I drove up to Vermont last weekend for my father’s birthday. On my way home Monday, driving south from Middlebury toward Albany, I turned on the car radio and listened for a couple of hours to a right-wing barrage directed against the American Constitution and the American judiciary.
First up was Phyllis Schlafly, 80-year-old author of the unfortunately-named The Supremacist (subtitle: The tyranny of judges and how to stop it). She was talking to Laurie Morrow, the gushing host of True North Radio, which is broadcast every day at 11 am on WDEV Radio Vermont:
L.M.: Phyllis, people do not teach civics anymore…most people today assume that the powers are ranked, that the courts are higher than the executive branch and the legislative branch. Now if I remember right, that’s NOT the case!
P.S.: No, Alexander Hamilton said that the judiciary should be the least dangerous branch of government–
[note the twist here--actually, he said it was the least dangerous branch, not that it should be]
L.M.: The WEAKEST branch!
[poor Hamilton's statement has now been completely transformed]
P.S.: The weakest, right…
[Phyllis caves in to the absurdity]
L.M.: We’ve got to go to a break. When we come back, I’m going to ask Phyllis WHAT we can do here in Vermont to stop the tyranny of judges, because if there’s anything we’ve learned from the Schiavo case, they’ll be willing to KILL you if it benefits them…I’m going to ask her what on EARTH we do–to stop the juggernaut.
Next came Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family, talking to Mark Levin, author of Men in Black, a book that lays all the evil that has ever happened in America at the feet of the Supreme Court:
J.D.: Before I let you go, Justice Scalia referred to his colleagues on the court as Black-Robed Masters. Isn’t that incredible?
M.L.: You know, it is incredible. I’m starting to think, just so we can knock them down a notch, Dr. Dobson, that they should be required to wear those white powdered wigs.
[laughter]
J.D.: Well, I heard a minister the other day talking about the great injustice and evil of the men in white robes, the Ku Klux Klan, that roamed the country in the South and, uh, they did great wrong to civil rights and to morality, and now we have black-robed men, and that’s what you’re talking about. The subtitle of the book is “How the Supreme Court is Destroying America,” by Mark Levin, introduction by Rush Limbaugh, which ought to tell you somethin’.
Mark summed up his agenda at the end of the show. He wants to: 1) limit the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court (taking away issues like abortion and gay rights), 2) give Congress the power to overrule the Supreme Court with a two-thirds vote, 3) limit federal judges to 12-year terms (because they have a dismaying tendency to “evolve,” according to Mark), and 4) get some more right-wing justices confirmed.
Hamilton thought the judiciary was the least dangerous branch of government because it had no power to spend money and no power to enforce its decisions. All it had was the support of men and women who wished to be ruled by law and reason. We’ll soon see if that support will be enough to save it now.
Eavesdropping on the American Christian Insurgency
I drove up to Vermont last weekend for my father’s birthday. On my way home Monday, driving south from Middlebury toward Albany, I turned on the car radio and listened for a couple of hours to a right-wing barrage directed against the American Constitution and the American judiciary.
First up was Phyllis Schlafly, 80-year-old author of the unfortunately-named The Supremacist (subtitle: The tyranny of judges and how to stop it). She was talking to Laurie Morrow, the gushing host of True North Radio, which is broadcast every day at 11 am on WDEV Radio Vermont:
Next came Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family, talking to Mark Levin, author of Men in Black, a book that lays all the evil that has ever happened in America at the feet of the Supreme Court:
Mark summed up his agenda at the end of the show. He wants to: 1) limit the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court (taking away issues like abortion and gay rights), 2) give Congress the power to overrule the Supreme Court with a two-thirds vote, 3) limit federal judges to 12-year terms (because they have a dismaying tendency to “evolve,” according to Mark), and 4) get some more right-wing justices confirmed.
Hamilton thought the judiciary was the least dangerous branch of government because it had no power to spend money and no power to enforce its decisions. All it had was the support of men and women who wished to be ruled by law and reason. We’ll soon see if that support will be enough to save it now.