Planned Parenthood Gunman Admits Religious Motive

While the couple who waged the attack on the San Bernadino social services office never left clear clues of their motive in the terror attack, Robert Lewis Dear, the gunman at the Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood facility more or less confirmed that he is a Christian terrorist - something the talking heads on the right and Republican politicians continue to refuse to admit exists.  More specifically, he exclaimed that he was a "warrior for the babies" - a phrase that correlates with the Christofascist manta that abortion is the murder of babies.  Not, of course, that the same godly folk give a damn for children once that are no longer in the womb as evidenced by their support for GOP policies that throw poor children off of assistance programs and that would deprive poor children of access to health care.  KKTV-11 has details on Dear's confession of sorts.  Here are details:

Family members of UCCS Officer Garrett Swasey and Iraq veteran Ke'arre Stewart were in the courtroom as Dear learned what charges he would face for allegedly killing their loved ones.

Dear made multiple outbursts during the court session--our reporter counted nearly 20--including declaring he was a "warrior for the babies" and accusing his own public defender of wanting to drug him.

Though investigators have not publicly released a motive, Dear heavily eluded to one with frequent references to abortion.  "Protect babies!" he exclaimed once.

"Can you add the babies that had been aborted that day, can you add that to the list?" he yelled another time while lawyers and the judge deliberated whether a list of victims' names should be made public.

Dear claimed his public defender was in cahoots with Planned Parenthood, suggesting that by trying to seal documents, the lawyer was trying to hide what Dear saw inside the building to protect the clinic.

Robert Dear faces 179 counts for allegedly storming a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood on a snowy Black Friday afternoon and gunning down 12 people.

Dear is accused of killing three and injuring nine in the shooting rampage. More than 300 people were locked down in the nearby shopping center as the suspect--who police believe was Dear--engaged in a fire fight with officers for four terrifying hours.

Dear and the San Bernadino shooters share one thing in common.  If Republicans want Muslims to have to register, they should similarly require that far right Christians register with authorities so that Christian terrorism can be controlled.

Quote of the Day: The Sickness of the Evangelical Right

A frightening image used to promote this year's Promise Keepers gathering

While the motives of the domestic terrorist who shot up the Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado Springs are still not fully clear, as the Washington Post reports, Robert Lewis Dear made statements to authorities that would indicate that he may have acted based on the false and inflammatory videos released by anti-abortion extremists this past summer.  Here are details:

The gunman suspected of storming a Planned Parenthood clinic and killing a police officer and two others used the phrase “no more baby parts’’ to explain his actions, according to a law enforcement official, a comment likely to further inflame the heated rhetoric surrounding abortion.

The attack on the clinic, allegedly by Robert Lewis Dear Jr., was “definitely politically motivated,’’ said the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is still underway. NBC News, which first reported the comment, said that Dear also mentioned President Obama in a range of statements to investigators that left his precise motivation unclear.

As much as politicians and the media refuse to admit the reality, far right evangelical Christians are becoming increasingly dangerous and extreme as they lose their ability to persecute others and the modern world and science prove the falsity of many of their cherished fairy tale beliefs.  Blogger friend Bob Felton sums up the situation well:

By any sane reckoning, the evangelical right has lost the culture war, and lost big. That doesn’t mean that the sickness has run its course, however. The cultural Christians are mostly gone, so there is nobody left in church but the crazies. What is more, frantic for revenue, the preachers give the crazies what they want. So every Sunday morning, all across the country, howling and bellowing pastors are denouncing abortion and preaching sedition. This is no joke; it’s really happening — and happening, incidentally, with a public subsidy in the form of tax protection.

We are nowhere near the end of it. Our godly neighbors, ever more marginalized and out-of-step with a world they are increasingly incompetent to live in, are a lot more dangerous than a few thousand Syrian refugees who want to get away from True Believers.

Sadly, I suspect we can expect increasing violence from the "godly folk" as their fantasy world is increasingly rejected by sane and rational people.  And don't forget the study that found that children raised in deeply religious homes were less generous and less kind than those raised in secular homes.  The myth that religion is a positive influence needs to die once and for all.  Think me harsh?  Check out the tweets gathered here that see the terror attack as a positive.

