The Justice Department’s Troubling Ties to Alliance Defending Freedom

Jeff Sessions announcing his new anti-gay task force.

While the "Alliance Defending Freedom" ("ADF") describes itself as a "Christian" law firm, the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups across America, has certified ADF as a hate group.  The principal target of ADF's efforts is the LGBT community whose civil rights it seeks to rescind in order that Christofascist can discriminate at will and be exempt from public accommodation laws.  Given the significant overlap between ADF's evangelical base and white supremacists, the LGBT community is not ADF's lone target.  A prior blog post earlier this week noted how  Attorney General Jeff Sessions - a man with a long history of homophobia and racism - announced at "task force" within the Department of Justice which would enforce exemptions from non-discrimination laws. A piece in Media Matters looks at the insidious relationship between the Trump/Pence DOJ and ADF.  Trump may be breaking promises to much of his base, but he is pandering overtime to the Christofascists thanks in no small part I suspect to Mike Pence, an extreme far right wing religious zealot in his own right.  Here are article highlights:

Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the creation of a Department of Justice (DOJ) task force to enforce “religious liberty” rules that make it easier to discriminate against the LGBTQ community and others under the guise of “religious freedom." Such discrimination is a major part of the mission of anti-LGBTQ legal powerhouse Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), and the announcement was followed by a panel that included a major ADF client and was moderated by an ADF staff alumna. Coupled with ADF's involvement in the announcement, the new task force demonstrates the influence of the group's extreme anti-LGBTQ views on the administration.

On July 30, Sessions launched a new “Religious Liberty Task Force” that would enforce discriminatory religious exemptions guidance that the DOJ released in October 2017. (Sessions had worked with ADF on the guidance before its release.) Religious exemptions policies, such as those the DOJ released, allow people and businesses to be exempt from nondiscrimination laws and policies by citing a burden on their religious beliefs. People have frequently used the exemptions to discriminate against the LGBTQ community and others.

ADF was one of the first to break the news of the July 30 “Religious Liberty Summit” in which the task force was announced, noting that the event would feature a panel including the group’s client Jack Phillips, a Christian baker who refused to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple and who took his case to the Supreme Court in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commision. ADF’s news release, however, did not mention that the panel’s moderator, DOJ media affairs specialist Kerri Kupec, worked at ADF for four yearsbefore joining DOJ in January. 

The Trump-Pence administration has shown a coziness with extreme anti-LGBTQ groups and with ADF, in particular. Sessions’ DOJ issued an unusual brief on behalf of Phillips before oral arguments in Masterpiece Cakeshop, and ADF alumni and allies have been hired by various agencies and nominated for federal judgeships. As Media Matters’ recently released research book details, ADF holds dozens of extreme anti-LGBTQ positions on nearly every every aspect of life, including supporting laws that would punish sodomy by imprisonment, writing in favor of Russia’s so-called “gay propaganda” law, and advocating against efforts to protect LGBTQ youth from the harmful and discredited practice of conversion therapy. The group is in many ways the most influential group working to roll back LGBTQ equality in the country, frequently targeting basic protections for transgender students and pushing religious exemptions policies.

The “Religious Liberty Task Force” is yet another example of a cabinet-level agency devoting significant resources to make it easier to discriminate against LGBTQ people. In January, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced a new division to enforce laws protecting “health care workers who express religious objections to performing abortions and certain other procedures,” including providing medical services to transgender and other LGBTQ people.

When groups like ADF have a seat at the table with the upper echelons of our federal government, discriminatory policies such as these come as no surprise.

Many secular straights and other minorities likely yawn at this news and figure that it does not affect them.  However, if one has followed the Christofascist agenda for years, gays are only the first on ADF's hit list.  These folks are so extreme that they would like to make contraception illegal once more.  If Brett Kavanaugh is confirmed to the Supreme Court, they might just have the votes needed to overrule Griswold v. Connecticut.  ADF and its supporters are nothing short of frightening. 

Roy Moore - A Referendum on Alabama's Identity

Alabama Capitol

Years ago my first job out of law school took me to Mobile, Alabama, where I lived and worked for four (4) years.  I found the people to be conservative, but gracious and nowhere deserving of the horrible reputation that Alabama had in much of the rest of the country (when visiting my former wife's family in New York City, it was always interesting to see people's reactions when we said we lived in Alabama). In the legal realm, the state had updated its rules of civil procedure and was actually much more modern than Virginia's to this day very outdated rules governing court actions.   Mobile, with its Catholic majority population was very different from the Baptist dominated northern part of the state.   Most importantly, the Christofascists had not yet hijacked the Alabama Republican Party.  But this latter event came to pass and now, Alabama has become a place I barely recognize, all thanks to the evangelicals/Christofascists.  Graciousness has given way to extremism in all too many contexts and, as a piece in the Washington Post notes, the state is posed to engage in a referendum on its identity and how it will be perceived by decent, moral people across the country and world.  The referendum centers on Roy Moore, a foul person in my view and a disgrace to Alabama.  Here are article highlights:

For many Alabama voters, unaccustomed to a competitive election and the national attention that has come with it, the bitter showdown between Republican Roy Moore and Democrat Doug Jones has become something more personal than a race to fill an open Senate seat. It is now a referendum on the state’s identity.

Supporters of Jones say with concern that a win Tuesday by the firebrand Moore would derail the state’s efforts to escape its painful history and rebrand as a forward-thinking place welcoming to Fortune 500 companies and a highly educated workforce. And they express a nagging feeling that a Moore victory would be a deflating sign that Alabama remains beholden to its past.

“You travel across the country and you say ‘Alabama,’ and something goes right across people’s eyes every time,” said retired actor Jonathan Fuller, a 61-year-old Democrat, as he shopped at the Piggly Wiggly supermarket in the suburbs south of Birmingham. “I don’t want to apologize anymore for where I’m from because there is this pocket of stubbornness in my state.”

