There was a politically motivated murder in front of a crowd streaming into church in Wichita, KS today. George Tiller, a Doctor who performs abortions, is dead, and one report has the gunman escaping in a “white or blue Taurus.” Hey, at least the terrorist buys American.

There can be little doubt at this stage that this murder was likely perpetrated by someone who calls him or herself “Pro-Life.” I’ve no doubt that the terrorist responsible for this heinous act will be caught and tried. I do not advocate the death penalty, but I hope the perpetrator ends up in jail for a long, long time, and hope there is plenty of investigation into the organizations to which the terrorist belongs.

Of course, in this season where we are contemplating Barack Obama’s choice for the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor, the abortion issue is on everyone’s mind. We are fresh from protests in South Bend, IN that featured ugliness both in the form of blood soaked images and arrests. Seems to me that the extremists on the right wing are beginning to feel bolder than ever. So who is leading them? Who do they think is leading them? I’ll bet this particular terrorist is a Republican. We’ll see that revealed in the next couple days. Meanwhile, every news organization in the country has dropped the Sotomayor story to the back burner as they race to Wichita.

Jason Linkins at Huffington Post mostly discusses the big fear the National Organization for Marriage is putting out there, that gay marriage will destroy the rights of bigots to think bigoted thoughts. As Linkins notes, this is nicely dealt with at The New Republic by Jonathan Chait. Of course Linkins examines the latest NOM ad, where the National Organization for Serial Opposite Marriage tries to stoke up the fear by touting headlines about first graders going to a gay wedding. (OH NOES! Dey’ll catch teh gay!)

More telling about these morons worrying about marriage is that can’t spell the word. Yeah, it is misspelled in their ad. Check out the screen capture.

Let’s see. So far Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich have claimed Sonia Sotomayor is a racist. Yes, the pulled out the race card they are so fond of claiming liberals use. I suppose it is important to note that one Republican, John Cornyn, has labelled such an attack as “terrible.” From NPR:

Sen. John Cornyn tonight repudiated the allegation that Judge Sonia Sotomayor is “racist” - and he distanced himself in no uncertain terms from the conservative opinion leaders who leveled that charge against the Supreme Court nominee, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and talk show host Rush Limbaugh.

“I think it’s terrible. This is not the kind of tone that any of us want to set when it comes to performing our constitutional responsibilities of advice and consent,” Cornyn told NPR’s “All Things Considered.”

. . .

Asked by NPR if he’s worried that comments like Limbaugh and Gingrich’s harm the confirmation debate, Cornyn said: “Neither one of these men are elected Republican officials. I just don’t think it’s appropriate and I certainly don’t endorse it. I think it’s wrong.”

We should expect John Cornyn to apologize to Rush Limbaugh in the next couple of days, but he represents reality. Right Wing commentator Mark Halperin is right that the Republicans will not succeed in stopping Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court from being confirmed. No, charges of racism won’t work, and neither will the insinuations that Sotomayor, a graduate of Princeton and Yale Law with high honors at both fine institutions, is an intellectual lightweight. They’ve also claimed she is an activist liberal judge, legislating from the bench, but as Eugene Robinson notes, that’s also a false charge. Heck, the whack job Christian conservatives screamed that Sotomayor was a pro-abortion activist without mentioning the two decisions by Sotomayor supporting the anti-abortion side of the issue. That isn’t going to work either.

There’s already a lot of fringe folks talking about how Sotomayor is ugly, or a closet leftist, or both, as referenced briefly on Powerline. But this is all really about Republicans energizing the base with the hopes of energizing their fundraising in the near future. That might seem a good goal for them, if it isn’t also a tactic that will alienate women and Hispanic voting blocs. Yeah, that’s the trap Obama has set nominating a Latina with stellar qualifications, and the Republicans seem to be walking right into the trap. And they’ll attack on several more fronts. As previewed by the New York Times this morning, the GOP will likely go after Sotomayor based on her temperament, which is, of course, a sexist attack, and on her associations with advocacy groups, which will likely anger the Hispanic electorate even more.

My question is why hasn’t a Republican accused Sotomayor of being a lesbian yet? Certainly they know the gay issue energized the base in California by both getting out the vote and garnering fundraising dollars during the Prop 8 fight last fall. Sotomayor is divorced and lives in the village. Seems a no-brainer, no matter that there isn’t a scintilla of fact behind such an accusation. With a challenge to national marriage laws coming from the odd couple of Theodore Olson and David Boies, the issue will be in the news for the foreseeable future. If they could claim Sotomayor is a lesbian, then they’ve got a winner of a fundraising issue, and what does the GOP care about offending gay and lesbian citizens, or Obama, or liberals?