Dylann Roof’s Racist Manifesto: A Reflection of Right-wing American Politics

Former GOP Senator George Allen and CCC  - click image to enlarge

FRC President Tony Perkins with CCC

The horrific shootings at Emanuel AME Church last week and the political dancing that is going on surrounding the Confederate flag continue to dominate much of the political blogosphere and news outlets.  Some on the right are still trying to pretend that racism and easy access to guns had nothing to do with the act of domestic terrorism.  Others such as bloggers at Bearing Drift, a right wing Virginia political blog, are trying to depict demands for the removal of the Confederate flag as "scapegoating symbols."  Still others are going ballistic over Gov. Terry McAuliffe's call that the flag be removed from Virginia vanity license plates for the Sons of Confederate Veterans - see comments on the piece about McAuliffe's action at the Richmond Times Dispatch.  In the last analysis, they all come down to largely the same thing: far right Republicans and their allies are trying to dodge responsibility for their role in fostering a climate of hate and division.  While some of Dylann Storm Roof's "manifesto" is clearly crazy, a significant part is in keeping with the messaging of more-or-less mainstream racist GOP politicians and "family values" leaders some of whom happily appeared at Council of Conservative Citizens events.  A piece in Salon looks at the unsettling similarities.  Here are excerpts:

[W]hat’s fascinating and disturbing about Dylann Roof’s rant about politics, race and violence: Half of it is nuts, and about half of it could come from a more-or-less mainstream racist politician of the Jesse Helms or Lee Atwater school.

It gives the lie to the ruling conservative meme that Roof was just a loan wacko with no affinities with the white-militia movement that the respectable right has tried to keep offstage. It also shows how the accused killer of nine in a Charleston church has roots in weird ideas that are part of even the think-tank culture of the right: Roof’s manifesto is a kind of distorted, funhouse-mirror reflection of Tea Party-era conservative white America’s core beliefs, and it shares the ahistorical way many conservatives deal with race.

To be clear: Not every conservative, nor even every Southern white conservative, is a racist — not even close. But let’s look closely at what this man is arguing and spot the disturbing parallels [with Roof's statements].  

1. Trayvon Martin was a dangerous thug and George Zimmerman was right to kill him.

2. Law and order in this country is threatened by dangerous, murderous blacks.  

3. Blacks are obsessed with race; they won’t stop talking about it.  

4. Slavery was not so bad.  

5. Segregation was not so bad, either.  

6. Black people are intellectually inferior. 

Now, just about all of this stuff sounds pretty extreme when coming from Dylann Roof, . . . .  But they’ve all, in some form or another, been heard in establishment or mainstream parts of the U.S. conservative movement. The George Zimmerman defense, which was supported by many conservative talking heads, has its roots in the larger “blacks threaten law and order” belief, an outgrowth of the GOP Southern strategy that dominated Republican politics for decades — the patrician George H.W. Bush (with Atwater’s help) struck gold there with his Willie Horton ad. 

The slavery-was-not-so-bad idea, which is the premise of “Gone With the Wind,” has been a mainstay of the sentimental brand of Southern “Lost Cause” culture for a very long time. Bring-back-segregation was uttered by Southern racist politicians, from Strom Thurmond to Trent Lott, who was Senate majority leader – one of the most powerful people in Washington – until he praised segregation a bit too publicly. And so on.

The blacks-are-intellectually-inferior meme goes way back, of course, but was still considered a legitimate enough insight to bring Charles Murray, who is still active and influential, a substantial career as an intellectual of the think-tank right after his book “The Bell Curve.”

And how about his larger ahistorical read of the American present? It’s true there are a lot of black Americans who are poor, who live in rough areas and do what people in rough areas do, and whose nuclear families are incomplete. Funny how it happens when you throw a group of people in chains, toss them in the hold of a ship, shatter families, beat them until they work and don’t let them own anything, keep them from voting or owning land or going to good schools even after they are free. Economic inequality, a result of institutional racism, is the legacy of the work of legal slavery and of the legal segregation that followed.

Roof, perhaps, is not smart enough to grasp this. But what’s disturbing is the way some of his rancid ideas have been floating in and out of political discourse for decades and longer — and they won’t necessarily die with his ugly manifesto.

