"Justice Sunday" Blurs the Line between Church and State

By ADA Intern Kate Mewhiney

Conservative Christians gathered in Kentucky on Sunday for the live nationwide broadcast of "Justice Sunday: Stopping the Filibuster Against People of Faith." The event, hosted by the Family Research Council and Focus on the Family, brought members of the Christian Right together to drag religion into the filibuster debate.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist addressed the crowd via taped message. Though he refrained from referring to religion in the video, he has drawn criticism from both parties for his involvement in the politically and religiously divisive event.

Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) said Frist's actual words were not as important as the message he sent by speaking at an event that, he said, "Clearly argues that people of one viewpoint have God on their side and all others are faithless."

The hour-long broadcast, which reportedly reached 61 million households, was a spectacle of the Christian right attempting to use religion to dictate legislative process. "Justice Sunday" and the organizations behind it are trying to undermine one of the most basic foundations of this country: the separation of Church and State. In an interview with the Washington Post, Representative Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO), a practicing Methodist minister, said groups like the Family Research Council and Focus on the Family are engaging in debate "by exploiting God," a move he called a "biblical and theological obscenity."

Speakers at the event addressed the audience from the church's pulpit. Participants railed against Democrats for their use of the filibuster to block judicial nominees. They attacked so-called "activist judges" who Joe Dobson, chairman of Focus on the Family, said practice "judicial tyranny to people of faith." They even went after their own, broadcasting the names and phone numbers of Republican senators who have not committed to the nuclear option, urging the audience to call and demand their support.

The organizers of "Justice Sunday" were from Christian conservative groups, who were among the most influential Republican supporters in the 2004 election. Now they want what they see as their reward. The Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director or Americans for Separation of Church and State, said he thinks Frist has made a mistake in aligning himself with such groups. "The people he's dealing with are not going to rest until there's a constitutional Armageddon in which the religious right controls all three branches of government."

Workers Deserve The Right To Organize

The ADA Workers' Rights Committee has prepared a new policy brief on the Employee Free Choice Act which was recently introduced in the House as H.R. 1696 and the Senate as S. 842.

The report can be viewed HERE.

For more information on the EFCA and to watch the webcast of the bill introduction click HERE

According to a recent survey from Peter D. Hart Research Associates, more working people than ever-some 57 million-say they would join a union if they had a chance. But employers routinely harass, intimidate and coerce workers who try to exercise their right to form a union at work.

Join the fight to allow workers to organize for a better life.

News and Notes

News And Notes
is online now.

Baby Steps

The Boston Globe

Connecticut approves gay civil unions
Advocates and opponents criticize compromise law

By Sarah Schweitzer, Globe Staff | April 21, 2005

HARTFORD -- Connecticut became the second state in the nation yesterday to create civil unions for gays and lesbians....

See full article HERE

Reform - NOT Repeal - the Estate Tax

From the Moving Ideas Network

Update: The House passed a permanent repeal of the estate tax, a boon for this nation's millionaires and a loss of much-needed revenue for the federal budget and cash-strapped states. They rejected an amendment reforming the tax instead of repealing it. The bill (S. 420/H.R. 8) moves to the Senate next.

The federal estate tax is a tax on the transfer of assets, called a person's estate, at death. Currently, estates over $1.5 million, or $3 million for couples, are subject to the tax. These large estates represent the wealthiest 2% of Americans. The tax is scheduled to phase out to zero by 2010, at which time the current law will expire and the task will revert back to affecting estates over $1 million. Republican leaders have made permanent repeal of the tax a top priority.

The estate tax brings in $20 billion for the federal budget annually, and a portion goes to state budgets. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, including the estate tax, will cost $2.1 trillion through 2015 at a time when the budget deficit and federal debt are ballooning out of control. The estate tax also encourages charitable giving, and its repeal would hurt charities' fundraising efforts.

Instead of an outright repeal, tax fairness groups are calling for reforms to ensure that the average working family is exempt while not letting millionaires off the hook. They propose that exemptions for family farms and businesses be simplified and improved and that the estate value subject to the tax be raised to $3.5 million, or $7 million for couples. These reforms would provide relief for 88% of current applicable estates leaving only the largest 0.25% of estates subject to the tax.

A permanent repeal of the estate tax is problematic for families and the U.S. economy. Take action today to preserve the estate tax.

