The Right Wing's War on the Judiciary

Today brings a new USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll which shows a growing nervousness on the part of the American public about the influence (i.e., bullying) of the Religious Right, particularly the intrusion of their (vastly superior) "morality" into the judicial system.

Today also brings the start of a two-day Washington conference being called "Confronting the Judicial War on Faith," dreamed up by a Texas Southern Baptist preacher named Rick Scarborough. Scarborough was on C-SPAN this a.m. promoting his website, StopActivistJudges, and proclaiming his fealty to Tom DeLay, the greatest Christian in the U.S. Congress (who unfortunately, and by the way, won't be able to attend and speak at Scarborough's little conference because, you know, he has to attend the Pope's funeral instead, plus maybe DeLay feels the need right now to lower his profile a little on the topic of threatening judges with divine retribution).

Big topics at "Confronting the Judicial War on Faith" include "the removal of Terri Schiavo's feeding tube, homosexual marriage, taking God out of the pledge of allegiance, bans on 10 commandments monuments, abortion on demand, and prohibiting school prayer." Reading that list makes us aware of at least two things: this bunch can't (or won't) make any distinctions between right-wing talking points and the way the law works, and they're blaming judges not so much for what judges do as for everything they don't approve of in American culture.

Rev. Rick Scarborough has been a busy soldier for Christ. He founded Vision America to encourage more preachers to impose themselves on the political process. Or to be a little more precise, he founded Vision America to mobilize more fundamentalist preachers to turn out the vote for Republicans, which he considers the surest route to Christian "dominion" over the nation. His big hero is Tom DeLay.

Here's some of the Rev. Scarborough's rhetoric: "Judicial activists are running rampant and a God-free country is their goal .... All means to turn the tide must be considered, including their removal." "All means ... must be considered"? No wonder Tom DeLay is his hero.

Even among Texas Baptists, Rev. Scarborough has been considered something of a wing-nut. In 1996 he ran for president of Texas Baptists against a "moderate" he had severely criticized. Texas Baptists chose the moderate by a wide margin.

"Dominion" is a favorite word among these cats, and they want nothing less than a theocracy. In fact, Scarborough apparently made great strides in Pearland, Texas, in taking over the local city council and the school board, at least temporarily in the late 1990s. But the good reverend doesn't mention those electoral victories today, mainly because they came to grief fairly quickly: "Scarborough-backed officials have been soundly rejected at the polls recently, and one of his cronies, Pearland City Manager Paul Grohman, was fired in 1998 under a cloud of scandal. Scarborough currently has no representation on the city council or school board. One Scarborough critic in Pearland told Church & State flatly, 'That church will never, ever have any influence in this city again. That's over.' "

Theocracy is what Vision America is all about. And you can get a good dose of where they want to take America by tuning in Scarborough's "Judicial War on Faith" conference today on C-SPAN, starting at 1 p.m.