California AG Asks Court to Invalidate "Kill the Gays" Referendum

This blog previously noted how a referendum issue had been initiated in California that seeks to have a statewide referendum on whether gays should be executed.  The measure - "The Sodomite Suppression Act," - was submitted by extreme right wing fanatic Matthew Gregory McLaughlin, an Orange County lawyer, on February 26, 2015.  California Attorney General Kamala Harris (pictured above) indicated today that she will be seeking a court order suppressing the measure and barring it from proceeding to the petition signature gathering stage.  While the proposal was submitted by a single individual, there are many voices among the Christofascists who would happily see gays murdered by the state.  It is little wonder that more and more Americans are walking away from religion.  Here are highlights from Talking Points Memo:

California Attorney General Kamala Harris said on Wednesday that she would try to scuttle a proposed ballot initiative mandating the execution of gay people.

"The Sodomite Suppression Act," submitted by Orange County lawyer Matthew Gregory McLaughlin on Feb. 26, would legalize the killing of homosexuals via "a bullet to the head."

While normal protocol would require Harris to review and summarize the potential ballot measure within 30 days, said she would be seeking authority from the Supreme Court to abort the measure.

"This proposal not only threatens public safety, it is patently unconstitutional, utterly reprehensible, and has no place in a civil society," she said. "Today, I am filing an action for declaratory relief with the Court seeking judicial authorization for relief from the duty to prepare and issue the title and summary for the 'Sodomite Suppression Act.'"

"If the Court does not grant this relief, my office will be forced to issue a title and summary for a proposal that seeks to legalize discrimination and vigilantism.”

In order for it to appear on a ballot, however, McLaughlin would have to collect more than 365,000 signatures from Californian citizens. Even then, experts said the State Supreme Court would most likely quash the self-evidently unconstitutional measure.

GOP Base Lunacy and the Measles Vaccine Debate

More and more the base of the Republican Party displays fear of modernity and scientific truths and in the name of "parental rights" refuse to expose their children to public schools and more dangerously, modern vaccines to avoid preventable diseases.  One of the results of this backwardness is the current measles outbreak which is being fueled by those who  refuse to have their children vaccinated.  To me, it is symptomatic of the lunacy that has become synonymous with today's Republican Party.  It is also typical of far right Christians who are among the most self-centered and selfish people one will encounter despite all the claims of piety and adherence to the Gospel message.  They truly, in my view, do not give a damn about how they endanger others.  Now, would be GOP presidential candidates are being pushed to take positions as to whether the public welfare outweighs pandering to those who live in a fantasy world.  The New York Times looks at the issue.  Here are highlights:

WASHINGTON — The politics of medicine, morality and free will have collided in an emotional debate over vaccines and the government’s place in requiring them, posing a challenge for Republicans who find themselves in the familiar but uncomfortable position of reconciling modern science with the skepticism of their core conservative voters.

As the latest measles outbreak raises alarm, and parents who have decided not to vaccinate their children face growing pressure to do so, the national debate is forcing the Republican Party’s 2016 presidential hopefuls to confront questions about whether it is in the public’s interest to allow parents to decide for themselves.

Gov. Chris Christie’s trade mission to London was suddenly overshadowed on Monday after he was quoted as saying that parents “need to have some measure of choice” about vaccinating their children against measles.

Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, a physician, was less equivocal, telling the conservative radio host Laura Ingraham on Monday that parents should absolutely have a say in whether to vaccinate their children for measles.

The vaccination controversy is a twist on an old problem for the Republican Party: how to approach matters that have largely been settled among scientists but are not widely accepted by conservatives.

It is a dance Republican candidates often do when they hedge their answers about whether evolution should be taught in schools. It is what makes the fight over global warming such a liability for their party, and what led last year to a widely criticized response to the Ebola scare.

There is evidence that vaccinations have become more of a political issue in recent years. Pew Research Center polls show that in 2009, 71 percent of both Republicans and Democrats favored requiring the vaccination of children. Five years later, Democratic support had grown to 76 percent, but Republican support had fallen to 65 percent.

[A]sked about immunization over the weekend in an interview on the NBC News program “Meet the Press,” Mr. Obama urged parents to “get your kids vaccinated.”

Hillary Rodham Clinton also weighed in with a jab at vaccine naysayers, writing Monday night on Twitter, “The science is clear: The earth is round, the sky is blue, and #vaccineswork.”

