about how they are victims, when they are not.  Whiney fake victim claims, believing things which are demonstrably not true, and things which are often deeply hateful -- the definition of 21st century conservatism.

No, popsie Palin, we are not a Theocracy, and this is a bad, UN-American Idea

Seriously Republicans; Wyoming DOESN'T NEED IT'S OWN Aircraft Carrier

As I read this, it occurred to me that the Republican Crazies are running the Asylum in Wyoming, and the nut house is their state capital building.  Which is bad enough - but it's worse when you put the lunatics in charge of it.

What led me to think that the good legislators of Wyoming had cracked their nuts, gone mental, lost their grip on reality, or were perhaps suffering from some form of delusion, possibly dementia or schizophrenia was THIS news article.

Wyoming lawmaker introduces doomsday bill
By msnbc.com staff

CHEYENNE – Fearing an economic and political collapse nationwide, Wyoming lawmakers are moving ahead with legislation to deal with a doomsday scenario -- complete with plans to create a state currency.

“Things happen quickly sometimes — look at Libya, look at Egypt, look at those situations,” the bill’s GOP sponsor State Rep. David Miller told the Star-Tribune in Casper. “We wouldn’t have time to meet as a Legislature or even in special session to do anything to respond.”

According to the Star-Tribune, House Bill 85 would create a state-run “government continuity task force,” to prepare Wyoming for potential disruptions in food and energy to a complete breakdown of the federal government.

Miller is also asking for the task force to look into creating its own state currency in the event the dollar loses value entirely.


The Wyoming House of Representatives advanced the legislation on Monday, but eliminated language calling for plans to implement its own military draft, army and acquire an aircraft carrier.

The bill now must pass two more House votes before it would head to the Senate for consideration.


“I don’t represent people in Illinois or New Jersey. I represent people in Wyoming,” Miller said. “And I want them to be protected from any catastrophic events that may beset the rest of the country.”

Now, it just makes sense that the good legislators, especially the more bizarre and stupid Republicans and Tea Partiers among them, and the good citizens of Wyoming could be better spending their time on things like jobs bills and real-life real-world real-time practical matters, and less time on either culture war legislation requiring state religion and pseudo-scientific fantasy.

State Representative Miller, do you get your ideas on the same Internet sites as the right wing idiot in the Indiana state legislature, the one who believes the Girl Scouts are sexy Communist Lesbian Abortionists? Are you afraid, Representative Miller, because we have a black President? Are you marking on your calendar in red crayon the End Time Dayz, and maybe drooling just a little bit as you do so? Do you have this sign in a prominent place in your office -

or is this an image from your family Christmas card?

Sir, what did you think you were going to do, IF you could get an Aircraft Carrier - put it up on blocks in front of the capital building?   Maybe surround it with Buffalo grazing on the rolling grasslands of the prairie?

Just to refresh my memory of the state of Wyoming, from prior visits as a child - my parents thought I should be educated in the regional differences of the United States - I took a quick look at both topographical maps of Wyoming like this one, and a satellite photo of Wyoming.  Those confirm what I remember - no major bodies of water.  That water, behind the Buffalo Bill dam?  The reservoir from damming up the Shoshone river - it's NOT BIG ENOUGH for an aircraft carrier, sir.  But  more than that, there is no way to get an aircraft carrier there.  It is not practical to take one apart and reassemble it; they don't make them out of Legos.

Were you unaware Representative Miller, that Wyoming is not only a very landlocked state, having no ocean or Gulf/Sea access, but also a state which lacks a sufficiently large body of water for an aircraft carrier.  It's not like you're a Great Lakes state either, which could maybe, kinda, sorta, with a shoe-horn manage an aircraft carrier, if we could get one into the lakes in the first place - a big IF.  They are quite large, you know, those aircraft carriers.

You do realize that is a crazy idea, don't you Representative Miller?  Do you understand that ALL of your proposals under this legislation, like creating your own "apocalypse buffalo bucks" currency are equally stupid? 

I was a Girl Scout as a child; I do respect their motto 'Be Prepared'.  But Representative Miller, and all your right wing tin foil hat wearing colleagues in the legislature, that pertained to real solutions to real potential problems.  Despite the silly idea that the other right wing nut, the one in Indiana, has about the girl scouts, you could do far worse than to follow their motto, the very pragmatic and reality based way they do so.

Thank goodness the health care reform that you and your other crazy conservative buddies like to demonize as 'Obamacare' provides good mental health coverage; because you and anyone who supports this crack pot idea are more batshit crazy than Orly Taitz -----and that is pretty darn crazy.

Seriously, there was a time and place where conservatives were not so closely associated with off-the-wall out-to-lunch fringe lunatic ideas and legislation, where conservatives were reality-based intelligent people, who were moderate and savvy, thoughtful and well educated.

Then people like you came along Representative Miller, and changed all of that - and not for the better.

I am waiting and wishing that moderates, that less ideological fringe lunatics, will emerge from wherever they have gone into hiding, and will take back the GOP.  I'm waiting for that sunny, wonderful day when sanity will prevail on the right again, when the right will not be synonymous with stupid any longer, or with religious extremism, and some sort of demented Christian theocracy contrary to the Constitution.

Resign from the state legislature, Representative Miller; check yourself out of government and into a mental health facility with padded rooms.  It will bring that right wing swing back from the fringe lunacy to reality a little sooner.