Supporters of Moore, meanwhile, see his candidacy as a conduit for their rejection of the national media and political elites who they believe unfairly caricature their home state as a cultural backwater. They shrug off the notion that sexual misconduct allegations against Moore — allegations that some see as a fabrication by outsiders — should make a difference. . . . He said people outside of Alabama “have no right to judge us.”

The vivid contrast between the two candidates — Moore, 70, with his apocalyptic warnings about Muslims and gay rights, against Jones, a low-key 63-year-old lawyer best known for prosecuting Ku Klux Klan members who planned the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham — has put in sharp relief the idea that the results could speak volumes about Alabama to the rest of the country — and to itself.

One pivotal group on Tuesday will be voters who feel caught between these two visions and must pick a side, especially ­Republican-leaning voters who feel pulled between their traditional values and a desire to turn the page on the uglier parts of Alabama’s past.

“We’ve got a lot of good here, a lot of people who died for equal rights. And we’ve got a lot of people who are stuck in 1930, and that’s not going to change,” Phillip Hutchins, a 67-year-old Democrat and retired aircraft worker, said last week outside a grocery store in Titusville, a heavily black neighborhood in Birmingham.

Business-minded white Republicans — a bloc that sees itself as modern and puts an emphasis on education, commerce and tradition — have been uneasy about Moore. They have recoiled, too, at the cascade of controversies that have gripped the state this year, making the current race a culmination of various discomforts rather than a sudden drama.

The competition with other states for corporate investment is fierce, and state business executives have watched closely what happened in North Carolina after its ban on gender-neutral bathrooms.  Jones has courted the business establishment, many of them Republicans, on both moral and economic grounds, urging them to abandon their partisan instincts to protect the state’s economy and reputation.

But Jones, who supports abortion rights and whose campaign headquarters has a Planned Parenthood poster on its wall, has struggled to win over Republicans such as JoAnn Turner, a 71-year-old nurse who lives in Vestavia Hills, a mostly white Birmingham suburb.

“I’ve been in Alabama for 42 years, and I’m so tired of the publicity being so bad. It’s not who we are, and it’s embarrassing,” Turner said, . . . “All that said,” Turner added, “I can’t vote for Roy Moore, and I can’t vote for Doug Jones. . . . . Turner plans to write in Sen. Luther Strange (R-Ala.). . . .

[V]eteran Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.) have remained wary of the former judge who was twice removed from the state Supreme Court — and have called the allegations against him credible and disturbing.  Shelby has opted to cast a write-in vote, telling The Washington Post that he is anxious about how a Moore victory would affect the corporate world’s impressions of Alabama. 

Outside of Birmingham and in rural towns to the east — home to massive evangelical churches and family-owned barbecue restaurants that puff black smoke out of chimneys — Moore’s support is heartier, particularly in his home town of Gadsden on the Coosa River. . . . Otis Dupree, a 53-year-old retired chicken-plant worker who works part time at the Burger King in Gadsden, said he is “disgusted” with the city’s embrace of Moore.

More than 100 miles southwest on the state’s flagship campus — the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa — hundreds of students in athletic clothing and T-shirts stream out of dorm buildings and sorority mansions across the street from the school’s beloved Bryant-Denny Stadium.

As with the men and women in Vestavia Hills, many of them are financially stable and white — and Republican in a cultural sense as much as ideologically. They see themselves as Alabama’s future and are eager to define it.  Roy Moore isn’t part of that plan, according to Ella Jernigan, a 19-year-old Republican student who’s studying marketing. . . .  I can’t stand us getting pinned now as rednecks or uneducated.”  She added, “Every time you think we’re going forward, something like Roy Moore sets us back.”

The Collapse of Trumpcare and the GOP's Inability to Govern

Like it or not, the Republican Party has become a sectarian, racist and ideologically driven political party.   The result is that ideology and bigotry trump all else and the practical realities of governing are either ignored or behind the comprehension of the zealots who now comprise the party base and to whom GOP elected officials have prostituted themselves. Trumpcare is a perfect example.  The real goal is massive tax cuts for the wealthy and the supposed removal of government from the healthcare industry, the later, of course, being utterly impossible, especially when one considers how poorly the private sector market function before the passage of the Affordable Health Care Act.  Add to this the public's massive opposition to the Republican "repeal and replace" bills to date and Trumpcare's collapse yesterday should have been foreseen by anyone not drinking the Republican Kool-Aid (thankfully 4 Republican senators seemingly refused to drink when the Kool-Aid was passed to them).   A piece in New York Magazine looks at the GOP's inability to govern when ideology is forced to meet reality.  Here are article highlights:

In 2009, David Frum, the former Bush administration speechwriter whose ideological apostasy was in its formative stages, met with conservative intellectuals to discuss the policy response to the great recession. Faced with evidence that only massive government action — a financial rescue coupled with fiscal stimulus — could have prevented a complete economic meltdown, one conservative made a startling confession: “Maybe it was a good thing we weren’t in power then — because our principles don’t allow us to respond to a crisis like this.”

The financial crisis is hardly the only issue for which conservative principles turn out to be incompatible with the practical demands of governance. (Climate change leaps to mind.) The collapse of the Republican plan to repeal and replace Obamacare is an especially vivid demonstration of the broader problem. The cohesion Republicans possessed in opposition disintegrated once they had power, because their ideology left them unable to pass legislation that was not cruel, horrific, and repugnant to their own constituents.

Donald Trump promised during the campaign that he would quickly and easily replace Obamacare with an alternative everybody would love.

One might dismiss this kind of rhetoric as a typical Trumpian boast. But the candidate was merely translating into the vernacular the somewhat more carefully hedged promises his party had made for years into terms in which they were meant to be understood. Paul Ryan’s “A Better Way” road map offered what it called “a step-by-step plan to give every American access to quality, affordable health care. … more choices and lower costs.”