The issue has more political potency among conservative voters who are highly skeptical of anything required by the government.

The vaccine question surfaced in the 2012 Republican primary when rivals of Rick Perry, then the Texas governor, pounced on him for issuing an executive order requiring sixth-grade girls to be vaccinated against the human papillomavirus . . .

[T]he debate is not one-sided for Republicans. Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, also a possible 2016 candidate, was asked on Sunday about vaccinations on the ABC News program “This Week,” and insisted that the science was clear and convincing. “Study after study has shown that there are no negative long-term consequences,” he said. “And the more kids who are not vaccinated, the more they’re at risk and the more they put their neighbors’ kids at risk as well.”

Asked about immunizations again later on Monday, Mr. Paul was even more insistent, saying it was a question of “freedom.” He grew irritated with a CNBC host who pressed him and snapped: “The state doesn’t own your children. Parents own the children.”

Rand Paul's comment is very distressing. NO ONE owns children.  They have every right to be protected from the ignorance of their parents and from their parent's poisonous religious beliefs.  Yet the far right sees children as chattel property to be mistreated and abused, physically and psychologically as deranged parents see fit.  This mindset needs to be eradicated.

Is Race the Motivation Behind Opposition to Obama's Immigration Order?

In my days as a Republican activist there were some in the GOP base who were out and out racists and most considered them to be unwanted outsiders who were truth be told viewed as an embarrassment to the party.  All too often, these folks were also far right Christians.  With the rise of the Christofascists in the GOP, these people have gone mainstream in the party base and the leadership, even if it tries to disguise its motivation by evasive language generally plays right along with the ugly sentiments of this element of the GOP base.  With a black man occupying the White House, many in this racist element of the Republican Party believe the world is ending.  What they are really frantic about is the growing reality that their power and white privilege is dwindling.  A column in the New York Times looks at this phenomenon in the context of Barack Obama's immigration executive order.  Here are excepts:

When The Journal looked at some of the people who “say they want to see a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants — which is beyond what Mr. Obama’s executive order would do — but say they disapprove of presidential executive action,” it found that the group was “overwhelmingly white and more likely to be Republican than not” and some said that they simply “don’t like anything associated with the president.”

Pay attention to the overall response from all sources, particularly the rhetoric in which it is wrapped.

There is no denying the insinuations in such language: a fear of subjugation by people like this president, an “other” person, predisposed to lawlessness.

As usual, issue-oriented opposition overlaps with a historical undercurrent, one desperate for demonstration (of liberal folly) and preservation (of conservative principles and traditional power).

Maybe that’s why the president cited Scripture when laying out his immigration plan: “Scripture tells us that we shall not oppress a stranger, for we know the heart of a stranger — we were strangers once, too.”

But that is surely to have fallen on deaf ears, if not hostile ones. Conservatives slammed the usage, and Mike Huckabee went so far as to accuse the president of trying to rewrite the Bible . . .

How dare the president — seen by some as a threat to Christianity — invoke Christianity in his defense!

As Paul Ryan put it in 2012, the president’s policies put us on a “dangerous path,” one that “grows government, restricts freedom and liberty, and compromises those values, those Judeo-Christian, Western civilization values that made us such a great and exceptional nation in the first place.”

Senator Tom Coburn upped the rhetoric last week, suggesting to USA Today that there could be a violent reaction to the president’s actions:  “You’re going to see — hopefully not — but you could see instances of anarchy.”

Make no mistake: This debate is not just about this president, this executive order or immigration. This is about the fear that makes the face flush when people stare into a future in which traditional power — their power — is eroded, and about their desperate, by-any-means determination to deny that future.

Judge Rejects Insane Kansas Couple's Bid to Intervene in Marriage Case

The Unruhs - mentally ill?