How will they make such a claim? I’m betting the first claim will come from a media whack job like Savage or O’Reilly, then will be talked about in the mainstream news for several days. After all, when a GOP whack job speaks, it becomes news. See, Cheney, Dick. The claim will come about five days before the Senate Judicial Committee hearings to confirm Sonia Sotomayor are scheduled. The whack job extremist world that is the Republican base will scream and fret and send in their dollars to the GOP, and the Republican Senators will get to grandstand on the issue of marriage, encouraged, perhaps, by that latest Gallup poll, ignoring other polls, of course. What they won’t have figured out is that in addition to alienating women and Hispanic voting blocs, they will then alienate the young even further. But I’m not giving the GOP credit for smarts.

The word comes from Ron Hamman, who is a Pastor at the Independent Baptist Church in Wasilla, AK. He wrote all about it in the Mat-Su Frontiersman. The startling news is that Barack Obama could not be the Anti-Christ, because the Anti-Christ is GAY!

I’m betting the Anti-Christ is either this guy, from Fairfax, CA, (he looks great in that tiara) or this guy, from Fairfax, VA (check out that Prom Queen sash!), but there doesn’t seem to be anything in the Bible about Fairfax, so I think we’ll have to ask that question of Pastor Hamman. Perhaps we could reach him through his most famous parishoner Sarah Palin.

Meanwhile, this guy here has copped to being the Anti-Christ.

On the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the United States Supreme Court, Norm coleman, former Senator from Minnesota, had this to say, from his own campaign web site:

“When debating judges, I was firm that I would use the same standard to evaluate judges under a Democrat President as I would a Republican President. Are they intellectually competent, do they have a record of integrity, and most importantly, are they committed to following the Constitution rather than creating new law and policy. When I am re-elected, I intend to review Judge Sotomayor’s record using this process. Certainly, the nomination of a Hispanic woman to the nation’s highest court is something all American’s should applaud.”

When he is re-elected. Meanwhile, the citizens of Minnesota have gone without their second Senator for several months now because of the litigious Coleman. What is ironic here is that if the Republicans do indeed try to fight the Sotomayor nomination, an action luminaries such as Pat Robertson are insisting on, Norm Coleman will by then be a nonfactor, as Al Franken will step in as Senator of Minnesota easily in time for an autumn SCOTUS nomination vote. Whistling into the wind, bloviating into the wind. . . it is not easy to distinguish with Coleman anymore. Does that make him a typical Republican?

I’m sure that there’s plenty of Supreme Court Justices who were the children of immigrants. But with the recent revival of West Side Story, music by son of immigrants Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, it seems fitting that Barack Obama’s choice of Sonia Sotomayor as the Supreme Court Justice (reported in this morning’s Times) to replace David Souter on the court seems apt. I am reminded of the song “America” from the hit musical, and I’m guessing someone on Broadway will play around with the lyrics a bit in the next couple days.

Immigrant goes to America,
Many hellos in America;
Nobody knows in America
Puerto Rico’s in America!

You know, it seems to me there’s been a lot of empathy in Broadway plays, at the very least in the old standards such as Oklahoma, South Pacific, and West Side Story. South Pacific deals with race, Oklahoma deals with politics on a local level with those farmers and cowboys, and West Side Story deals with the threat of immigration. Heck, even Rent dealt with AIDS, eh? This isn’t just empathy these plays dealt with, but social justice. Unfortunately for Sonia Sotomayor, both empathy and social justice are issues the Republicans in the Senate are not happy about.

Man, I’ve buried my lead! The Republicans, on the other hand, are going to try and bury Sonia Sotomayor. Even though she was appointed first by a Republican, they are going to claim she’s an activist judge. Along the way they’ll probably boot George Herbert Walker Bush from the party. Even though Sonia Sotomayor is the child of immigrants, and she will be showing us that the ideal of our country as a land of opportunity is still alive, Republicans are already chipping away at that ideal, at least as it applies to immigrants, as I wrote earlier today. The Republicans will also go after the notion of “empathy,” as if any human could fundction without that quality. The Republicans want the law to have no empathy, to express no regard for the people other than what the words say. They ignore that the words in our constitution were inspired by a profound empathy. Freedom, liberty, happiness and rights are all about a profound empathy for those who had been ruled by the laws of others. Forget empathy, Republicans say. Heck, given the right circumstances, such as a panicky Bush Administration, and they say “forget the constitution.”

