26 April: And Justice For All...
While I've certainly not been as news-hound-y as I typically am during this Honeymoon in Paris, there was one political happening back in the US that I was curious about how it was playing out. In our trip to Le Buci to check in on email and Web news stories today, I grabbed as much as I could about "Justice Sunday -- Stopping The Filibuster Against People of Faith"--the rally that The Right Rev. Dr. Bill (I'm Really a Medical Doctor) Frist (in 2008) lent his videotaped time to. I mentioned it in a previous post, but here's a refresher from Salon:

The message of Justice Sunday was that the Senate's filibuster of some of Bush's judicial nominees constitutes discrimination against "people of faith." Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who delivered a speech by video, tried to distance himself from this inflammatory assertion, but his participation spoke much louder than the wan caveats offered in his remarks. He lent his authority and credibility to the parade of right-wing celebrities who are using the parliamentary stalemate over judges as an excuse to tar Democrats as, essentially, enemies of God. Thousands crowded the megachurch in Louisville, while others watched via satellite in hundreds of churches nationwide. Still more tuned in online and through Christian TV and radio. They heard from Focus on the Family's James Dobson, the Family Research Council's Tony Perkins, Watergate felon turned evangelist Chuck Colson and a handful of others.

And let's remember, folks, the rumblings over this possible Holy War are over seven judges (though 10 is the number used most--10 judges were blocked by Democrats during Bush's first four-year term; the President has renominated seven of them for this term).

The language on Sunday was consistently apocalyptic. Dobson, the avuncular culture warrior, declared, "I think this is one of the most significant issues we've ever faced as a nation, because the future of democracy and ordered liberty actually depends on the outcome of this struggle." After all, the Supreme Court is responsible for "the biggest holocaust in world history" -- the legalization of abortion. "For 44 years, the Supreme Court has been on a campaign to limit religious freedom," Dobson said. He continued, "We do have a right to participate in this great representative form of government." From the way the crowd cheered, you'd have thought someone had told them they didn't. Conflating the right to participate with the right to evangelize, Mohler said, "We are not calling for people to be moral, we want them to be believers in the Lord Jesus Christ." That's a valid position for a religious figure to take, perhaps, but since Mohler also argued that Christians can't separate their public responsibilities from their spiritual obligations, it seemed as if he was arguing for the right of judges to impose Christianity. If so, the real problem isn't discrimination against "people of faith." It's the claim that "people of faith" have the right to discriminate.

The AP article on Justice Sunday soft-peddaled Frist's involvment a bit:

A potential candidate for the White House in 2008, the Tennessee Republican made no overt mention of religion in a brief address taped for a rally Sunday evening in Louisville, Ky., according to a text of his remarks released before the event. Instead, Frist seemed intent on steering clear of the views expressed by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, and other conservatives in and out of Congress who have urged investigations and even possible impeachment of judges they describe as activists.

To which Hunter at Daily Kos notes:

I'd like to point out, yet again, that whether or not Frist "makes mention of religion" in his taped endorsement of the event doesn't enter into it, and you'd have to be a special kind of stupid to think that that somehow represents moderation. The point is that the entire event is branded around the false and extremely offensive notions that the objections to these particular judicial nominations are based on religious prejudice, and that Americans who don't subscribe to this one particular subcult of far-far-right Schiavoism are therefore not religious, not Christians, and not legitimate voices in the theocracy-to-be that the Dobsons of the world demand America become.

As this story gets out in the public more and more, the public seems to be turning on the Republicans. Here are some numbers from the Washington Post:

The Senate has confirmed 35 federal appeals court judges nominated by Bush, while Senate Democrats have blocked 10 others. Do you think the Senate Democrats are right or wrong to block these nominations? Right 48 Wrong 36 Would you support or oppose changing Senate rules to make it easier for the Republicans to confirm Bush's judicial nominees? Support 26 Oppose 66

Which is making the Republicans turn to the Frank Luntz playbook of changing the terminology of an issue to better sell it or to avoid negatives (back to Salon:

The Republicans like to call their plan to kill the filibuster the "constitutional option," and they're trying hard to distance themselves from the less savory term by which the move is generally known. On Sunday, Frist said that if Democrats in the Senate continue to "obstruct" votes on the president's judicial nominees, the Republicans "will consider what opponents call the 'nuclear option.'" But it's not just "opponents" who call the nuclear option the nuclear option. As Atrios notes, Frist seems to have used the term "nuclear option" pretty regularly as recently as November. And as Josh Marshall points out, the New Yorker says that the term was invented not by the Democrats but by none other than former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, who understood the explosive nature ofg ending the filibuster. As John McCain, who opposes the nuclear option, once said, "It's not called 'nuclear' for nothing."

And this from Hunter at Daily Kos:

Straight from the bowels of the usual GOP strategists, the Constitutional Option is indecipherably vague, and presented in such a manner as to practically require stapling an American Flag to your forehead while saying it. This is how the GOP has approached national politics for the last few elections: no matter what your agenda is, (1) give it an impossibly abstract name, and (2) hide the actual issue behind that name -- bringing us things like the I Love Baby Eagles Initiative, or the Free America Freedom Liberty Freedom Act to Preserve Freedom. And it's utterly effective, except when the American public already knows about the issue in question. That's why the GOP Social Security initiatives are bombing -- no matter what they call it, the general public is already keenly aware of what Social Security is and what it does for them.

Despite the fact that Frist now disavows usage of the "nuclear" terminology, he wasn't shy about using it previously (via Atrios):

On November 14, 2004, there was the following exchange on Fox News: WALLACE: Well, let me ask you about one of them, because some Republicans are talking about what they call the nuclear option, and that would be a ruling that the filibuster of executive nominees is unconstitutional, which would require not 60 or 67 votes but only a simple majority of 51. FRIST: Yes. That's right. WALLACE: Are you prepared to do that? FRIST: Oh, it's clearly one of the options. I've always said it's one of the options. What it basically -- it's called the nuclear option. It's really a constitutional option. And what that means is that the Constitution says you, as a Senate, give advice and consent, and that is a majority vote. And then you vote on that, and that takes 50 votes to pass. On November 16 he said to NPR: Sen. FRIST: If we continue to see obstruction where one out of three of the president's nominees to fill vacancies in the circuit court are being obstructed, then action would be taken. One of those is the nuclear option. The Constitution says advice and consent is the Senate's responsibility; the president's responsibility to it is to a point, and therefore, if the Constitution says `advice and consent,' by 50 votes you can decide to give advice and consent. Will we have to do that? I can't tell you, but I can tell you if obstructions are to continue like they have in the past, that clearly is an option that we have on the table.

Well, enough about scary theocratic American politics--back to the wine and cheese.

PS - this might have been our last trip to Le Buci. The waiter who served us on Sunday was being rather snotty with the wi-fi access card (more on that in another post), so we'll probably try another establishment (which was probably his true aim).