With state bans on same sex marriage having fallen like a chain of dominoes over the last few weeks, the reaction of self-prostituting Republicans in a few states - e.g., Kansas, Florida and North Carolina are examples - as well as  "godly Christians" has helped underscore just how deranged most these individual are in fact.  Among the most bizarre examples, however, was the effort by Phillip and Sandra Unruh (straight godly Kansas Christians) to intervene in the case, Marie v. Moser, pending in federal court in Kansas.  According to the couple's batshit crazy petition to intervene, allowing same-sex couples to marry is "deeply disturbing," "inflicts profound harm" on them, and is tantamount to a literal theft of their own marriage.  I am NOT making this up!  Here's some of the lunacy from their petition:

If the Plaintiffs are successful in their causes of action the meaning of marriage will be so fundamentally and profoundly changed that the Unruh's [sic] will experience a taking of their property rights in marriage without due process of law. The Unruhs claim a property right in marriage that is the subject of this action and is so situated that disposing of this action may as a practical matter impair or impede Unruhs' ability to protect their interest in the institution of marriage that forms the substance of their relationship...

The extension of marriage to same sex relationships inflicts profound harm on the Unruhs. For the courts to say that from this day forward marriage in Kansas must be extended to a same sex couple is and for ever [sic] will be deeply disturbing to the Unruhs and undoubtedly to those that cared enough to pass an amendment to protect it, a departure from the joy and celebration normally associated with the word marriage.

Thankfully, the federal court recognized the Unruh's for the loony bin escapees that they are and rejected their bizarre and insane claims.  The Bilerico Project has details on the Court's drop kicking of the Unruh's claims.  Here are highlights:

The Unruhs have identified no federal statute giving them an unconditional right to intervene in this case and the Court has identified no such statute. In addition, the Unruhs have failed to satisfy the four factors established by Fed. R. Civ. P. 24(a)(2). Specifically, the Court doubts whether plaintiffs can show that their marriage constitutes a protectable property interest under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution or that this case’s disposition will impair their ability to protect that interest.

[T]he Unruhs assert that “an injustice would be done by leaving out the very individuals whose marriage is affected by the marriage laws and decisions regarding their constitutionality.”  But the Unruhs do not identify any reasons the Kansas Attorney General’s  Office cannot or will not represent those interests adequately. The Court concludes, therefore, that the Unruhs have failed to make a “compelling showing” sufficient to overcome the presumption of adequate representation. Accordingly, the Court denies the Unruhs request for intervention as a matter of  right under the first alternative of Rule 24.

As I and others have noted before, the best argument for not being Christian is the "godly Christians" themselves.  Fortunately, the younger generations are seemingly watching them closely and walking away for institutional religion entirely.

Love, Death and Sochi

A column in the New York Times uses the start of the 2014 Winter Olympic in homophobic Russia this week as a spring board for a review of the plight of LGBT individuals in the many countries that criminalize homosexuality.  Some countries, all Muslim, even impose a death penalty for gays.  Behind all the hate and torment is ultimately religion.  Fundamentalist religion in particular.  Religion, which over the centuries has cause so much bloodshed and some much misery.  Religion, which in my view has brought a net harm to humanity.  Yes, scapegoating gays is a convenient way for corrupt and repressive governments to distract their often ignorant and uneducated citizenry from the true cause of their misery, but without religion it would be a much more difficult task.  Today, in Norfolk supporters of Virginia's gay marriage ban will hold a demonstration in support of the ban.  Despite what they may disingenuously claim about caring about children - these same folks politically generally support slashing social welfare programs and oppose Medicaid expansion - their actions are really all about religion and forcing their religious beliefs on all Virginians.  Americans need to face the reality that fundamentalist religious belief, whether Christian or Muslim, is an evil that the world would be better off without.  Here are column highlights:

There are few moments sweeter, more humbling or more thrilling than telling someone you love how you feel.  As soon as Roger Mbede did that, he was damned.

This happened in Cameroon, which, like many African countries, treats homosexuality as if it were a curse, a scourge. He lost sight of that, and made the mistake of sending several text messages that were too candid, too trusting.

“I’m very much in love with you,” one of them said, and the man who got it, apparently worried that he was being set up, turned Roger in. Law enforcement officers scrutinized all of his correspondence for suggestions of sexual activity with people of the same gender, which can lead to a prison sentence of five years.

On Thursday the Olympics begin. Worldwide attention will turn to Sochi, Russia, and there will be a spike in commentary about Russia’s dangerously homophobic climate, which has already prompted discussion and protest.

But while this will be an important reminder of the kind of persecution that L.G.B.T. people endure in a country openly hostile to them, it will also be an incomplete one. Russia’s hardly the worst.

