Justin's Political Corner
Phyllis Schlafly has been going all out in opposition to comprehensive immigration reform, warning that would be “suicide for the GOP” and that it’s all part of President Obama’s plan to “destroy our system.”
So it makes sense that this month’s “Phyllis Schlafly Report” is devoted entirely to opposing immigration reform. In particular, Schlafly is worried that immigration authorities aren’t “vetting” immigration applicants to “make sure that the applicant really wants to become an American.” This, she claims, is more necessary than in the past because “the immigrants of earlier generations, Irish, Italian, Jewish, etc., certainly did want to be Americans; like Irving Berlin, their attitude was God Bless America.”
Schlafly is concerned as well that immigrants be made to “accept the rule that disputes in our courts must be decided according to U.S. law, not any foreign law,” a nod to the Right’s bogus “Sharia law” conspiracy theory.
h/t: RWW
Eagle Forum wants its members to know that the Christian conservative groups backing comprehensive immigration reform are reading their Bibles wrong. In an email to members today, Phyllis Schlafly’s group states in bold print, “Scripture is clear on many things, but a sovereign nation’s immigration policy is not one of them. There is no biblical mandate for mass Amnesty for illegal aliens.”
Biblical prescriptions for “kindness and compassion to ‘strangers’ or ‘sojourners’” are meant only for people who are “in a foreign land temporarily,” the group clarifies. In addition, this is “not a command to the government.”
The email goes on to assure readers that “it is not racist, isolationist, nativist, or xenophobic” to oppose immigration reform.
h/t: Right Wing Watch
Eagle Forum founder Phyllis Schlafly dropped by the Steve Malzberg Show on NewsMax TV recently to discuss the bipartisan Gang of Eight’s efforts on comprehensive immigration reform. Schlafly told Malzberg that creating a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants would be “suicide for the Republican Party because they’re going to vote Democratic.” Schlafly predicts that immigrants will vote for Democrats “because they come from a country where there’s no tradition or expectation of limited government” and “think government should be there to give orders and solve their problems and give them a handout when they need it.”
H/T: RWW
Eagle Forum founder and Joseph McCarthy admirer Phyllis Schlafly is using the Boston Marathon bombings as an excuse to push for the reinstatement of the notorious House Committee on Un-American Activities.
“It would be useful to reinstate the House Committee on Un-American Activities,” Schlafly wrote in a column yesterday, “so we can have a look at those in our midst who may be jihadists, dupes of violent Muslim indoctrination, or (in old Communist lingo) fellow travelers or useful idiots.”
In her column, which she titled, “Are You American 1st or Muslim 1st?,” Schlafly further argues that while it is okay to be a Christian first and American second, Muslims who put faith first should not be allowed in the country.
H/T: Right Wing Watch
Phyllis Schlafly wants America to get “back to basics.” And when it comes to preventing “marriage mayhem,” that means talking about sodomy, which is “a central feature of same-sex marriage.”
Specifically, it means talking about sodomy in the “Anglo American legal tradition,” from its criminalization in English common law as early as 1533 through the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1986 decision in Bowers v Hardwick upholding state sodomy laws. In Schlafly’s April 15 Eagle Forum missive she admiringly quotes from Chief Justice Warren Burger’s concurrence in Bowers, in which he quotes 18th Century commentator William Blackstone to the effect that sodomy is worse than rape.
But all this grand history was upended, Schlafly complains, with the Supreme Court’s “anti-tradition” decision in Lawrence v Texas, which overturned state sodomy laws and upheld the privacy and sexual freedom of consenting adults. And that, she says, has led to the marriage equality cases currently being considered by the Court. Not surprisingly, Schlafly has strong opinions on those cases:
If the pro-homosexual rights forces win, that which is natural to the human race —marriage — is destroyed, and our venerable Constitution and legal tradition are slammed by Humanistic forces wanting to reconstruct American law and society on an anti-Judeo-Christian foundation.
Of course, Schlafly has her own “traditional” views about rape. She has repeatedly denounced the concept of marital rape, saying that “when you get married you have consented to sex. That’s what marriage is all about.”
H/T: Right Wing Watch
With Republican Party leaders pushing a plan for the GOP to broaden its appeal by softening its stance on social issues, a group of leading social conservatives sent a letter to RNC Chairman Reince Priebus promising an exodus from the party if it stops opposing gay marriage.
But in the letter, the signatories — who included Eagle Forum founder Phyllis Schlafly, former presidential candidate Gary Bauer, and Focus on the Family’s James Dobson — also expressed indignation that anyone would suggest they haven’t been nice to gays — or “homosexuals,” as they say.
“We deeply resent the insinuation that we have treated homosexuals unkindly personally,” they wrote.
So, of course, we had to dig through the archives to find some of the uniquely kind things these conservative activists have said about gays and lesbians over the years.