This post shouldn’t be about Republicans and the attacks on Sonia Sotomayor that they will launch in the coming days. Mr. Obama’s announcement about Judge Sotomayor will come in the next hour, but I’m sure the airwaves are already full of GOP bloviating. Rush Limbaugh’s show starts soon, and I’m sure the Leader of the GOP will be making up his argument as he goes along. This post should not be focussed too heavily on the whiney Republicans, who will not have the power to oppose Sonia Sotomayor. Sure, they think opposition to Sotomayor will line their fundraising coffers — yeah, that’s what this is all about. Republican Senators need to show they’ve got what it takes to satisfy the Republican base. The House did all that by voting as one against the stimulus package, and now the Republicans in the Senate need to do their borkwork.

We need to do something else today than to follow the slimey and whiney attacks ready on the tongues of Republicans. We need to celebrate. I’m going to do so by going out and buying the soundtrack to West Side Story. Then I’ll bring that soundtrack home and set my son in my lap and sing along with “America,” in celebration of Sonia Sotomayor being nominated to the United States Supreme Court.

US Representative Nathan Dean (R-Confederacy) is proposing to do away with at least a portion of the first clause of the 14th Amendment. He’s all upset about immigrants having children here in the US and the children getting citizenship, so he wants to do away with that first clause. Here’s the story from the Atlanta Journal Constitution:

U.S. Rep. Nathan Deal, a Republican candidate for governor of Georgia, has proposed changing the long-standing federal policy that automatically grants citizenship to any baby born on U.S. soil, a move opposed by immigrant rights advocates.

Supporters of Deal’s proposal say “birthright citizenship” encourages illegal immigration and makes enforcement of immigration laws more difficult. Opponents say the proposed law wouldn’t solve the illegal immigration problem and goes against this country’s traditions of welcoming immigrants.

Automatic citizenship is enshrined in the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which says: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.” That provision, ratified in 1868, was drafted with freed slaves in mind.

Deal and his supporters say the 14th Amendment wording was never meant to automatically give citizenship to babies born to illegal immigrants.

“This is a sensible, overdue measure that closes a clause that was never meant to be a loophole,” said Bob Dane, spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which seeks tighter immigration restrictions.

Under Deal’s proposal, babies born in the U.S. would automatically have citizenship only if at least one of their parents is a U.S. citizen or national, a legal permanent resident of the U.S., or actively serving in the U.S. military.

Azadeh Shahshahani, director of the Immigrants Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia, said the proposed law “is not cognizant with the American spirit.”

“We would stand in strong opposition to this bill as it’s in fundamental contradiction to our nation’s long history of welcoming immigrants and bestowing inalienable rights” on all people born here, regardless of the circumstances of their birth, she said.

Oh, this is surely about immigration and the whiney Republicans not happy with our constitution and its amendments. But it is also about the 14th Amendment and how it has become awfully inconvenient for Republicans as of late. Sure, it is inconvenient for them in terms of immigration, and the xenophopic wing of the Republican Party — is that all of them? But it is also inconvenient as concerns its due process and equal protection clauses. That first section of the 14th Amendment (the rest of the 14th is focused on anti-slavery actions during the post-cilvil war period) reads like this, as found on the Legal Information Institute of the Cornell University Law School web site:

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

No, these folks don’t like any of that language, at least their policies show they don’t. They don’t like Americans getting due process, ergo their railing against the ACLU when it tries to defend the due process of prisoners, etc. Heck, these folks would throw due process out the window if it meant they couldn’t torture an American they think is a terrorist, or spy on Americans at will. And the equal protection clause gives them a bunch in their underwear as well, especially as it is used as a legal justification by judges for gay marriage. Look for more Republicans to try to rewrite the 14th Amendment in the future, and not merely this back bench Republican Congressman from Georgia.

The story broke last week, that Liberty University had revoked the priveleges of the student Democratic Club. Supposedly College Democrats don’t adequately conform to the mission of the school. Here’s the report from the Boston Globe:

Liberty University will no longer recognize its campus Democratic Party club because its parent organization stands against the conservative Christian school’s moral principles.

The club, which has about 30 members, will no longer be able to use Liberty’s name, hold on-campus meetings, or be eligible for student activities money.

“I think it does the university a great disservice to stifle one side of the discussion simply because we are Democrats,” said Maria Childress, the club’s adviser and an administrative assistant at the school.

Brian Diaz, president of Liberty’s Democratic club, said he was informed of the school’s decision in a May 15 e-mail.

“The candidates supported are directly contrary to the mission of Liberty University,” the e-mail said.

Liberty has had a College Republicans club for years. The Democratic club formed in October and worked aggressively to elect President Obama.

“They . . . let the Liberty University College Republicans stay on campus, but they don’t let us,” said Diaz, 18, who will be a sophomore next year. “Sounds like censorship to me.”