Although it has an easily abused and utterly ridiculous law against so-called gay propaganda, it doesn’t technically criminalize same-sex activity. About 75 other countries do, and by the laws or customs of Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Mauritania, Sudan and certain parts of Nigeria and Somalia, such activity is even punishable by death. Gays, it turns out, are handy scapegoats, distracting people from the grave problems that really hold them back.

In Nigeria, the president signed new legislation last month that establishes 14-year prison sentences for anyone who enters into a same-sex union and 10-year sentences for people who publicly display same-sex affection or who simply participate in gay groups. There have since been accounts of gay people being rounded up.

L.G.B.T. people in Jamaica live in fear, despite a fresh, hopeful push by some Jamaicans to repeal a law that permits long prison sentences for sodomy. Mobs there have chased people believed to be gay, and last year a transgendered teen was reportedly killed — stabbed, shot and run over with a car — in a hate crime.

Strains of Russia’s florid bigotry can be found in its neighbors, too: Lithuania, Latvia, Moldova, Ukraine.

Back before the text message, back before the dread label of homosexual was hung on him, Roger [Mbede] had confidence. He had respect. He studied philosophy at a local university, with an eye on a teaching career.  “He was the hope of the family,” Nkom told me. “He was the one who had a future.”  Then he shared what was in his heart. And that future was gone.

These countries ought to be treated as international pariahs yet sadly, because of the undeserved deference and privilege given to religion, atrocities continue.    As I have said before, when I hear that someone is a "born again Christian" or "devout conservative Christian," increasingly my first thought is that they must be a horrible, self-centered person.  They deserve our contempt, not our deference or respect. 

Meet the Evangelical Cabal Orchestrating the Government Shutdown

This blog has taken the position on numerous occasions that far right evangelical Christians - those I refer to as the Christofascist - present a clear and present danger to America's constitutional form of government.  They want to destroy the United States Constitution and the structure of government it created and they most certainly want to deprive all but themselves of the right to freedom of religion.  They want a Inquisition like theocracy to replace the federal and state governments with, of course, themselves in control.  These people wrap themselves in the American flag, but by trying to subvert the Constitution and our constitutional form of government, they are little better than traitors and anarchists.  A piece in The Nation looks at some of the foul elements of the evangelical Christian far right (not surprisingly, anti-gay hate groups are among them) who are playing a role in try to subvert the United States Constitution and destroy both America's and the world's economy in the process.  Here are excerpts:

At Ebenezer’s Coffeehouse, a small shop next to Union Station and around the corner from the Heritage Foundation, “fair trade” coffee is dispensed and Christian books are available for customers to read.
A group of political operatives and evangelical firebrands behind the strategy to shut down the government over healthcare reform couldn’t have picked a more unassuming meeting place. Though the more famous “Wednesday meeting” is across town at the offices of Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform, the shutdown plotters often meet at a weekly lunch held on Wednesday at the event space of Ebenezer’s. (The group also meets regularly on Wednesday mornings at the offices of the Family Research Council.)
This other Wednesday group is a convening of the Conservative Action Project, an ad hoc coalition created in the early years of the Obama administration to reorganize the conservative movement.
The coalition is managed by Heritage and the Council for National Policy. The latter organization, dubbed once as “the most powerful conservative group you’ve never heard of,” is a thirty-year-old nonprofit dedicated to transforming the country into a more right-wing Christian society. Founded by Tim LaHaye, the Rapture-obsessed author of the “Left Behind” series, CNP is now run by Christian-right luminaries such as Phyllis Schlafly, Tony Perkins and Kenneth Blackwell.
Yesterday, The New York Times revealed in great detail how the Conservative Action Project has orchestrated the current showdown.
- See more at: http://www.thenation.com/blog/176538/meet-evangelical-cabal-orchestrating-shut-down#sthash.uMAMy9yS.dpuf

At Ebenezer’s Coffeehouse, a small shop next to Union Station and around the corner from the Heritage Foundation, “fair trade” coffee is dispensed and Christian books are available for customers to read.

A group of political operatives and evangelical firebrands behind the strategy to shut down the government over healthcare reform couldn’t have picked a more unassuming meeting place.

