| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"" |
| Date: |
14 Aug 2005 01:24:12 PM |
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Attack Of The Clones |
http://www.au.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=7249&abbr=cs_
March 2005
Feature
Church & State Magazine
Attack Of The Clones
President Bush And His Religious Right Allies Want To Stack The Supreme
Court With Right-Wing Ideologues
by Rob Boston
[excerpts]
“We don’t believe in cloning, but if we did, we would clone Scalia and
Thomas,” gushed Andrea Lafferty, TVC executive director.
Mehlman’s words might have been music to Lafferty’s ears, but to defenders
of church-state separation, the GOP official definitely struck a sour note.
Mehlman’s promise was clear evidence that the Bush administration is
determined to remake the Supreme Court in a rigidly right-wing mode. The
final result could be a full-scale judicial assault on the church-state
wall.
What would a court stacked with Scalia and Thomas clones do to the wall of
separation?
To answer that question, one need only look at the opinions the two have
penned. Since joining the high court in 1986, Scalia has been a consistent
foe of church-state separation in every case. Ditto for Thomas, who was
confirmed in 1991.
A court remade in the Scalia/Thomas mode would permit public schools to
teach creationism alongside evolution and give its blessing to other forms
of government-sponsored religion in the classroom. Government would not
only be allowed, but required, to fund religious schools and other
sectarian enterprises in certain cases. Government officials could festoon
courthouses and other public buildings with religious symbols.
At the same time, Scalia’s vision of religious freedom – the “free exercise
of religion” promised in the First Amendment – is already holding sway at
the high court, and even many conservatives say it’s a cramped and narrow
view that unfairly singles out minority faiths and makes them vulnerable to
government control.
Scalia’s outspokenness on his personal religious views is nothing new. In
fact, it goes hand in hand with his ultra-conservative judicial philosophy.
Once seated on the high court, Scalia wasted no time making his hard-line
anti-separationist views known. During the court’s 1986-87 term, the
justices heard a case challenging a Louisiana law requiring public schools
to offer “balanced treatment” between biblical creationism and evolution,
giving the combative newcomer an early opportunity to sound off.
The court struck down the law by a 7-2 vote, with Scalia in the minority.
Blasting a “theme of chaos” that Scalia said ran through the high court’s
church-state cases, the justice asserted that if a majority of Louisiana
residents wanted creationism in the classroom, they should be allowed to
have it. The idea, he insisted, was not necessarily religious.
Since then, Scalia has voted against separation of church and state in
numerous cases to come before the court.
There are no surprises with Scalia. Since taking his seat, he has ruled
against the separation of church and state in every case dealing with
challenges to laws “respecting an establishment of religion.”
Scalia rejects the entire foundation of modern church-state law: that laws
respecting an establishment means more than simply declaring an official
national church. His view of the First Amendment’s religion clauses is
extremely narrow. Critics say that under Scalia’s view, communities could
quickly have a de facto established religion of whatever the majority
chose.
What’s worse, critics say, Scalia’s opinions, especially his dissents, are
frequently mean-spirited and dripping with sarcasm. His opponents on the
high court aren’t just wrong, they must be stupid as well or perhaps
hostile to religion.
Even more shockingly, Scalia has not limited his judicial assault to the
“establishment” part of church-state separation. The wall also protects
every Americans’ right to the “free exercise” of religion. Here, Scalia’s
record has also been a disaster.
In 1990, Scalia cobbled together a court majority that basically
eviscerated the very core of the First Amendment’s religious freedom
protections. With the stroke of a pen, Scalia, who wrote the majority
opinion in Employment Division v. Smith, wiped more than three decades of
settled law off the books.
In its place, Scalia substituted a crabbed and narrow vision of religious
freedom rights that critics say all but guarantees that when the rights of
the believer and the perceived needs of the government come into conflict,
the state always wins.
Scalia acknowledged that his new formula would put religious minorities at
a disadvantage but essentially said that is too bad.