I suppose Mr. Diaz is wrong, at least if you are like me and think censorship is more properly discussed when the government denies the right of free speech. And while the federal government provides aid in terms of tax breaks and student loans to Liberty University, I’ll let the ACLU handle those issues. The marketplace is good enough for me, and in the marketplace of ideas I’m willing to bet that the quality of students applying to Liberty University will go down if this policy remains.

The reactions to Liberty’s announcements are interesting, though. DNC Chair Tim Kaine wonders why Liberty University attacks the liberty of its students. Candidate for Governor Terry McCaulliffe echoes Kaine’s sentiments, evidently thinking this is an issue that will play in Virginia. (Careful, Terry, you just might not know your constituents all that well.) But, as usual, the best reaction is from the right wing whack jobs, this time by Jerry Falwell, Jr., President of Liberty U. His is a whining, backpedaling mess of an apologia, justifying nothing. Here’s a sample from Christian Newswire:

While the students in the college Democrat club are pro-life and support traditional marriage, the constitution of the club pledged support to advance the Democratic platform and candidates. The 2008 Democratic platform has taken an extreme turn to the left on social issues. For the first time it supports federal funding of abortion and repeal of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, a law passed overwhelmingly by a bi-partisan Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton. Liberty University will not lend its’ name or financial support to undermine marriage or to promote abortion.

While students are free to meet on campus, debate and discuss politics of every stripe, the University will remain true to its’ core principles and not lend its’ name or fund groups that work to undermine the principles that make Liberty attractive to so many people. Liberty brings many diverse speakers to campus. Last year Senator John McCain’s brother spoke to the students along with Virginia Democratic Governor, Tim Kaine. Dr. Bernice King, daughter of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., spoke to our students this Spring about how her opposition to same sex marriage put her at odds with her family and her political allies. Ted Kennedy also spoke at Liberty in 1983.

We encourage our students to bring positive change to all political parties, Democrats, Republicans and Independents. We hope our students challenge all political parties to remain true to the core moral values consistent with the Christian mission of the University. To blindly support any candidate solely because of party affiliation irrespective of their moral views is wrong. Liberty would never endorse a Republican student group that supported abortion rights. Liberty stands for certain core values; not for a political party.

I love how Falwell had to go back 26 years to find an example of a major Democratic figure Liberty University hosted. He whines earlier in the press release about the media, a move which seems a typical talking point, and then backpedals, noting that the Democratic Club is allowed to meet, just isn’t recognized. Even though the members of the club are pro-life, and therefore not supportive of the planks of the Democratic Party to which Falwell objects, Falwell still revokes the club’s official status. Evidently this policy isn’t effected by the Republican Party’s programmatic support of torture. There’s the rub, and what makes this demonstrably so political that Falwell risks his university’s tax-exempt status. For he claims to be against torture as well, and yet Republicans are heavily involved in torture over the last eight years, including in the torture of syntax in their whiney excuses for their behavior (see Cheney, Dick).

Will this become a common occurence in our nation, the stifling of student voices because they don’t fit the narrow “Christian” viewpoint of extremists like Falwell? The case of the sixth grader in California whose report about Harvey Milk led her school to send out permission slips is tangentially related here. The school was overzealous, certainly, in reacting to Milk’s homosexuality rather than recognizing Milk as an historical figure in California worthy of the students’ investigation. The ACLU is involved, of course. Whining and backpedaling will surely encue. Meanwhile, College Democrats at Liberty University are told by their school’s President that their freedom of conscience doesn’t count, and a little girl in California is told that her attempts at scholarship just aren’t good enough.

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel was a hero. Sure he died over 30 years ago, but his legacy is fighting hate long after he marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. This time he is not marching along a road to Selma, but he is a road in Missouri, the “Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel Memorial Highway.” We can thank Rep. Sara Lampe, D-Springfield, for Rabbi Heschel’s continued service. From the Springfield, MO News-Leader:

Rep. Sara Lampe, D-Springfield, got an amendment added to a transportation bill to rename a portion of West Bypass from Farm Road 142 to West Sunshine the “Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel Memorial Highway.” Heschel marched with Martin Luther King Jr. at the Selma, Ala., Civil Rights march in 1965.

Lampe said she asked Jewish groups to nominate a religious figure to counter the Springfield unit of the National Socialist Movement, which adopted the section of road.

“It’s a counter to hate,” Lampe said.

Two signs noting the National Socialist Movement’s participation in the Adopt-A-Highway program went up last October. The Missouri Department of Transportation could not turn down the group’s application to be in the program based of its views because of the group’s First Amendment right.

