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Banned
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Originally Posted by roachboy
sometimes i wonder if this kind of thing is but a test of limits, the christian right checking to see how far it can go.
that would be my optimistic self speaking.
that would be optimism, then.
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No....roachboy, this could be a watershed moment in American politics that we are witnessing......the "people of faith" have gone over the top. We can only hope that after their "telecast" tomorrow, and after the outcome of the senate fillibuster showdown, like Robert E. Lee, after Gettysburg, they will declare victory, but retreat with a wagon train full of wounded, 17 miles long, never to be as formidable of a force again.
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<a href="http://www.pueblo.gsa.gov/cic_text/misc/gettysburg/text.htm">http://www.pueblo.gsa.gov/cic_text/misc/gettysburg/text.htm</a>
End of Invasion
Lee, as he looked over the desolate field of dead and wounded and the broken remnants of his once-powerful army still ready for renewed battle, must have realized that not only was Gettysburg lost, but that eventually it might all end this way. Meade did not counterattack, as expected. The following day, July 4, the two armies lay facing each other, exhausted and torn.
Late on the afternoon of July 4, Lee began an orderly retreat. The wagon train of wounded, 17 miles in length, guarded by Imboden's cavalry, started homeward through Greenwood and Greencastle.
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In teh meantime..........
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<a href="http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/news_columnists/article/0,1299,DRMN_86_3723559,00.html">http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/news_columnists/article/0,1299,DRMN_86_3723559,00.html</a>
Littwin: Angry Salazar focuses his wrath on Dobson
April 23, 2005
Ken Salazar is a person of faith. We know that much about him.
I mean, if you're a politician and you call out James Dobson's Focus on the Family, you've got to be a major believer - and in something other than poll numbers.
But what surprises me is that Salazar - the same not-exactly-ferocious Ken Salazar we've known for years - would have enough faith in himself and his political future to take on Dobson, Focus on the Family and, conceivably, every evangelical Christian that tunes in Dobson on the radio.
Salazar doesn't see it that way. He says he had no choice.
Look, it's not just faith you need to determine that people do occasionally recognize a demagogue when they see one. Or that many Americans know the difference between democracy and theocracy, even if we're shaky on the original Greek.
And you don't need faith - just a close look - to see the battle over judicial nominations and filibusters in the U.S. Senate is not a war against "people of faith."
How presumptuous is the "people of faith" label anyway? Whose faith exactly? Your faith? My faith? The guy who wears his faith on the sleeve of his America-Is-The-Great-Satan T-shirt?
Salazar has seen the presumption up close. He's seen it in full-page ads. He is a devout Catholic, who will tell you he reads the Bible daily and that Focus on the Family has no monopoly on belief.
He says it slowly, measuring each word. It's the punch that surprises you.
"I was attacked," Salazar said after landing at DIA Friday afternoon. "They took out full-page ads against me. They were on the radio. I don't think it's right when they question my faith or the faith of my colleagues because they don't get their way 100 percent of the time - just 96 percent."
The Democrats like to point out that Bush has gotten 96 percent of his judicial appointments confirmed. Republicans like to point out that Salazar had campaigned against filibustering judicial appointees.
It took him a while to admit he'd changed his mind. Now Salazar doesn't seem to mind that anyone has noticed.
We all understand the stakes here. The battle over the judiciary is getting as nasty as it has been since the days of the "Impeach Earl Warren" bumper sticker, which, for you youngsters out there, was in the very early stages of political bumper stickers.
For nastiness, you can always go to Tom DeLay, who never met a judge whose motives he couldn't question. In the wake of the Terri Schiavo case, he would threaten (it always sounds like a threat when DeLay is talking), "The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior."
It became easy enough for Salazar to become engaged. The big story, after all, is in the Senate showdown - whether Democrats try a filibuster to block seven extremely conservative Bush judicial nominees and, if they do, whether Republicans counter by voting out the filibuster for judicial nominations.
This is a liberal vs. conservative showdown, which doesn't explain how it becomes a holy war. In my reading of the Bible, filibustering judicial appointments never comes up. I read the Book of Judges twice, just to make sure.
But it is a holy war. Ask the people from the Family Research Council who are making that point in a telecast Sunday - with speakers ranging from James Dobson to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist - saying those opposing the appointment of certain conservative judges also oppose "people of faith."
For Democrats, as somebody said, the problem isn't lack of faith but a lack of arithmetic. They can't count to 51 votes. Thus the filibuster.
If Republicans take away the filibuster and Democrats shut down the Senate - and that's the threat from each side - no one knows for sure which side the public will take. But Dobson and company are ready to tell us which side God is on.
It's bad enough when Alberto Gonzales is nominated as attorney general, and someone suggests his opponents are anti-Hispanic, as if the real issue might not have been the torture memos.
But when a Focus on the Family spokesman said that opposition to William Pryor, a judge who happens to be Catholic, is anti-Catholic, Salazar took it personally.
He fired off an angry letter to Dobson, in which he included the fact that one of Dobson's board members had called Catholicism "a false church" that "teaches a false gospel."
In interviews, Salazar would accuse Focus on the Family of strong-arming the political process. He warned of a theocracy.
Suddenly, you can't predict what Salazar might do. He has made votes that have angered liberals. He has directly taken on a huge conservative constituency. And even now, Salazar hasn't said how he'll vote if there's a filibuster. For that matter, he hasn't said how he'd vote on any of the controversial judges.
Some have suggested that there's a Democratic strategy at work- that Salazar has the perfect credentials to make this case. But there has to be more than strategy for Salazar. He didn't simply take on those in the religious right. He has done it on their own terms.
"I am very serious about my faith," he said. "I don't think it's right for a powerful evangelical group to point their guns at people of faith."
He said it with both barrels firing.
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