In truth, it was never possible to reconcile public standards for a humane health-care system with conservative ideology. In a pure market system, access to medical care will be unaffordable for a huge share of the public. Giving them access to quality care means mobilizing government power to redistribute resources, either through direct tax and transfers or through regulations that raise costs for the healthy and lower them for the sick. Obamacare uses both methods, and both are utterly repugnant and unacceptable to movement conservatives. That commitment to abstract anti-government dogma, without any concern for the practical impact, is the quality that makes the Republican Party unlike right-of-center governing parties in any other democracy. In no other country would a conservative party develop a plan for health care that every major industry stakeholder calls completely unworkable.

The Trump administration might lash out at Obamacare by continuing to sabotage its functioning markets. They will find, however, that sabotaging the insurance exchanges will create millions of victims right away, as opposed to the luxury of delaying the pain until after the elections. The power to destroy remains within the Republican Party’s capacity. The power to translate its ideological principles into practical government is utterly beyond its reach.

The first step in the GOP's move to insanity was when the Christofascists hijacked the party base.  Now, the entire party has been subsumed to ignoring objective reality just as the Christofascists reject anything or anyone that challenges their myth and legend based world view.  Myths and legends may be fine and good in literature or in the bubble of a fundamentalist congregation, but objective facts and science quickly undercut the unsupportable fantasy world that they comprise.  So too with the GOP's unworkable ideology. 

Pence: The Ideologue and Schemer Who Would be President

While America needs to be rid of the dangerous, and in my view, mentally ill Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Trumpenführer,  the nation dose not need to have him replaced by Mike Pence, a man who in some ways is perhaps even more extreme than the deranged Trump.  Hence my constant hopes that the Russiagate investigations will reveal that Pence was far more involved than he presents via his "Sergeant Schultz" that he knew nothing and saw nothing.  A column in the Boston Globe provides a good overview of what Pence is dangerous and also unfit for the White House.  Here are excerpts:

On the evidence of a lifetime, America’s vice president is not a complex man. Instead he is three extremely simple ones: an incompetent ideologue, an obsequious toady, and a self-serving schemer.

When Donald Trump selected Indiana’s governor to run with him, local observers were dumbfounded. They knew Pence as a comically ambitious, rigid, and inept right-wing evangelical — a climate-change denying, Darwin-doubting zealot who, before leaving Congress, had left no mark beyond his sulfurous opposition to reproductive and gay rights. And his accession to the governorship, meant to position him as presidential timber, had foundered on the fundamentalist verities that define his mental cul-de-sac.

A signal embarrassment was his embrace of a “religious freedom” bill designed to propitiate business owners who wished to discriminate against gays. This antagonized the state’s business community at large . . . . Shouldering Pence aside, the legislature reached a compromise to salvage Indiana’s reputation.

Facing electoral doom, this ostentatious Christian — who calls his wife “Mother” and refuses to be alone with another woman — prostrated himself to become Trump’s running mate, the bridge between evangelicals and a blatant libertine. 

Trump, not Jesus, became Pence’s personal savior: Cravenly, Pence proclaimed Trump a model paterfamilias and man of deep faith. To cognoscenti, the reflexive alacrity with which Pence swathed Trump in pieties confirmed a surreal obliviousness to his own moral smallness.

Pence’s duplicitous sequence of volte-faces began when Trump’s “Access Hollywood” recording revealed his boasts of grabbing women’s genitals. . . . Belatedly perceiving that Trump’s misogyny had provoked mass revulsion, he canceled a campaign appearance before vanishing altogether, after saying that he could not “condone [ Trump’s] remarks” — true moral leadership, that — but that “ we . . . look forward to the opportunities he has to show what is in his heart” in the debate the following night.

When Trump survived the debate, Pence wallowed in renewed self-abasement. “Proud to stand with you,” Pence tweeted, and grabbed Trump’s coattails once again.

His next oscillation came in the vice presidential debate. Resigned to second place, Pence began positioning himself for 2020, turning in a robotic appearance, heavy on right-wing talking points but exceedingly light on praise of Trump. . . . Little wonder that Trump expressed private discontent with his underling’s performance, which exposed the calculus of a climber who expected Trump to lose.

Instantly, Pence reverted to fawning puppet — even by the standards of vice presidents. Joe Biden supported Barack Obama without ever losing his dignity or integrity; Pence had neither.

Miming a servile staffer — Trump’s preferred mode of behavior for his underlings — Pence parroted Trump’s moronic talking points and outright lies, nodding and smiling as Trump spouted self-contradicting nonsense. 

It was utterly in character, then, when Pence kicked off the most excruciating display of synchronized sycophancy in memory — the chorus of praise from cabinet members upon their first meeting with America’s Dear Leader. “The greatest privilege of my life,” Pence intoned in his church organ voice, “is to serve as vice president to the president who’s keeping his word to the American people.” Sadly, perhaps it is.

But the palace contriver ever searches for vacuums. Because Trump knew no one in Washington, Pence curried favor with the right by helping seed the cabinet with conservative ideologues. And as questions about Trump’s survival burgeoned anew, Pence launched his own political action committee while cultivating restive legislators.

Who is Mike Pence? Take your pick of three. But one thing is clear — none of his personae are fit to be president.

Religious extremist, liar and hypocrite and scheming backstabber.  Pence makes George W. Bush look almost competent and thoughtful. 

Why We Do Not Want Mike Pence as President

As much as the nation needs Donald Trump removed from the office of the presidency, the big worry is that Mike Pence, an ignorance embracing evangelical Christian and bigot, might be his replacement unless we are lucky enough to have pence also caught up in the Russiagate scandal.  For LGBT Americans, Pence poses a special threat given his record of anti-LGBT bigotry, including signing a falsely named "religious freedom" law while governor of Indiana.  But others need to worry about what this closed minded religious zealot might push as his agenda.  The New York Times has a very unflattering piece on Pence.  Here are excerpts:

Mr. Pence’s great appeal to many people now is that he is not Donald Trump. Liberals salivate that Robert Mueller might metaphorically reverse an election they see as stolen by a steak salesman and his Moscow buddies. Conservatives dream of ridding themselves of a nutbag and installing a man who can pursue tax cuts and a few more Justice Neil Gorsuches without the fear of a third world war being started because of something Mr. Trump heard on Infowars.