Meet the New Pope

Meet the New Pope

Well, it's a great day for people named Benedict. If progressives had a favorite among the leading papal candidates, it likely wasn't Joseph Ratzinger, who will become Pope Benedict XVI. He authored last year's letter urging U.S. bishops to deny communion to pro-choice politicians, widely seen as a shot at John Kerry. He opposes any weakening of the Church's stands on birth control, gay rights, choice, clerical celibacy, or the role of women. He has said nasty things about feminism, battled liberation theology and was even an (involuntary) member of the Hitler Youth as a teenager. Not our kind of guy.

But, unless you believe he really is God's representative on earth, it doesn't matter much. The Church is not about to open its arms to gay marriage, women priests, or even the vast majority of American Catholics who disagree with its teachings on sexual morality. It would have been nice to see an African or Latin American pope, but leading candidates from those areas were not progressives either. Pope Benedict's dutiful denunciations of war and the death penalty may be more obviously pro forma (hey, that's Latin!) but John Paul's words on those topics did not slow the machinery of death in Texas or Iraq. Progressive Catholics working to change the Church cannot expect backup from Rome anytime soon--the hierarchy, as they proved again in electing Ratzinger, is just too conservative.


John Brodkin is an ADA member and former Executive Director of the Greater Washington chapter. Opinions expressed here are not necessarily those of ADA.

"An Indefensible Budget"

If a half-trillion dollar military budget lands on Capitol Hill and no one seems to hear, does it make a sound? You bet.

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists - May-June issue - By John Isaacs

THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION RECENTLY REQUESTED MORE than $500 billion in military spending, and few in Congress, the media, or the public have paid much attention. That's worth repeating: half a trillion dollars. Liberals are largely silent about the Pentagon budget because of the futility of opposing military spending during wartime. Fiscal conservatives are quiet because they would rather go after Medicaid spending or Social Security. Pentagon hawks speak up only to ask for more money for "shortchanged" programs.

The formal defense budget request-including Energy Department spending for military programs-totals $439 billion. That sum alone, according to an analysis prepared by the Senate Budget Committee's Democratic staff, is roughly 18 percent higher in real terms than the average Cold War defense budget. To put it another way, although U.S. troop strength is one-third smaller today, the Pentagon is spending more to build and maintain a military to confront poorly armed insurgents, like those in Iraq and Afghanistan, than it did during the long struggle with the imperial Soviet superpower.

Even the $439 billion total lowballs defense the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan-an average of more than $5 billion a month. Also left out were the costs of adding 33,000 military personnel to the army and marines worldwide, which Congress authorized last year, and $5 billion to reorganize the army into smaller brigades. The army pulled its own accounting trick, moving program requests that should have been in the $439 billion budget to a separate spending request sent to Congress around the same time. All told, this shell game tacks on an additional $75 billion to defense spending.

This supplemental request is technically slated to be used in fiscal 2005 and the $439 billion in fiscal 2006, but even Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld concedes that "we need to look at the budget and the supplemental together." Add up all of these items and presto, a $514 billion budget request.

While Rumsfeld talks about transforming the military to confront the challenges of the twenty-first century, the $514 billion budget is chock-full of programs that have no relevance to Saddam Hussein's heirs or to Osama bin Laden. For example, the budget includes $8.8 billion for missile defense-the largest single weapons request. Yet national missile defense, a significant portion of that $8.8 billion, has failed its two most recent tests, and Rumsfeld admitted at a February 17 Senate Armed Services Committee hearing that, "There's no deterrent if something is known to not work."

The budget also includes: $4.3 billion for the F/A-22 Raptor fighter jet that was designed to fight the Soviet Air Force and is slated to be discontinued in fiscal 2008; $2.6 billion for submarines that will be great at tracking and sinking Soviet naval vessels, should any be found outside movie lots; and $1 billion for another Cold War weapon, the Trident II D5 missile. Not to disappoint the new nuke crowd, the proposed budget funds continued research on a new generation of "bunker-busting" nuclear weapons.

Half a trillion dollars may sound like a lot, but not to some members of Congress. "We're not spending enough on defense," says Sen. James Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican. Not to be outdone, superhawk Sen. Joseph Lieberman, a Connecticut Democrat, added, "I essentially want to agree with [Inhofe], . . . we are, in this budget, underinvesting in our future." The ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, Missouri's Ike Skelton, spoke of $13.8 billion in "unfunded requirements" from each of the services' wish lists of programs.