Though the more famous “Wednesday meeting” is across town at the offices of Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform, the shutdown plotters often meet at a weekly lunch held on Wednesday at the event space of Ebenezer’s. (The group also meets regularly on Wednesday mornings at the offices of the Family Research Council.)

This other Wednesday group is a convening of the Conservative Action Project, an ad hoc coalition created in the early years of the Obama administration to reorganize the conservative movement.

The coalition is managed by Heritage and the Council for National Policy. The latter organization, dubbed once as “the most powerful conservative group you’ve never heard of,” is a thirty-year-old nonprofit dedicated to transforming the country into a more right-wing Christian society. Founded by Tim LaHaye, the Rapture-obsessed author of the “Left Behind” series, CNP is now run by Christian-right luminaries such as Phyllis Schlafly, Tony Perkins and Kenneth Blackwell.

Yesterday, The New York Times revealed in great detail how the Conservative Action Project has orchestrated the current showdown.

The group has played a background role in several high-profile political debates.  It was this rival Wednesday group that gave rise to the farcical “Ground Zero Mosque” conspiracy in 2010. The Conservative Action Project also played a consequential role in whipping up opposition to a number of key Obama judicial nominees, including judges David Hamilton and Goodwin Liu. Through rapid-fire memos and coalition advocacy, the Conservative Action Project can claim large responsibility for the fact that Obama has been deprived more than any modern American president of appointing judges of his choice for the federal bench.

But like the quagmire that GOP leaders find themselves in today, the hard-charging Conservative Action Project has bristled at establishment criticism in the past. Notably, it was the Conservative Action Project that first courted controversial Senate candidates like Christine O’Donnell and Joe Miller.

Many of the leaders involved in this effort are well-known Christian conservative icons, including “Christian Zionist” and former presidential candidate Gary Bauer and Liberty Counsel’s Mat Staver, an activist famous for his over-the-top attacks on the gay community.

The group has engaged in clashes with libertarian-leaning GOP leaders, particularly Norquist. That is not to say the group is not well connected with well-heeled interest groups.

Kevin Gentry, a key employee of Koch Industries’s lobbying subsidiary Koch Public Sector, has served on the board of CNP. Gentry now helped to run the new $250 million fund for conservative advocacy groups called Freedom Partners and manages the twice-annual secret gatherings for Charles Koch’s cohorts. (It was at a CNP gathering that Charles Koch once compared himself to the theologian Martin Luther.)

 

At Ebenezer’s Coffeehouse, a small shop next to Union Station and around the corner from the Heritage Foundation, “fair trade” coffee is dispensed and Christian books are available for customers to read.
A group of political operatives and evangelical firebrands behind the strategy to shut down the government over healthcare reform couldn’t have picked a more unassuming meeting place. Though the more famous “Wednesday meeting” is across town at the offices of Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform, the shutdown plotters often meet at a weekly lunch held on Wednesday at the event space of Ebenezer’s. (The group also meets regularly on Wednesday mornings at the offices of the Family Research Council.)
This other Wednesday group is a convening of the Conservative Action Project, an ad hoc coalition created in the early years of the Obama administration to reorganize the conservative movement.
The coalition is managed by Heritage and the Council for National Policy. The latter organization, dubbed once as “the most powerful conservative group you’ve never heard of,” is a thirty-year-old nonprofit dedicated to transforming the country into a more right-wing Christian society. Founded by Tim LaHaye, the Rapture-obsessed author of the “Left Behind” series, CNP is now run by Christian-right luminaries such as Phyllis Schlafly, Tony Perkins and Kenneth Blackwell.
Yesterday, The New York Times revealed in great detail how the Conservative Action Project has orchestrated the current showdown.
- See more at: http://www.thenation.com/blog/176538/meet-evangelical-cabal-orchestrating-shut-down#sthash.uMAMy9yS.dpuf

Let's be clear about something.  These are not nice people or nice organizations. They are motivated by religious extremism and unlimited greed and a lust for power.  They deserve no respect or deference and the general public needs to be educated about their toxic goals which ought to scare the daylights out of women, gays, non-Christians of all faiths, and anyone who believes in science and knowledge.  Those who prostitute themselves to these people - like Congressman Randy Forbes - need to be challenged and forced to end their alliegance to these forces of hate, racism and greed.