GOP Ready to Overthrow Constitution and Bill of Rights After Boston

Numerous studies have shown that the United States ranks up with Russia and China when it comes to the level of surveillance and lack of privacy for citizens.  Now, in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings and the capture of Dzhokar Tsarnaev, leading members of the GOP want to toss out legal protections guaranteed to U.S. citizens.  For a political party that whines incessantly about the "slippery slope" that could be triggered by gay rights and same sex marriage and an abusive federal government, they are oblivious to the much more frightening slippery slope that will be set in motion if Tsarnaev is treated as an "enemy combatant."  Once exceptions to the rule of law, right to trial by jury, etc., are made and worse yet, become acceptable, all of us are ultimately at risk to an unrestrained government.  One need only look at how the Nazis slowly undermined the rule of law in Germany in the 1930's for a case study of where this slippery slope can lead.  Emotion - and pandering to a misogynistic party base - do not justify jettisoning constitutional protections for citizens.  A piece in Politico looks at the GOP rush to subvert the processes that all of us should support.  Here are highlights:

Sens. Lindsey Graham and John McCain are calling for the surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings to be tried as an enemy combatant, rather than as an ordinary criminal.

“Under the Law of War we can hold this suspect as a potential enemy combatant not entitled to Miranda warnings or the appointment of counsel,” the Republicans said in a statement released Friday night. “Our goal at this critical juncture should be to gather intelligence and protect our nation from further attacks. We remain under threat from radical Islam and we hope the Obama Administration will seriously consider the enemy combatant option.”

“Now that the suspect is in custody, the last thing we should want is for him to remain silent,” they said. “It is absolutely vital the suspect be questioned for intelligence gathering purposes. We need to know about any possible future attacks which could take additional American lives. The least of our worries is a criminal trial which will likely be held years from now.”

President Barack Obama offered a possible nod to that issue in his televised address Friday night, saying that “it’s important that we do this right.”  “That’s why we have investigations. That’s why we relentlessly gather the facts. That’s why we have courts,” Obama said.

I am not opposed to questioning Tsarnaev and doing things right, but let's not forget that under Bush/Cheney, America violated the Geneva Conventions and engaged in illegal torture.  Indeed, Bush and Cheney deserve to be tried for war crimes.  Now the same mind set wants to undermine protections at home for U.S. citizens.  I find it scary to say the least.  In some ways since 9-11 we are slowly drifting towards a police state and many people don't even realize that it is happening.  One would think that John McCain of all people would be worried about abuses and possible torture.

Federal Judge: Crackpots and Lunatics in the GOP Have Made Me Less Conservative

Judge Richard Posner of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago has long been one of the nation's most respected and admired conservative jurists.  But like many others, he finds that the sickness - an almost mental illness that combines religious extremism, greed and a total lack of compassion for others, and a refusal to deal with objective reality - that predominates in today's Republican Party is driving him away from conservatism. As a former Republican and party activist, I fully relate to Posner's disgust with what the GOP has become and how it has truly made the label "conservative" into something ugly.  Frankly, I don't see things getting any better as Mitt Romney continues to prostitute himself to the nastiest elements in the GOP.  NPR has a piece on Judge Posner's retreat from conservatism.  I particularly enjoy his use of the terms "crackpots" and "lunatics."   Here are excerpts:

Judge Richard Posner, a conservative on the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago, has long been one of the nation's most respected and admired legal thinkers on the right. But in an interview with NPR, he expressed exasperation at the modern Republican Party, and confessed that he has become "less conservative" as a result.

Posner expressed admiration for President Ronald Reagan and the economist Milton Friedman, two pillars of conservatism. But over the past 10 years, Posner said, "there's been a real deterioration in conservative thinking. And that has to lead people to re-examine and modify their thinking."
"I've become less conservative since the Republican Party started becoming goofy," he said.