Others seem most determined to protect military jobs in their states. At the February 17 hearing, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner of Virginia protested a shortage of new ships in the budget, ships that might just happen to be produced in the Old Dominion. Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican representing another ship-building state, Maine, raised the specter of an expanding Chinese fleet to hammer home the point: "The decreasing number of ships being procured, particularly in light of the Chinese buildup, really concerns me."

Sen. Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat, complained about the possibility that an aircraft carrier based in his state could be retired. Georgia Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss appeared most concerned about the paucity of orders for new airplanes built in the Peach State, particularly the F/A-22 fighter and the C-130J cargo aircraft. He rather self-consciously defended his plaint: "I have been a fiscal conservative, have been supportive of balancing the budget ever since I got into the political game . . . but there are some things that don't have a price tag on them and we all know that freedom is one of them."

Meanwhile, as senators pined about the price of freedom being marked down, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the deficit stands at $394 billion for fiscal year 2005 and about $370 billion for fiscal year 2006. The administration purports to cope with these deficits by cutting funding for domestic discretionary programs by $212 billion during the next five years and for entitlements, such as Medicaid, by $138 billion during the next 10 years.

Liberals will try to protect domestic social programs from the meat axe. And they have much to defend, including cuts in low-income home heating assistance, clean water funding, community housing programs, and Amtrak. But don't expect to see any funds moved from the defense budget to help augment these programs, despite the country's worsening fiscal condition. The war in Iraq is the gift that keeps on taking, with analysts expecting continued heavy expenditures for years to come. Meanwhile, President George W. Bush is proposing expanded tax cuts that will worsen the deficit.

The public won't know the final military price tag for months, as the budget goes through its many stages in Congress: the budget resolution, the supplemental appropriations request, the defense authorization bill, and the defense appropriations bill. But you can bet half a trillion dollars that the requested amount will not decline. Instead, Congress will likely use budget gimmicks to fund pork barrel projects. As high as the defense budget is, expect it to climb still higher next year, perpetuating a nasty cycle.

John Isaacs, a member of the Bulletin's editorial advisory board, is the executive director of the Council for a Livable World in Washington, D.C. and a National Board Member of Americans for Democratic Action.

Slippery Slope

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) warns that limiting the minority could ultimately hurt the GOP too.

From the LA Times:

"Appearing on CBS' "Face the Nation," McCain said a ban on filibusters for judicial nominations could spread to other legislative issues, fundamentally changing the Senate.

"I think that there's a problem with a slippery slope," he said.

In that way, he argued, the precedent could ultimately hurt the GOP by allowing Democrats to bar the filibuster the next time they hold the White House and a majority in the Senate.

"If we don't protect the rights of the minority … if you had a liberal president and a Democrat-controlled Senate, I think that it could do great damage," said McCain, who sought the GOP presidential nomination in 2000 and is considering another run in 2008."

Food For Thought

Moving from the realm of single issues to that of overall, grand strategy for liberals, this article by Bill Bradley definitely gives us something to chew on. I think his portrayal of the GOP as a solidly unified machine, or pyramid, is a bit of an over-exaggeration: just think about what "unity" will mean in the 2008 GOP primaries if McCain and/or Giuliani take on an Establishment candidate like Bill Frist. Nonetheless, his ideas are worth a read.

Come in Space Cadet Cornyn

Earth to Space Cadet! Earth to Space Cadet!

The Space Cadet this time is Republican Senator John Cornyn of Texas. From the Washington Post article today. "Sen. John Cornyn said yesterday that recent examples of courthouse violence may be linked to public anger over judges who make politically charged decisions without being held accountable."

Here is a quote from the floor of the Senate. "It causes a lot of people, including me, great distress to see judges use the authority that they have been given to make raw political or ideological decisions." Cornyn goes on, "...we have seen some recent episodes of courthouse violence in this country. . . . And I wonder whether there may be some connection between the perception in some quarters, on some occasions, where judges are making political decisions yet are unaccountable to the public, that it builds up and builds up and builds up to the point where some people engage in, engage in violence."

Some examples of recent court related violence: Again from the Washington Post article, "In Chicago, a man fatally shot the husband and mother of a federal judge who had ruled against him in a medical malpractice suit. And in Atlanta last month, a man broke away from a deputy and fatally shot four people, including the judge presiding over his rape trial."

Is a prominent Republican Senator really condoning murder in the name of ideologically driven judicial "reform"?

Sex Education: No April Fool's Joke

Bush backed and now federally funded abstinence-only programs are full of inaccuracy and outright lies.

Take George Bush's sex-ed quiz courtesy of NARAL to find out more about these risky programs and take action to stop them.