Schlafly, who has a gay son, may believe she’s kind to homosexuals, but she doesn’t respect them. She made that clear in a 2010 interview where she outlined her opposition to gay marriage, something Schlafly and many of the others who signed the letter to Priebus have fought tooth and nail.
step further. Not only does he not respect gays, he doesn’t want them to respect themselves. Wildmon made this clear in a 2010 statement criticizing a Gay Pride parade that had a 10-year-old grand marshal.
“There is nothing about homosexual conduct to be proud of, and much to be ashamed of,” said Wildmon.
Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, who also signed the letter, is also not a fan of Gay Pride celebrations. He made this clear in a 2012 broadcast on the AFA’s radio network in which he implied being gay is similar to being an alcoholic or unfaithful to one’s spouse.
“The month of June is Gay Pride Month. Now, I have not yet seen where they have declared Adultery Pride Month, I have not seen where they have declared the Drunkenness Pride Month,” Perkins said. “Whether it’s adultery, whether it’s any type of sexual immorality it’s a problem, but we’re not celebrating those other forms as a society, we’re not promoting it and teaching it as normal in our schools.”
How kind!
The signatories of the letter have also blamed gays and lesbians for all sorts of societal ills. An2012 “action alert” from the AFA said gays are damaging to your health.
“Homosexuality is a poor and dangerous choice, and has been proven to lead to a litany of health hazards to not only the individuals but also society as a whole,” the alert said.
Another AFA radio personality who signed the letter, Sandy Rios, used her time on the organization’s airwaves to blame gays and lesbians for all sorts of societal ills. In February 2012, she said gay friendly school programs were responsible for falling test scores.
“Whether they are teaching radical environmentalism or homosexuality. Can you imagine that they are teaching this instead of math and science? … That’s the reason our test scores are so shockingly low compared with the world.”
Just under nine months later, Rios upped the ante.
“They are clamoring for gay marriage,” said Rios of LGBT activists. “Of course it isn’t just gay marriage, it’s instruction, explicit instruction in public schools, it’s really I think the rape of our children’s innocence.”
Dobson, ever so kindly and politely, of course, managed to accuse LGBT activists of causing something even more dramatic than raping young minds — the total destruction of our world.
“Homosexuals are not monogamous. They want to destroy the institution of marriage, Dobson said at a 2004 rally in Oklahoma. “It will destroy marriage. It will destroy the Earth.”
The signatories have also accused gays and lesbians of wanting to attack American values. InMarch of this year, Wildmon said gay marriage could have a disastrous effect on the founding fathers’ vision for this country.
“Condoning sexual immorality and same-sex marriage may be a good way to make political friends, but it is diametrically opposed to the Word of God. The American Family Association is concerned more about the future of America and how moving away from God’s purpose and intent for marriage destroys the foundations of our Republic.”
Another signatory, Reverend Louis P. Sheldon, authored a book on the “homosexual plan to change America” in 2005 that described the gay “deathstyle” as being driven by angry, unpatriotic individuals.
Perhaps the kindest words of all came from Bauer in 1999 after the Vermont Supreme Court ruled gay couples should have the same legal protections afforded to married couples.
“I think what the Vermont Supreme Court did last week was in some ways worse than terrorism,” Bauer said.
Apparently, President Obama and John Brennan aren’t the only secret Muslim agents in the administration.
Yesterday, Vic Eliason of Voice of Christian Youth America interviewed Eagle Forum founder Phyllis Schlafly about Chuck Hagel, who is set to be confirmed as secretary of defense later today. Adding to the other ridiculous, last-ditch efforts to sink Hagel’s nomination, Eliason asked Schlafly about wild allegations “that Mr. Hagel has become or has been a part of Islam, he’s Islamic.” Rather than specifically address Eliason’s question, Schlafly said that since Obama “gives a pass to Islam” in “his attack on religion,” Americans “have to be on guard on that all the time.”
The two then went on to praise Hagel-critic Jerome Corsi of WorldNetDaily, who must be taking a break from his usual endeavors of exposing Obama’s foreign birthplace, secret Muslim faith and gay past.
Later, Schlafly compared the American policy of Cold War deterrence to the current policy for “dealing with the Islam,” while noting that “the Muslims are different” than the Soviets as “they seem to like to commit suicide.”
Schlafly’s classification of all Muslims as terrorists was part of a bizarre argument that criticized Hagel for supposedly seeking to do away with America’s nuclear arsenal that she claims we need to scare terrorists who also are not at all afraid of our nuclear weapons.