A Jewish organization in Kansas City will pay for signs marking the memorial highway along the same stretch of road maintained by volunteers from the neo-Nazi group. “I’m leveling the playing field,” Lampe said.

The National Socialist Movement’s Missouri Chapter is still crowing about their participation in the Adopt-A-Highway program, but it seems now they will be caring for a memorial to a civil rights leader who fought hate by walking for peace and justice. They are fools.

My wife and I will be taking our son Jack to synagogue this evening, and this story will make the trip all the more special. Jack is African American and adopted, and we are raising him Jewish. Tonight we attend Shabbat, but also begin arranging for his naming ceremony and conversion. I can’t wait to tell this story to our rabbi. Oh, the weekend starts well with this story, what should be an inspiration to us all. I hope everyone has a fine holiday.

Harold Jackson, the Editor of the Editorial page at the Philadelphia Inquirer, wrote Sunday to defend the paper’s hiring of John Yoo and fellow conservative columnist Rick Santorum. It is a petulent defense, though to his credit Harold Jackson makes the hiring of Yoo and Santorum seem like the culmination of a high-minded purpose, to fill the editorial pages with perspectives from all legitimate ends of the political spectrum. Let me be clear, as Harold Jackson is not. For instance, while Jackson petulently whines about “bloggers,” which could include me, he really means Will Bunch, though he didn’t have the stones to name names (I wonder if he’d have mentioned Stephen Colbert?). I’ll name names, and I will not discuss political viewpoints here, because I actually think a variety of opinion on the editorial page is important. The goal, though, should also include honesty. That Yoo and Santorum cannot write a column without arguing against a straw man position of their own building is a sign that neither one of them is ready for prime time. That each of them continually ignore major news in order to keep their house of ideological cards from falling is simply intellectually dishonest. No editorial page is served by such partisan dishonesty.

Will Bunch has a rebuttal to Harold Jackson, and it contains some pretty strong reasoning. My complaint is a bit more simple, that John Yoo and Rick Santorum are so partisan that they rely on building straw men and distorting data to such an extent that they simply aren’t worth reading for whatever their ideas might be. They are dishonest. To that end, Will Bunch’s column concerning Rick Santorum today does not go far enough. Bunch takes Santorum far too seriously, especially with Santorum’s claim of a pro-life majority and his claim that moderate Republicans are moving to the pro-life position. Here’s Santorum from today’s column:

Obama’s zealotry has helped move moderate Republicans into the pro-life camp. From 2001 through last year, 55 to 60 percent of Republicans said they were pro-life, while 33 to 38 percent identified themselves as pro-choice, according to Gallup. But the most recent poll shows that 70 percent of Republicans are now pro-life, while only 26 percent are pro-choice.

Forget for a moment that there is no such thing as Obama zealotry concerning his pro-choice stance, something he showed quite adequately in his speech at Notre Dame, a major speech Rick Santorum chooses, dishonestly, not to confront. The bigger dishonesty is Santorum’s refusal to acknowledge the elephant in the room, the fact that moderate Republicans haven’t moved to a pro-life stance, but have instead LEFT THE PARTY. How could the percentage of Republicans supporting a pro-life position rise 10 points in the polls? It’s a smaller pool and the ones upset at the extremists like Santorum pissing in that pool have LEFT! A shrinking GOP means extremists like Rick Santorum are dominating, but that means nothing about support for a pro-life position. The Gallup poll showing those shrinking Republican numbers appeared in thousands of newspapers, was readily available, and Santorum ignored the information, refused to confront it, just as he refused to congfront Barack Obama’s speech at Notre Dame. Santorum either refused to confront the information, showing that as a writer he cannot anticipate the arguments of his opponents betters, or he’s too stupid to figure out the arguments of his opponents betters. Either he is blatantly dishonest or he’s too stupid to be hired by any newspaper, much less the Inquirer.

We will already have, of course, find found out that John Yoo was involved in the same sort of dishonesty when he was formulating the memos justifying torture for the Bush Administration. Precedent is perhaps the most important principle in the law, and because precedent did not support Yoo’s position, he dishonestly ignored it. The precedent in that case is that the United States has prosecuted waterboarding as torture in the past. It was the United States under Reagan that prosecuted waterboarding. An honest brief by Yoo would at least have mentioned that fact, but Yoo was not honest.

Harold Jackson, I sure hope you read this. You surely know Rick Santorum can’t argue without a straw man, and yet you evidently feel this sort of dishonesty is OK, because it represents the “other side.” I’m just unsure why you don’t find a literate and honest columnist who happens to be Republican and jettison Yoo and Santorum on grounds of incompetence. But that begs the question, doesn’t it?

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