For his first few years on the court, Scalia was something of a lone voice,
often able to muster only Rehnquist as an ideological partner. That changed
in 1991 when the two got a new ally – Clarence Thomas.
Thomas and Scalia have become so closely identified that jokes have
circulated that Scalia now gets two votes on the court. Indeed, the two
have never split on a church-state case, always voting to oppose separation
of church and state. (Rehnquist is usually with them, though he did part
company in the Davey case.)
During his bruising confirmation battle, Thomas claimed to support
church-state separation, telling the Senate Judiciary Committee that the
wall is “an appropriate metaphor.” But once on the court, he wasted no time
attacking that principle.
In a concurring opinion in a 1995 case, Rosenberger v. Rector and Visitors
of the University of Virginia, Thomas outlined his church-state views in
detail.
Thomas asserted that the interpretation of church-state separation
attributed to founder James Madison is “extreme” and added, “In any event,
the views of one man do not establish the original understanding of the
First Amendment.”
Ruling in favor of taxpayer aid to private schools in a 2000 case (Mitchell
v. Helms), Thomas ridiculed the idea that government should not be
permitted to fund “pervasively sectarian” institutions, implying that such
a standard was a product of bigotry. Amazingly, Thomas’ views were endorsed
by three other justices – Scalia, Rehnquist and Kennedy.
Two years later, the high court upheld Ohio’s private-school voucher plan
in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris. In a concurrence short on legal analysis but
long on dicta (a legal term meaning a judge’s personal opinion), Thomas
sought to portray vouchers as a civil rights issue.
But it was the 2004 controversy over the Pledge of Allegiance that really
caused Thomas to go around the bend. Although the court dismissed the Elk
Grove Unified School District v. Newdow case, Thomas could not resist the
opportunity to take another shot at church-state separation.
The First Amendment, Thomas wrote in a concurring opinion, “probably”
prohibits the establishment of a national religion. But, he went on to say,
it does not “purport to protect individual rights.”
Furthermore, Thomas opined, the Establishment Clause does not place limits
on state involvement with religion. Under Thomas’ extreme states’ rights
theory, states would be free not only to fund religion but to set up
official churches as well.
Thomas, who narrowly won a seat on the high court thanks to Religious
Right-led lobbying, retains a tight relationship with the right-wing
establishment in Washington and beyond. He’s so enamored of the far right
that after the November elections he agreed to swear in Tom Parker, an
Alabama associate of infamous “Ten Commandments judge” Roy Moore. In
November, Parker won a seat on the Alabama Supreme Court.
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| User: "Clyde Frog" |
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| Title: Re: Attack Of The Clones |
07 Oct 2005 04:05:23 PM |
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wrote..., On 08/14/2005 11:24:
“We don’t believe in cloning, but if we did, we would clone Scalia and
Thomas,” gushed Andrea Lafferty, TVC executive director.
Would they clone Thomas' vast porno collection, or would that violate
copyright laws? And if it wound up violating obscenity laws, would
Thomas' clone uphold the constitutionality of those laws?
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| User: "Info Junkie" |
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| Title: Re: Attack Of The Clones |
08 Oct 2005 11:06:16 AM |
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On Fri, 07 Oct 2005 21:05:23 GMT, Clyde Frog <clyde@frog.net> wrote:
buckeye-ELO@nospam.net wrote..., On 08/14/2005 11:24:
“We don’t believe in cloning, but if we did, we would clone Scalia and
Thomas,” gushed Andrea Lafferty, TVC executive director.
Would they clone Thomas' vast porno collection, or would that violate
copyright laws? And if it wound up violating obscenity laws, would
Thomas' clone uphold the constitutionality of those laws?
Unless you wish to prove that Justice Thomas actually has a "vast porno
collection", one may consider your assertions non sequitur. Until such proof is
provided, the questions above should be considered as being asked from a troll.
"...every person must be his own watchman for truth... -Justice Jackson
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