Where GOP Libertarianism, White Supremacy and Social Conservatism all Came Together as today’s Rethugliklans:

Walter Shapiro reads Rick Santorum’s book so you don’t have to. And it sounds like you really don’t want to. The guy sounds like a hot tempered idiot. He discusses the influence of the Catholic Church, naturally but there’s another, less obvious, aspect to his worldview as well:

Sometime, presumably early in law school at Penn State, Santorum was introduced to the concept of the slippery slope–and it changed his mental life. In It Takes a Family, Santorum repeatedly warns about the legal consequences flowing from popular Supreme Court decisions. He laments the reasoning behind the 1965 Griswold decision (overturning–yikes!–a Connecticut law that banned the sale of condoms) because it introduced the constitutional zone of privacy that later allowed the Supreme Court to legalize abortion. Santorum even expresses his concern with the precedent set by Loving v. Virginia, the landmark 1967 civil-rights decision that decreed that states could not ban interracial marriages. What troubles Santorum is not the result (ending Jim Crow legislation) but that “16 years later, the IRS ruled that religious groups opposed to interracial marriage could be stripped of their tax-exempt status.” Now that, my friends, is a dogwhistle. A particularly shrill one:

[W]hat I try to expose in the book and I think I document copiously is that the religious right did not–did not–coalesce as a political movement in direct response to the Roe v. Wade decision of 1973. In fact, the Southern Baptist Convention, which is hardly a bastion of liberalism, had passed a resolution calling for the legalization of abortion, and this was a resolution that was reaffirmed in 1974, again in 1976. It was not the abortion issue. What galvanized evangelicals as a political block, as a political movement, was instead the actions of the Internal Revenue Service to go after the tax-exempt status of Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina, because of its racially discriminatory policies, and that Carter was unfairly blamed for this by the architects of the religious right, and they used that against him and mobilized to defeat him four years later in 1980. [...]

Bob Jones University did not allow African-Americans to be enrolled at the school until 1991 and did not allow unmarried African-Americans as students until 1995. The lower court ruling that really became the catalyst for the rise of the religious right was a ruling called Green v. Connelly, issued in 1971, by the district court of the District of Columbia; and it upheld the Internal Revenue Service in its ruling that any organization that engages in racial segregation or discrimination is not, by definition, a charitable organization and as such has no claim to tax-exempt status. And as the IRS began applying that ruling and enforcing it in various places, including Bob Jones University, that is what galvanized evangelical leaders into a political movement that we know today as the religious right.

According to one of the architects of the religious right, who told me this directly, after they had organized on the issue of Bob Jones University and more broadly the issue of government interference in these schools, as they understood it, there was a conference call among these various evangelical leaders and the political consultants who were trying to organize them into a political movement, and several people mentioned several issues. Finally the voice on the end of one of the lines said, `How about abortion?’ And that’s how abortion was cobbled into the agenda of the religious right, late in the 1970s in preparation for the 1980 presidential election.

Bob Jones University is where GOP libertarianism, white supremacy and social conservatism all come together in one big toxic stew.

By Digby

Hello Friends of A Gentleman’s View,

I just want to say thank you folks who come here everyday and read my postings. I believe in the good of humanity, in how we interact, communicate and relate to each other. I do believe the basis for for this interaction is politics. I try to share my vision of what I see happening in politics with my postings or my personal opinions essays of current events. I am very thankful for all who come to read my postings and/or comment. I want to thank all of you and wish you the most happy and prosperous holiday season and new year. Thank so much for sharing this experience with me. Please be safe. HAPPY HOLIDAYS                                                                                     A Gentleman

My ‘Occupy Wall Street’ Hit List to stimulate the economy and clean up the process;

Special Election held in 2012 election cycle for 535 seats in Senate and House.

No Senator or Congressperson currently holding a seat will qualify for this election or any at the Federal level for 10 years.

No Corporation donations of any kind, direct, PACs or third party allowed.

Cap individual donations at $250000, personal assets not allowed.

Vote using Facial Recognition Software online. One man, one vote.

Forgive Student loan interest and penalties 1995 forward to present and continue thru 2015. During which time system reform developed and implemented.

Immediate complete re-instatement of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 separating commercial banks from investment ones.

Adjust all mortgages to remove underwater status for all mortgages 2000 forward.

One year of unemployment benefits for the 99ers who have dropped off the numbers counts having lost benefits long ago or any part thereof…

Forfeiture of 50% all CEO/Directors/ VP’s Bonuses of Wall Street Banks 2008 forward and immediate freezing of all said assets.