Still, maybe we should all stop and ponder an actual Pence presidency.

It is possible that we could replace the most flamboyant and flamboyantly unqualified president in history with the most quietly unqualified and unexamined president since Warren Harding. (He has never answered whether he believes in evolution, but the evidence is not encouraging.)

Mr. Trump was the bloated Macy’s parade float that no one thought had a chance, and not a lot of time was spent investigating his generic sidekick holding the ropes.

Mr. Pence was elected governor of Indiana in 2012 with less than 50 percent of the vote. Many of the politicos I talked to in Indiana described him as ambitious for the sake of ambition, with no ideological compass other than his evangelical Christianity. They thought that, unlike the previous governor, Mitch Daniels, Mr. Pence was interested in the job mainly to check off executive experience on his presidential-candidate résumé.

He certainly couldn’t stress his 12 years in Congress — an earlier congressional bid exploded when he used campaign funds to pay his mortgage — where he passed exactly zero bills that became law but frequently introduced legislation to defund Planned Parenthood.

Mr. Pence wrote in 2001 that the link between smoking and cancer was not proved, but during the 2012 campaign he hid his paleo-conservative views, talking instead of getting Indiana back to work. He pivoted after taking charge.

In 2015, conservative activists pressured Indiana legislators to introduce the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a bill that would make it easier for Indiana business owners to discriminate against gays if it offended their religious beliefs. Mr. Pence stood on the sidelines as the bill was constructed and signed the legislation in private. He then released a photograph of the signing that was so dumbfounding that Indiana State Representative Ed DeLaney, a Democrat, was accused of Photoshopping it by his colleagues when he circulated it. The photo showed Mr. Pence, pen in hand, surrounded by nuns and monks and three conservative backers, each with violently anti-gay beliefs. Immediately, corporations and convention groups threatened to pull business out of Indianapolis, a move that could have cost the state millions.

The controversy metastasized. . . . . . Mr. Stephanopoulos gave Mr. Pence two chances to say he was not in favor of discrimination against gay people. He declined and pronounced he would not revise the law.

This did not sit well back home in Indiana. Legislative leaders met to work their way out of the political disaster and Mr. Pence wasn’t invited. A compromise was reached that pleased no one but was mushy enough that the tourists came back. Mr. Pence signed the bill and slipped out of the statehouse without taking any questions.

“America needs to understand that this is what they’re going to get,” said Scott Pelath, the Democratic House minority leader. “He is not going to look at something, assess it, think critically about it and go.

The Religious Freedom Restoration Act had killed Mr. Pence’s presidential dreams; now he was trying to hang on to his day job. In April, he was booed at the home opener of the Indianapolis Indians, the city’s AAA team, shortly after he signed a restrictive anti-abortion bill. A May poll found the governor and his Democratic opponent in a statistical dead heat.

On July 15, Mr. Trump threw Mr. Pence the life preserver. The Indiana governor gave Mr. Trump cover with the Christian right. And Mr. Pence proved to have something in common with Mr. Trump: Most observers thought he won the vice-presidential debate with Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia by sticking to his talking points, no matter their relationship with reality. (PolitiFact ruled that over 40 percent of Mr. Pence’s statements were either false or mostly false.)

Mr. Pence has done little as vice president to suggest he is rising to the occasion. As head of the transition committee, he was either (a) kept in the dark about Michael Flynn’s being investigated for his international ties or (b) lied about it. Neither is a comforting thought. Both are totally him.

The only certainty of a Pence presidency is a Christian conservative bias for judges who will make Americans long for the relatively sane Justice Gorsuch.

Do I think Mike Pence is less likely to start a nuclear war than Donald Trump or to throw a reporter in jail over a Twitter beef about his daughter’s shoe line? Absolutely. There is that upside.

Let's hope and pray that Russiagate takes down Pence too.  The man is a menace, albeit a different sort of menace than Der Trumpenführer. 

Don't Buy Mike Pence's Claims of Innocence

There are many things to find disgusting and reprehensible in the Trump/Pence, not the least of which is Mike Pence who, in his own way is just as dangerous as Der Trumpenführer.  Pence, like Trump, is a pathological liar, except Pence, like most Christofascists, sees lying to protect himself and to advance his theocratic agenda.  Now, Pence is lying to try to convince Americans that he has known nothing of the scandals roiling the flounder Trump regime.  To believe this, however, one has to accept the fact that Pence, as head of the transition team, is utterly incompetent and near brain dead. The truth, of course, is that Pence knows what's going on and is simply trying to save his extremist ass.  It must be remembered that Pence jumped at the vice presidential slot because he was facing likely defeat if he ran for re-election in Indiana's gubernatorial race.  Thus, Pence is a loser and a liar who claims to be a "godly Christian" even though he hitched his future on a thrice married, narcissistic liar who brags about sexual harassing/molesting women.  An op-ed in the Washington Post looks at Pence's lies.  Here are excerpts:

Mike Pence would like you to know that Mike Pence is not involved in any of this. At least that appears to be the message coming from Pence’s allies, and perhaps the vice president himself, as the Trump White House reels from a series of interlocking scandals that threaten all manner of political peril, even potentially an impeachment or resignation that could make Pence the president of the United States.

All of a sudden we’re seeing a wave of articles in which anonymous sources close to Pence tell reporters that he’s completely out of the loop, to use the phrase that then-Vice President George H.W. Bush uttered so memorably when claiming his innocence in the Iran-Contra scandal. But can we believe it?