Posner, who was appointed to the appeals court by Reagan, speculated that the leaks about the deliberations over the national health care law — which are apparently designed to discredit Chief Justice John Roberts' opinion upholding the law — would backfire. "I think these right-wingers who are blasting Roberts are making a very serious mistake," he said.

"Because if you put [yourself] in his position ... what's he supposed to think? That he finds his allies to be a bunch of crackpots? Does that help the conservative movement? I mean, what would you do if you were Roberts? All the sudden you find out that the people you thought were your friends have turned against you, they despise you, they mistreat you, they leak to the press. What do you do? Do you become more conservative? Or do you say, 'What am I doing with this crowd of lunatics?' Right? Maybe you have to re-examine your position."

As NPR notes, in addition to serving as a federal appeals court judge, Posner is the author of several  dozen books on subjects ranging from law and economics to aging and literature.  I don't blame him whatsoever for wanting to distance himself from today's "conservatives."

American Psychological Association Votes For Marriage Equality

The policy making body of the American Psychological Association ("APA") has unanimously vote (157-0) to approve a resolution supporting same-sex marriage. I can already hear the shrieks and whining amongst the Christianists over this move which will further undermine their agenda of stigmatizing LGBT individuals and same sex relations. This pro-LGBT move comes on the heels of the APA's condemnation of reparative therapy as unethical and the less than subtle signal to licensed therapist that ex-gay therapy might lead to problems with licensing. This will leave ex-gay clinics confined to quacks like Michele Bachmann husband, "Marcia" Bachmann, who hide under the "Christian ministry" moniker to avoid being barred from selling their snake oil. USA Today has coverage on the APA vote. Here are excerpts:

The world's largest organization of psychologists took its strongest stand to date supporting full marriage equity, a move that observers say will have a far-reaching impact on the national debate.

The group, with more than 154,000 members, has long supported full equal rights for gays, based on social science research on sexual orientation. Now the nation's psychologists — citing an increasing body of research about same-sex marriage, as well as increased discussion at the state and federal levels — took the support to a new level.

"Now as the country has really begun to have experience with gay marriage, our position is much clearer and more straightforward — that marriage equity is the policy that the country should be moving toward," says Clinton Anderson, director of APA's Office on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Concerns.

It adds that "emerging evidence suggests that statewide campaigns to deny same-sex couples legal access to civil marriage are a significant source of stress to the lesbian, gay and bisexual residents of those states and may have negative effects on their psychological well-being."

Clinical psychologist Mark Hatzenbuehler, a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholar at Columbia University in New York City, whose new research is cited in the resolution, says the courts tend to look at these kinds of policy statements because "they're really looking to see what social science research says about the influence on gay marriage and marriage bans on a whole host of outcomes."

The last APA resolution on sexual orientation and marriage was approved in 2004. The resolution notes that since that time, APA has worked on 11 amicus briefs filed in same-sex marriage cases since 2004.

Are Gay-Rights Court Rulings Spurring Change?