All CEO’s at existing investment banks in place during 2008 immediate resignation to include 10-year suspension of required certifications and licenses from investment/trading/advising practices.

Immediate extension of unemployment benefits for one year or any part thereof.

In some circles, there is a price for spewing the kind of hatred Patrick J. Buchanan spews out daily!

What kind of political pundit would you expect to hear on a radio talk-show sponsored by neo-Nazis? What kind of author, wants to sell his latest book to an audience composed of white supremacists, Holocaust deniers and Christian militiamen?  Would you expect such a pundit and author to be a “regular” on  MSNBC, PBS and have a column that appears in mainstream newspapers across the country?

Last night (11/22), Pat Buchanan appeared on The Political Cesspool to hawk his latest book.

A word or two about the The Political Cesspool:  It is talk radio show founded and hosted by white supremacist, James Edwards.  The Cesspool is broadcast by Liberty Radio Network and Accent Radio Network. It is also frequently carried and promoted by Stormfront Radio, a service of the neo-Nazis Stormfront website.  Sponsors of The Political Cesspool  include the white separatist Council of Conservative Citizens and the Institute for Historical Review, a Holocaust denial group.

Writing for MediaMatters , Eric Hanonoki reports that:

“During the nearly twenty-five minute interview, Buchanan attacked the country’s increasing diversity and warned that America would face numerous problems when whites become a minority.”

One can’t help but wonder what proverbial line Pat Buchanan must cross before media outlets like NBC and PBS, declare him persona non grata.  Would David Duke be welcomed to the round-table discussion of the The McLaughlin Group? Would CNN or MSNBC put out the welcome-mat for Reverend Jeremiah Wright?

Considering Buchanan’s  long history of racial and ethnic incitement, how is it that he is still viewed as a legitimate, authentic, mainstream voice for the political right?  Is it because America has drifted so far to the right? Or is Buchanan is just slimy enough and chummy enough with the powers that be, that he will forever be welcomed to march on to the mainstream media stage wearing nothing more than his ethereal Nazi jack-boots and Klan hood?

By Robert Barnes, Published: August 23

Texas Gov. Rick Perry brings to the presidential race a law-and-order credential that none of his competitors can match — even if they wanted to.
In his nearly 11 years as the state’s chief executive, Perry, now running for the Republican presidential nomination, has overseen more executions than any governor in modern history: 234 and counting. That’s more than the combined total in the next two states — Oklahoma and Virginia — since the death penalty was restored 35 years ago. Texas governor announced his candidacy for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination, shaking up the Republican field.

The number is partly explained by sheer longevity at the helm of a huge state that has mastered the complicated legal maze of carrying out capital punishment. But Perry has hardly shrunk from the task. As the 2012 presidential race unfolds, Perry’s record will inevitably become part of the debate in a country where the number of death sentences handed down continues to fall and some states are renouncing executions. Polls show that capital punishment remains both popular and controversial. And although all of Perry’s main competitors, including President Obama, support the death penalty, Perry’s role stands out.

He vetoed a bill that would have spared the mentally retarded, and sharply criticized a Supreme Court ruling that juveniles were not eligible for the death penalty. He has found during his tenure only one inmate on Texas’s crowded death row he thought should receive the lesser sentence of life in prison. And Perry’s role in the 2004 execution of Cameron Todd Wil­lingham — who supporters said should have been at least temporarily spared when experts warned that faulty forensic science led to his conviction — is still the subject of investigation in Texas.

Perry has been unapologetic. “If you don’t support the death penalty and citizens packing a pistol, don’t come to Texas,” he wrote in his book lauding states’ rights, “Fed Up!” It is a bipartisan tradition. The annual rate of executions was actually higher when George W. Bush was the state’s governor, and Democratic Gov. Ann Richards oversaw 50 executions during her four-year term without ever granting clemency.

“In the big picture, it is hard to see how Perry is much different from Bush or Richards,” said Jordan Steiker, co-director of the University of Texas Law School’s Capital Punishment Center. That’s partly because Texans and their representatives give governors little room to slow down the process. Decisions to seek the death penalty are made by local prosecutors. Unlike in some states, the governor does not sign death warrants or set execution dates. The state constitution prohibits the governor from calling a moratorium on executions and allows clemency only when the Board of Pardons and Paroles recommends it, which is rarely.