Nobody tells him anything! How can he possibly have any culpability for administration wrongdoing when he’s barely involved in any of this running-the-government stuff? Sources close to Pence would also like you to know that “Pence was not consulted about the decision to bring on Flynn as the national security adviser in November.” I barely know the guy, I tell ya.

You’ll recall that Flynn was supposedly fired because he told Pence that he didn’t discuss the potential easing of sanctions with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak when he and the ambassador talked multiple times during the campaign, a lie that Pence then repeated to the press. This affront to Pence’s honor was so profound that President Trump had no choice but to give Flynn the boot. 

Flynn was paid half a million dollars to lobby on behalf of Turkey while he was advising the Trump campaign, and in January, on the advice of his lawyer, he retroactively registered as the agent of a foreign government. Though Flynn informed the Trump transition’s legal team of this fact, Pence says that no one told him, despite the fact that he was in charge of the transition.

Pence claimed in March to have just found out about Flynn’s work for Turkey. Yet Rep. Elijah Cummings (Md.), the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, sent Pence a letter on Nov. 18 going into considerable detail about Flynn’s Turkey connection. As of yesterday, Pence was standing by his assertion that he only learned about it in March.

As leader of the transition, it was Pence’s job to make sure that things such as appointing a national security adviser with troubling ties to foreign governments didn’t happen. So his defense in the Flynn matter comes down to: I was doing a terrible job leading the transition and had no idea what was going on.

That then brings us to the matter of FBI Director James B. Comey’s firing. . . . . We quickly learned, however, that Trump intended to fire Comey all along. Trump said so in an interview with NBC, and Rosenstein confirmed it to senators yesterday when he told them that he was instructed to write the memo after being told that Comey would be fired.

So the initial White House line was a lie, which was only corrected once Trump blurted out the truth. Did Pence know? . . . . if you parse Pence’s words carefully enough, you can come up with an interpretation in which he was being technically accurate despite giving an intentionally misleading impression.

Anyone who has gone to work in this administration risks being tainted with its excesses, its incompetence and its corruption. No one is more at risk than Pence, who plainly harbors presidential ambitions of his own — and might even become president without having to run for the job. So the steady narrative coming from Pence associates —  that he has nothing to do with the parade of horrors issuing from the administration — could be an attempt to inoculate him for some later date when he has to stand before the voters on his own. Sure, I was there, he may say, but I really wasn’t involved with that catastrophe.

If Pence thinks that argument is going to fly, he’s got another thing coming.

Using Religion as a Cover for Bigotry

UPDATED: From RTV-6 in Indianapolis:

Nine of Indiana's largest employers sent a letter to state GOP leaders Monday asking for immediate action on the controversial religious freedom law.

The CEOs of Emmis Communications, Anthem, Cummins, Eli Lilly & Co., Dow AgroSciences, Angie's List, Indiana University Health, Roche Diagnostics and Salesforce sent the joint letter to Gov. Mike Pence, House Speaker Brian Bosma and Senate President Pro-Tem David Long on Monday afternoon.

Angie's List and Salesforce have already announced plans to reduce their investment in Indiana over the law.

The letter ends by asking lawmakers to immediately enact new legislation that "makes it clear that neither the Religious Freedom Restoration Act nor any other Indiana law can be used to justify discrimination based upon sexual orientation or gender identity."

I don't want to beat a dead horse, but Indiana's heinous Religious Freedom Restoration Act is very dangerous because of the precedent it will set.  Despite claims by supporters of discrimination that it is little different than existing laws including a federal law signed in 1993, Indiana's law is sharply different.  Moreover, if it is not reversed, it will set the blue print for other laws that will expose gays, blacks, Muslims and others for open discrimination nicely wrapped it claims of "religious belief."  The New York Times takes the Indiana law to task in a main editorial.  Here are excerpts:

Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana, who last week signed a religious-freedom law driven by bigotry against gays and lesbians, has been complaining that the law’s opponents — which include top business leaders and civil-rights groups — are spreading “misinformation.”

It is true that the law does not, as some opponents claim, specifically permit businesses to refuse to serve gays and lesbians. Its drafters were too smart to make that explicit. Instead, the law allows individuals or corporations facing discrimination lawsuits to claim that serving gays and lesbians “substantially” burdens their religious freedom.

But nobody is fooled as to the law’s underlying purpose. As its most prominent backers have said quite clearly, it is meant to protect “Christian businesses and churches from those supporting homosexual marriages.” In other words, it should allow them to refuse service to gay couples.

The law has understandably spawned a nationwide call for boycotts of the state, not to mention the rebuke of the Indiana Chamber of Commerce, companies like Apple, and the N.C.A.A., whose college basketball tournament is holding the Final Four in Indianapolis this coming weekend.

Religious-freedom laws, which were originally intended to protect religious minorities from burdensome laws or regulations, have become increasingly invoked by conservative Christian groups as gay rights in general — and marriage equality in particular — found greater acceptance nationally. Besides Indiana, 19 states have adopted such laws, but the laws in the other states apply to disputes between individuals and the government; Indiana’s law also applies to disputes between private citizens.

If Mr. Pence is genuinely concerned about why people may be misunderstanding the law, he could start by looking in the mirror. Under persistent questioning on ABC News’s “This Week” on Sunday morning, Mr. Pence insisted that the law “is not about discrimination,” but about “empowering people.”

That claim is impossible to square with his refusal to consider a statewide law protecting gays and lesbians from discrimination (about a dozen Indiana cities, including most of the largest ones, already have such laws).

The freedom to exercise one’s religion is not under assault in Indiana, or anywhere else in the country. . . . . religion should not be allowed to serve as a cover for discrimination in the public sphere. In the past, racial discrimination was also justified by religious beliefs, yet businesses may not refuse service to customers because of their race. Such behavior should be no more tolerable when it is based on sexual orientation.

Very well said.