Time magazine and now the conservative Wall Street Journal have articles raising the question of whether or not the recent string of pro-LGBT court rulings are helping or hindering the advancement of gays rights in the public opinion. Personally, I make the case that they ARE spurring change despite the recall of three Iowa Supreme Court justices that the Christianists hold up as evidence to the contrary. Between low voter turn out, huge out of state Christofascist funding against the justices, and virtually no campaigning by the justices to counter the NOM backed out of state based assault, the Iowa results do not tell the real story. Nor do they take into account that often the courts have been well ahead of public opinion on matters of equal rights. For example, when the California Supreme Court struck down bans on interracial marriage in that state, public opinion was more against interracial marriage than is the case now with gay marriage. Ditto for Loving v. Virginia in terms of opinion within Virginia even as late as 1968. Or take the case of Brown v. Board of Education which was anything but supported by public opinion of the time, especially in the South. The courts in my view are supposed to lead - otherwise there would often be no need to protect the rights of minorities under the Constitution. Here are highlights first from Time:
*
In the 17 years since Hawaii's Supreme Court issued the first ruling in favor of gay marriage, it has been judges — not lawmakers, and certainly not the voters in 30-odd state referendums banning gay marriage — who have sided with same-sex couples seeking to wed. That's never been clearer than it is now, with three different federal opinions in favor of gay rights that together threaten to end America's long history of legal discrimination against gays.
*
[S]ome legal scholars say history suggests that the courts, no matter what they decree, cannot persuade a reluctant public to embrace social change — in fact, they may even polarize the issue. "Ever since Brown v. Board of Education, it's been the underlying view of political liberals that victories in court will give them the social changes they feel are needed, and do it faster [than waiting for change to happen on its own]," Professor Mike Klarman of Harvard Law School tells TIME. "But such rulings have often brought significant political backlashes."
*
That doesn't mean the historic gay-rights legal wins of 2010 are doomed to be Pyrrhic victories. It's simply too soon to know whether the courts' decisions will backfire or will help spur change.
*
The Wall Street Journal correctly states that Time punted on answering the question. Again, I think in the long run court rulings do accelerate change even if in the short term there is a backlash. Once the power of the law has been stripped from the forces pushing to maintain prejudice and bigotry, the wheels are set in motion for societal views to change. Hence the rising anti-gay hysteria of the Religious Right and hate groups like Family Research Council. They know that such is the case and are desperate to block changes in the law that will take away a powerful argument for their advocacy of LGBT inferiority and anti-gay discrimination. Here's a sampling of what the WSJ had to say:
*
The article, not surprisingly, does not answer the question, but it does offer food for thought about the recent trilogy of opinions on gay rights: the July ruling out of Massachusetts declaring the federal Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional; Judge Vaughn Walker’s August ruling overturning Prop 8; and last month’s decision by Virginia Philips to halt Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.
*
In short, the article posits, Supreme Court opinions, standing alone, can not accomplish significant social change; it takes legislation for that to happen. Judges, of course, are not in the public polling business. They’re generally not encouraged to calibrate their rulings to ensure they are line with the prevailing views of the day. On hot button issues, judges operate in the more rarefied air of deciding whether conduct comports with the Constitution.
*
And generally, the Constitution does not support discrimination against minorities whether it be based on claimed religious belief or otherwise. Thus, again, why the Christianists hate the courts.

Why Court Action is Needed to Protect Gay Minority

Looking back over America's history it has often been the Courts who have been the first to uphold the legal equality of minority groups. Obviously, Brown v. Board of Education decide in 1954 is a prominent example of that phenomenon as is Loving v. Virginia in 1968, or even Lawrence v. Texas in 2003. The sad truth is that the majority of citizens have historically demonstrated a very poor track record of treating members of minorities as full, equal citizens. Eventually, the majority has followed the reasoning of the Courts, but often many years after the fact. The quest for gay rights and marriage is but another incarnation of this process which is well stated in a recent letter to the editor by Dane Youngblom of Duluth, Minnesota, that I came across via one of my google alert engines. Here are some highlights:

*

A majority of folks are born straight. Most of us also realize there is a minority of folks born gay. It saddened me to read the Dec. 3 letter, “Don’t let the courts decide gay marriage issue,” which seemed to be an attempt to rally the straight majority to hurry up and prohibit the right of the gay minority to marry. The idea of the letter seemed to be to act before the courts have a chance to rule on the constitutionality of denying rights to this group of citizens.

*

The writer seemed afraid the courts could rule that the issue is one of civil rights and as such cannot and should not be decided based on its popularity with the majority. The writer was probably correct in seeing that our courts do have a tendency to protect the minority from the majority in cases of oppression. The courts made this clear by outlawing segregation and racial, sexual and age discrimination, which were all favored by the voting majority at the time.

*

Someday, we will be embarrassed by efforts we’ve made to classify any people as second class. Until then, we will have to rely on our courts to rule on the rights our founders wrote into the constitution, that the majority would not trample on the rights of the minority. We are not a democracy where majority rules, but rather a representative republic where we choose responsible, knowledgeable leaders to protect us from ignorant impulses.