Texas’s relatively streamlined process for death penalty appeals is overseen by an elected court not known for reversals. Federal lawsuits go to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit in New Orleans, which has the same reputation. “In many states, executions are blocked because the state courts, the federal courts or both are intensely hostile to capital punishment and look for any excuse to overturn convictions,” said Kent Scheidegger, legal director of the pro-death-penalty Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in California. “So the short answer to why Texas has the most executions is (1) size, and (2) not being obstructed by hostile courts.”

Still, Perry has been an aggressive advocate. He battled the Bush administration in the Supreme Court when the president tried to force state courts to review the death sentences of 51 Mexican nationals who had not been allowed to consult Mexican authorities. The court ruled in Perry’s favor, 6 to 3.

Last month, the Obama administration and governments around the world asked Perry to delay the execution of Humberto Leal Jr., a Mexican national who faced execution for raping and killing a 16-year-old in San Antonio.
Perry declined and Leal was executed July 7.
Although Leal’s innocence was not at issue, death penalty opponents say 12 men on Texas’s death row have been exonerated. Anthony Graves is the latest, spending 18 years in prison before a Texas Monthly investigation showed his innocence.

Perry signed a bill awarding Graves $1.45 million in compensation but denied his imprisonment was an indictment of the Texas system.
“He’s a good example of, you continue to find errors that were made and clear them up,” Perry told the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal. “So I think our system works well, it goes through many layers of observation and appeal, et cetera.” Such statements do not endear him to opponents of capital punishment. “We’d like to get rid of him,” said Scott Cobb of the Texas Moratorium Network, “but not by giving him to the rest of the country.”
Despite the limits on power, law professor Steiker said that “it is fair to say a Texas governor is responsible for every execution.”

If he is particularly concerned about a case, the governor may halt the process for 30 days and use the “bully pulpit” to express those doubts, Steiker said. Although a majority of the pardon board must recommend clemency, its members are appointed by Perry and beholden to him. Perry’s lone clemency decision — aside from halting executions of the mentally retarded and juveniles dictated by the Supreme Court — came in the case of a man who drove the getaway car and was not the triggerman in a murder. Perry called for the legislature to reexamine the law, but it has not been changed.
After Perry signed a law offering life without the possibility of parole as an alternative to the death penalty, the total number of death sentences in Texas dropped, as it has in other states, from 23 in 2004 to eight in 2010, according to the anti-capital-punishment Death Penalty Information Center.

But what is likely to draw the most attention as Perry campaigns is the case of Willingham, who was convicted in 1991 of setting fire to his home and killing his three young daughters. Shortly before his 2004 execution, defense attorneys gave Perry and the pardon board a report from an arson expert saying the forensic evidence used to convict Willingham was severely flawed.
Perry went ahead with the execution, and has refused to release information from his advisers about the evidence.
The state forensic science commission began to review the case and the state’s arson unit after investigative journalists cast increasing doubt on Willingham’s guilt. But just before the commission was to hear from an investigator it had hired, Perry dismissed the chairman and replaced three members of the commission.

Perry’s newly installed chairman, a prosecutor who had called Willingham a “guilty monster,” delayed the commission’s hearings and asked the attorney general for an opinion about whether the commission could actively investigate the Willingham case. Attorney General Greg Abbott (R) said last month that it could not.
Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, who unsuccessfully challenged Perry in the 2010 Republican primary, tried to make an issue of the Willingham case, accusing Perry of “trying to ramrod a covering-up.”
Perry fired back through a spokeswoman that critics “should just say so” if they oppose the death penalty for a man who killed his children and beat his wife and whose conviction had been upheld by numerous courts.
On the campaign trail last week, Perry was asked how he defended the cost and inefficiency of the death penalty.

He said it was a decision to be made by states, and “in the state of Texas, our citizens have clearly said that they support by overwhelming majority capital punishment.” If others disagree, he said, they should try to pass a constitutional amendment to halt the death penalty. “I just lay it out there as an issue for Americans,” he said. “I will suggest to you that I’m going to work a whole lot harder on a balanced budget amendment to the United States constitution than I am for an amendment that will ban capital punishment.”

Staff writer Krissah Thompson contributed to this report.

You sometimes wonder just exactly what planet are some people on.

To whom the Deficit may concern;

If I purchase a house and obtain a mortgage thru my local Dollar Bank and make payments as required, I am being a responsible person and paying my bills. I get to keep living on that particular property as long as I keep paying my mortgage payments on time. If Dollar Bank for business interest having nothing to do with the fact that I save and loaned with them, decides to sell that mortgage to another bank, say Wells Fargo with whom I don’t save, loan or bank with at all, I still have to pay my mortgage payments when they are due and not one day later without penalty, just as the original contract required me to do. My point to the Tea Party membership, just because you don’t like who is in the White House presently, doesn’t give us as a country the right to fuck over the rest of the world financially speaking and not pay bills and agreements in place long before the Black man took office. I’m just saying, it is just that simple, we must meet our obligations in spite of who runs our politics.