Judge Overrules Religous Objections to Vaccinations

Increasingly America is facing a rise in diseases formerly almost wholly eradicated through vaccination programs.  So what is causing the near epidemic situation in some regions?  Parents who refuse to have their children vaccinated based on claimed religious beliefs.  Like some many other things the Christofascist do in the name of "religious freedom," the refusal to have children vaccinated reflects a total disregard for the health and safety of others.  The motto of the Christofascists ought to be "It's all about me - everyone else, go f*ck yourself."  As the judge in the ruling in New York State concluded, the Christofascist movement against Vaccinations poses a public health threat.  Here are highlights from a piece in the Huffington Post:

Judge William F. Kuntz II has ruled to uphold a New York City policy that bars unvaccinated children from attending school when another student has a disease preventable by a vaccination, reports The New York Times.

In the ruling, Kuntz wrote that the Supreme Court, "strongly suggested that religious objectors are not constitutionally exempt from vaccinations."

Three families filing suit contended that the school policy preventing their unvaccinated children from attending school at risky times is a First Amendment violation of religious freedom. The Brooklyn Eagle reported that Nicole Phillips, Fabian Mendoza-Vaca and Dina Check had decided not to vaccinate their children on the grounds of "sincere religious belief."

From a public health standpoint, the small unvaccinated percentage of the population threatens efforts to eradicate preventable diseases from society. Depending on the contagiousness of the specific disease, a certain percentage of the population must be vaccinated in order to prevent an outbreak, due to a phenomenon known as "herd immunity," reports The Times. For highly contagious diseases like measles, that percentage is as high as 95%, which means that even a few unvaccinated children could pose a hazard to an entire school.

Kuntz cited a 109-year-old ruling on public health as a precedent in this case. He also pointed to a more recent Brooklyn federal court decision that said, "the free exercise clause of the First Amendment does not provide a right for religious objectors to be exempt from New York's compulsory inoculation law.”

 I'm sorry, but these Christofascist are not only incredibly selfish but  they are insane to boot.  Kudos to Judge Kuntz.

GOP Donors Revolt Against GOP Led Government Shutdown

Large GOP donors largely sat on their hands as the so-called GOP establishment allowed evangelical Christians - i.e., the Christofascists - and their equally mentally disturbed Tea Party cousins to infiltrate and ultimately hijack the Republican Party.   It's still not clear if these donors were asleep at the wheel or foolishly thought that they would be able to control the Frankenstein monster that was created.  Either way, the educated donor set now is seeing the results of their indifference and/or arrogance as the GOP shuts down the federal government and now threatens a U.S. debt default. A piece in The Daily Beast looks at the far too late revolt among the large GOP donor class.  Here are some highlights:

On a Monday last month, Rep. Greg Walden, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, met with some top GOP donors for lunch at Le Cirque on Lexington Avenue in Manhattan. The donors, a youngish collection of financial industry types and lawyers, had some questions for Walden, a mild-mannered lawmaker from eastern Oregon known for speaking his mind.

Why, they asked, did the GOP seem so in the thrall of its most extremist wing? The donors, banker types who occupy the upper reaches of Wall Street’s towers, couldn’t understand why the Republican Party—their party—seemed close to threatening the nation with a government shutdown, never mind a default if the debt ceiling isn’t raised later this month.

“Listen,” Walden said, according to several people present. “We have to do this because of the Tea Party. If we don’t, these guys are going to get primaried and they are going to lose their primary.”

Walden asked how many of those seated around the table were precinct captains. These were money men, though, not the types to spend night after night knocking on doors and slipping palm cards into mailboxes. “A lot of the people there didn’t even know what a precinct captain was,” said one attendee.
 
I hear this complaint all the time,” Walden said. “But no one gets involved at the local level. The Tea Party gets involved at the local level.”

It is unlikely that the gilded power brokers in the Republican Party are likely to join their local county political club any time soon, but as the stock market wobbles amid the government shutdown and the continued demand for an Obamacare delay, a number of GOP donors are wondering if it is time for a little outside counter-pressure to sap the Tea Party of some of its energy. 

[S]everal top GOP donors say figuring out a way to “break the fever”—as Obama once put it—or at least keep their fellow party members from damaging the economy any further has become Topic A in their social set.

“We are finding a marvelous way to grab defeat from the jaws of victory,” said Fred Zeidman, a Houston-based businessman who was a major donor to both of George W. Bush’s presidential campaigns. “The way we are handling this has been a mistake from the beginning. I think we misread where the country was.”

“The Tea Party is not looking at the big picture,” he said. “In the long run it will have deleterious effects on the whole party when we could have taken the high road. There is so much going on right now with Obamacare, and no one is saying a word about it.”

“I am not writing a check to anyone,” he added. “That is not working for the American people.”  Bobbie Kilberg, a Republican fundraiser who has worked for four Republican presidents, echoed Zeidman.. . . . “When you have a small segment who dictate to the rest of the party, the result is what we have seen in the last two days,” she said. “People need to stand up and not be afraid of the Tea Party.” “This may be a turning point,” she predicted. “People may say, ‘Enough already.’”

[T]here is still a sense among the donor class that some countervailing force is needed to push back against the furthest edges of the party, regardless of what it is called.

“I have raised a lot of money, but I am not raising any more for House candidates,” said Munr Kazmir, a New Jersey-based businessman and major donor to George W. Bush. “I am angry. I am embarrassed to be a Republican sometimes, I tell you.”

I'm sorry, but withholding money isn't the answer.  Walking away, funding Democrat challengers and guaranteeing repeated GOP defeats are the only thing that will ultimately force change in the GOP.  This way, the GOP has to change or die.  Here in Virginia some wealthy GOP donors have finally recognized this reality and are backing Terry McAuliffe for governor because they recognize that Ken Cuccinelli is the product of the metastasizing cancer the Christofascists and Tea Party represent.