The End of Awe By MAUREEN DOWD Published: July 23, 2011

WEDNESDAY found both the British prime minister and the Irish taoiseach passionately addressing their parliaments about the demystified lords of their universes. Frantically distancing himself from the pope of Fleet Street, David Cameron sardonically assured riled-up lawmakers that he had never seen Rebekah Brooks in her PJs because he had not attended Gordon Brown’s wife’s slumber party at Chequers with Wendi Deng and Elisabeth Murdoch in 2008.

He conceded that he should not have ignored warnings from the palace and elsewhere against bringing a capo from the sulfurous Murdoch gang into his inner circle.
Across the Irish Sea in Dublin, Enda Kenny took on the actual pope, making a blazing speech about the Vatican’s unconscionable behavior in the pedophilia scandal.

After 17 years of revolting revelations, Kenny said the latest report on the Cloyne diocese in County Cork exposed “an attempt by the Holy See to frustrate an inquiry in a sovereign, democratic republic as little as three years ago, not three decades ago.” The report, he said, “excavates the dysfunction, disconnection, elitism, the narcissism that dominate the culture of the Vatican to this day. The rape and torture of children were downplayed or ‘managed’ to uphold, instead, the primacy of the institution, its power, standing and ‘reputation.’
“Far from listening to evidence of humiliation and betrayal with St. Benedict’s ‘ear of the heart,’ the Vatican’s reaction was to parse and analyze it with the gimlet eye of a canon lawyer. This calculated, withering position being the polar opposite of the radicalism, humility and compassion upon which the Roman church was founded.”
Pulling back the curtain to expose the profane amid the sacred would have been remarkable coming from any leader in one of the many countries scarred by pedophile priests, but from the devoutly Catholic prime minister of a nation whose constitution once enshrined the special position of the church, it was breathtaking.

The Irish were taken aback by the ire of the ordinarily amiable, soft-spoken Kenny, the longest-serving parliamentarian in the land. In his first few months as Taoiseach, the 60-year-old had not given any sign that he could throw such Zeus-style thunderbolts.
But bankrupt and battered Eire, which needed a shot of muscular national pride, was thrilled with his emphatic articulation of their revulsion at the tragedy, and his assertion of Ireland as a sovereign republic not under the thumb of Rome.

“If you look at some of his predecessors, going right back 50 years, they would have been very much of the view that they were Catholics first and politicians second,” said Diarmaid Ferriter, a professor of modern Irish history at University College Dublin.Sounding like he could have been talking about Rupert Murdoch’s fief as well, Ferriter observed: “There has been this very obvious and planned and hugely arrogant policy of obfuscation and deliberate delaying tactics and complete avoidance of responsibility on the part of the Vatican. They were actually treating the sovereign government of Ireland with complete contempt.”
He added: “We’re fed up with hearing about canon law. This is a Republic, it’s about civil law.”

Garry O’Sullivan, the editor of The Irish Catholic, compared the resonance of the speech to the French revolution, without the violence. “The French Republic didn’t kick out the Catholic Church, but they set up a French Catholic Church and kicked out Rome,” he said. “Kenny has tapped into a vein in the Irish psyche, people saying, ‘Well done for standing up to those bloody bishops and the pope.’ It was lancing a boil.”

Like other elites in shaken Ireland, like the multimillionaire bankers and real estate developers, the church elite is rapidly losing clout. “The mighty have fallen from their thrones,” O’Sullivan said.
Diarmuid Martin, the archbishop of Dublin, who has been frozen out by the Vatican and his fellow Irish bishops for his tender solicitude toward abuse victims, teared up on Irish TV talking about Kenny’s cri de coeur.

What church “cabal” is this in the Vatican or Ireland, he asked, “who try to undermine what is being done, or simply refuse to understand what is being done?”
In Britain and in Ireland, two dictatorial institutions that once dominated with fearsome power are crumbling, brought low by highhanded cultures inured even to crimes against children.

A large part of the strategy of the Vatican and Rupert Murdoch in acquiring power was to create an aura of invincibility, a hallowed mystique. But those mythologies are cracking, and people are no longer afraid to confront these empires’ corrupt practices and vast cover-ups.
It is stirring to watch people who have long been cowed finally speaking up, shedding their fear of the authoritarian men at the top who owed their power to the awe of the people.