How to Save the Republican Party

I am accused at times of bashing the Republican Party.  In truth, I want to see the GOP return to what it once was and to a time when reason, logic and social moderation were the norm as opposed to today's horrid state of the party.  If pointing out the party's faults - and those responsible for its current knuckle dragging, ignorance embracing and theocratic state - is bashing, then I plead guilty.  There's another reason for my steady criticism: for our political system to function, we cannot have one of the two major political parties locked in obstructionism and intractable extremism.  A column in the Washington Post looks at some of the things that are needed to save today's Republican Party from its unwashed base.  Here are excerpts:

Although there are more conservatives than liberals in the electorate, the GOP still needs moderate support. But the tea party’s Wahhabi-style drive to restore pure, uncompromised conservatism has led Republicans away from an electoral majority. This is especially true with young voters and minorities, although in recent years the entire country has become more tolerant and inclusive. A party dominated by hard-edged social conservatives, opponents of the DREAM Act and climate-change deniers will have a difficult time gaining a hearing.

Republicans would also do well to acknowledge that their commitment to shrinking government entails much deeper spending cuts than most Americans are willing to accept — especially in programs such as Social Security and Medicare. And they must find a way to respond to mainstream concerns about stagnant wages and widening disparities of income and wealth.

The Republicans’ demographic problem is the mirror image of the one that Democrats faced a quarter-century ago. Back then, there weren’t enough minorities to make the Democrats’ electoral strategy work; today, there aren’t enough whites to put the Republicans over the top.

And it will only get worse for them: By the middle of this century, the Census Bureau projects, whites will no longer constitute a majority of the U.S. population. A nearly all-white party, which is what the GOP has become, will have no chance of obtaining an electoral majority. Republicans will have to compete for black, Latino and Asian votes.

Incumbency can protect a party against shifts in the electorate for only so long. The Republican hold on the House is not overwhelming, and it is far from permanent. Nor is the GOP’s edge among governors. If the generational replacement taking place at the presidential level continues, it will inevitably affect Congress and the states as well.

For Republicans to design an agenda that applies to the conditions of 1980 is as if Ronald Reagan designed his agenda for conditions that existed in the Truman years.”

[T]he transformation of the Republican Party has barely begun. There’s no substitute for a leader who has the guts to break with outdated party orthodoxy . . . . As long as aspirants for GOP leadership flinch from confronting their angry base, the American people will continue to see Republicans as uncompromising, uncaring and retrograde.  And until party leaders are willing to call extremism by its rightful name, repudiating not just mean-spirited words but also narrow-minded policies, it is unlikely that any candidate will be willing to do so.

Republican Lawmakers Seek To Stop Gay Marriage In New Mexico

Always the dutiful political whores to the Christofascists who now make up perhaps the largest element of the Republican Party base, GOP legislators in New Mexico have filed a lawsuit to attempt to bar the same sex marriages currently taking place in sic of New Mexico's counties.  As noted previously, New Mexico does not have a constitutional amendment barring same sex marriages, the result of which has been county clerks issuing marriage licenses to same sex couples in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling in United States v. Windsor.  Talking Points Memo looks at the development which is yet one of the many faces of the hate and bigotry that now wears the name Christianity.  Here are highlights:

A group of Republican legislators has brought the first lawsuit to try to block gay marriage in New Mexico since six counties began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples in the past week.

The lawsuit targets one southern New Mexico county — Dona Ana — but could provide another route for the dispute to reach New Mexico’s highest court for a final statewide resolution. The New Mexico Association of Counties and county clerks statewide have said they plan a separate appeal to the state Supreme Court to try to get a decision on whether gay marriage is legal in New Mexico.

Paul Becht, an Albuquerque lawyer for the GOP legislators, said Friday the lawsuit was filed in Las Cruces, where the Dona Ana County clerk’s office has issued more than 200 marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples since last week.

Five other counties have taken similar steps, and Los Alamos County could become the seventh county to issue licenses.

A judge on Thursday ordered the clerk there to start granting marriage licenses to same-sex couples or to appear in court next week to explain why that shouldn’t happen. Los Alamos County Clerk Sharon Stover said the ruling is under review and no decision has been made on what will be done.

The lawsuit contends the Dona Ana County clerk exceeded his powers as a local official in issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. It’s up to the Legislature — not a county clerk — to change the law to provide for gay marriage, said Becht, a former state senator.

Dona Ana County Clerk Lynn Ellins . . . .  a lawyer, concluded the state’s marriage laws are “gender neutral” and don’t prohibit the county from issuing licenses to gay and lesbian couples.

A district judge in Albuquerque ruled earlier this week that it was unconstitutional to deny a marriage license to same-sex couples. However, the ruling doesn’t apply to all 33 counties in the state.

The Association of Counties and county clerks expect to file an appeal of the judge’s decision next week with the Supreme Court. There’s no guarantee the high court will take up their appeal, however.

Just as the U. S. Supreme Court found with DOMA, the only real basis for opposing gay marriage is anti-gay animus which doesn't pass constitutional muster to justify stigmatizing and discriminating against same sex couples.

Conservatives Against Christie

The so-called Republican establishment continues to reap what it sowed in allowing the Christofascists and equally reality denying Tea Party crowd to hijack the party base.  Among the likely 2016 GOP candidates, one contender would not immediately be radio active to independents and more conservative Democrats:  Chris Christie.  The problem is, however, is that Christie is anathema to the Christofascists and Tea Party crowd who seem unable to forgive Christie for (i) seeking federal funds in the wake of Hurricane Sandy's devastation to New Jersey, and (ii) embracing Barack Obama's support for New Jersey.  Allahpundit questions whether Christie could overcome the far right's hatred of him to win the nomination.  Here are excerpts:

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that Christie earns 21% support when Republican voters are asked whom they would vote for if the party’s primary in their state were held today. Florida Senator Marco Rubio runs a close second with 18% of the GOP vote, followed by former Florida Governor Jeb Bush at 16% and Kentucky Senator Rand Paul with 15% of the vote.

Congressman Paul Ryan, the unsuccessful Republican vice presidential candidate in 2012, picks up 13% of the Republican vote, with Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker dead last at six percent (6%). Just three percent (3%) prefer another candidate, and eight percent (8%) are undecided.

Good news for Christie-haters: He’s also leading the field — by double digits — when Republicans are asked who they’d least like to see win the nomination. (His new nemesis, Rand Paul, is a distant second.) This is why I keep thinking that, for all the slobber over his “electability,” he might be so widely and deeply disliked by a small but significant minority of righties that they end up staying home if he’s nominee and costing him the election. To be “electable” with a few percentage points’ worth of conservatives sitting out, he’d have to offset them by grabbing more centrist Democrats than expected from the Democratic nominee. How likely is that if Hillary’s the pick and Bill Clinton’s out there every day for her on the trail? Every candidate tacks toward the center after he’s nominated, but Christie would tack further than most — not just because he’s inclined to, but because he might have to in order to make up those lost conservative votes.

It’s time (already!) to stop thinking about national polls for 2016, though, and to start thinking in terms of Iowa and New Hampshire.

A new Granite State Poll  . . . . The poll’s new leader is New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, at 21 percent. He is followed by Paul at 16 percent, former Florida governor Jeb Bush at 10 percent, Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.) at 8 percent and Rubio at 6 percent.

Rubio’s a special case in that he’s a Florida native and could, in theory, win there even if he loses the first three major primaries, but imagine how many “Rubio disappoints again” stories will be written before then. New Hampshire is going to be even tougher than usual next time too thanks to Christie’s and Paul’s likely candidacies: Each of them, in very different ways, seems better suited to NH’s maverick-y sensibility than Rubio does.

One other fun fact from the Rasmussen poll: Among Democrats, Christie is the guy they’d most like to see win the GOP nomination — and Jeb Bush, by far, is who they’d least like to see win. Shouldn’t it be the opposite? If you’re a Dem, you’d love to run against a guy named Bush, especially if you’re carrying the dynastic liability of nominating someone named Clinton. Or do Democrats really think Jeb would be that formidable in the general?

Former Texas GOP Chair: Immigration Reform Will Lead To A Biometric Mark Of The Beast

I get a lot of grief at times for my unrelenting effort to display the insanity of today's GOP and the fact that I blame much of the party's descent into crazy land on the Christofascists.   I would argue that, if anything, I go too easy on the spittle flecked nutcases of the Christofascist base of the GOP.  A case in point comes from the former chair of the Texas Republican Party who has obviously drunk way too much Kool-Aid.  Cathie Adams (pictured at left), the former chairwoman of the Texas Republican Party and not surprisingly the current president of the Texas Eagle Forum, maintains that immigration reform would lead to biometric scanning which, as everyone knows, is a tool of Satan. WTF is going on with the GOP that would allow someone this unhinged to have been state party chair?  Right Wing Watch has details.  Here are excerpts:

Yesterday, End Times radio host Rick Wiles interviewed Cathie Adams, the former head of the Texas Republican Party and current president of the Texas Eagle Forum, in a wide-ranging discussion which included a warning that immigration reform would lead to biometric scanning which, as everyone knows, is a tool of Satan.

Adams warned that the problem is not just that Hispanics are crossing the border illegally, but so are people from Muslim nations and so if immigration reform passes, we'll be giving amnesty "to people who are not here with the best intentions for America."

After Adams said that the Department for Homeland Security is unable to account for more than a million foreigners who have overstayed their visas, Wiles predicted that immigration reform advocates would call for biometric scanning as a solution to this problem, which Adams declared would be an unmistakable sign of the End Times.

Then, for good measure, Adams returned to the issue of all those sneaky Muslims who are entering the United States as refugees "from Moozlum, Hindu, and Buddhist cultures [who] are not here because they love America but because they are fleeing countries, and yet, what kind of culture are they bringing here? They want sharia law, just like what they left that was causing them to be persecuted."

Adams: I do understand that. I've seen it. I've heard it. And, of course, we know in biblical prophecy that that is the End Times. That is going to be the brand either on our foreheads or on the back of our hands.  That is demonic through and through.  That is End Times prophecy.  There is no question about that.

 Ms. Adams needs a brand on her forehead alright: "BC" for batshit crazy.  I increasingly believe that far right Christians are mentally ill.  Nothing else explains the level of insanity.

 

Yesterday, End Times radio host Rick Wiles interviewed Cathie Adams, the former head of the Texas Republican Party and current president of the Texas Eagle Forum, in a wide-ranging discussion which included a warning that immigration reform would lead to biometric scanning which, as everyone knows, is a tool of Satan.
Adams warned that the problem is not just that Hispanics are crossing the border illegally, but so are people from Muslim nations and so if immigration reform passes, we'll be giving amnesty "to people who are not here with the best intentions for America."
After Adams said that the Department for Homeland Security is unable to account for more than a million foreigners who have overstayed their visas, Wiles predicted that immigration reform advocates would call for biometric scanning as a solution to this problem, which Adams declared would be an unmistakable sign of the End Times.
Then, for good measure, Adams returned to the issue of all those sneaky Muslims who are entering the United States as refugees "from Moozlum, Hindu, and Buddhist cultures [who] are not here because they love America but because they are fleeing countries, and yet, what kind of culture are they bringing here? They want sharia law, just like what they left that was causing them to be persecuted."
- See more at: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/adams-immigration-reform-will-lead-biometric-mark-beast#sthash.n927fz5o.dpuf

Cathie Adams, the former head of the Texas Republican Party and current president of the Texas Eagle Forum, - See more at: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/adams-immigration-reform-will-lead-biometric-mark-beast#sthash.nBl4YhJn.dpuf

Cathie Adams, the former head of the Texas Republican Party and current president of the Texas Eagle Forum, - See more at: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/adams-immigration-reform-will-lead-biometric-mark-beast#sthash.nBl4YhJn.dpuf