Schlafly: I want to point out one difference between dealing with the Communists and dealing with the Islam. When the Communists in Russia were in charge we had a policy called mutually assured destruction which we called MAD and it was that they knew that if they dropped a bomb on New York City we’d hit back and wipe them out and that was supposed to deter them from doing any bad attack. But the Muslims are different; they seem to like to commit suicide. I don’t think they are going to be deterred by that type of an attitude and we have to make sure that we have the weapons that are enough to scare them that they never attack in the first place.
h/t: Brian Tashman at RWW
As the Obama administration continues to be a complete nightmare for antifeminist activist Phyllis Schlafly, the Eagle Forum president is out with a new column attacking Defense Secretary Leon Panetta over his decision to end the ban on women in combat. She claims the policy shift is “lacking in common sense and it is toadying to the feminist officers who yearn to be 3- and 4-star generals based on the feminist dogma of gender interchangeability and on their desire to force men into situations to be commanded by feminists” and even makes a bogus analogy to the NFL.
Schlafly said that the rate of sexual assaults “will skyrocket” if the ban is removed and also attacked the “feminist ideology” for blaming men for such incidents: “Only men will be deemed at fault because it is feminist ideology that men are innately batterers and women are victims.”
H/T: Right Wing Watch
After warning that a decline in the white birth rate will lead to the demise of American culture, Eagle Forum is now attacking racial and religious minorities for supposedly trying to “tear down traditional American culture” and “undermine Americanism.” As Kyle noted yesterday, Roger Schlafly (son of Eagle Forum founder Phyllis Schlafly) is taking a page from Bill O’Reilly in blaming President Obama’s re-election on Democrats who have been “badmouthing traditional American values” and “increasing government dependence.” Schlafly, who earlier claimed that people should fear that “immigrants do not share American values” and “will not be voting Republican,” writes that Republicans and WASP culture are the last bastions of “traditional American values” against “non-whites, non-Christians, and non-marrieds.”
h/t: Brian Tashman at RWW
In late September, a month after his remarks about “legitimate rape” sent shock waves through the country, Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin addressed a St. Louis conference convened by Eagle Forum founder Phyllis Schlafly, one of Akin’s most ardent defenders. In his speech, Akin wasn’t at all apologetic about his claim that women are unable to become pregnant in cases of “legitimate rape.” Instead, he argued that “political correctness” had caused him to face greater backlash than Bill Clinton, “who was accused of doing something wrong, as opposed to saying something wrong.”
“It surprised me that the saying it wrong almost seems like it’s worse than the doing it wrong,” he said. Clinton, of course, was impeached. And Akin’s comments on abortion and rape are indeed reflected in his actions, such as his attempt to redefine rape and participation in militant anti-abortion rights activism.
He went on to compare criticism of his remarks to decapitation by Islamic extremists: “We see that all the time with [what] the Islamists pull out on us: we’re offended so we’re going to cut your head off.”
h/t: Brian Tashman at RWW
HANNIBAL, Mo. • Todd Akin has repeatedly apologized to Missouri and the nation for suggesting that victims of “legitimate rape” can’t get pregnant.
But he wasn’t making any apologies recently to the students at Hannibal-LaGrange University, a private Christian college nestled in Mark Twain’s home town.
When asked to address the controversy to an auditorium full of students, the Republican congressman abandoned the penance-seeking stance he’d offered in the secular world. Surrounded by enthusiastically Christian young people, Akin defined the conflict much differently.
“That was just a reaction to somebody who is pro-life,” he told them.
It was, of course, more than that. Many pro-life Republicans run for the U.S. Senate, as Akin is doing, but few find the national leaders of their own party lined up against them and demanding that they quit.
Still, Akin’s wider point was clear: Even in the religious wing of America’s conservative major party, he’s viewed by many as too religious and too conservative.
Those designations don’t appear to bother him.
Arguably back from the dead in his campaign against Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill, but still the underdog, Akin on the campaign trail continues to stake out positions that are well to the right of most Americans and many in his own party. He’s unapologetic in his opposition to federally backed college loans, school lunches, labor laws, the minimum wage, business regulations, the U.S. Department of Education and a host of other governmental functions.
“We’re facing a choice of two Americas, and two totally different directions that the country is going to go,” he said in a recent interview. “One of them is based on a faith in a lot of big government. I, on the other hand, have an extreme skepticism of the effectiveness of government on a lot of functions that government is trying to do.”
His comments to students in Hannibal recently were illustrative:
On gay marriage: “The purpose of marriage is one man and woman. What are they doing? They’re creating the next generation of citizens.”
On economic policy: “The economy is connected to the virtue of our character.
On abortion: “I believe life starts at conception … The question we need to ask (pro-choice forces) is, `When do you think life starts?’ ”
On his own political career: “I was asking the Lord, `What’s the next step going to be?’ And I felt He was guiding me in the direction of government.”
Akin, 65, a devout Presbyterian who was educated in a seminary and home-schooled his children, routinely begins campaign events with a prayer. He seldom lets a public appearance go by without a reference or three to God. He presents himself not as a politician with religious beliefs, but rather as a believer who also happens to be in politics.
“One of these days I’m going to take a class in political science to find out what I’m doing,” he joked with the Hannibal students.
His unabashed mixing of politics and religion is well received by the conservative audiences Akin is mostly sticking to these days. Students at Hannibal-LaGrange applauded warmly during Akin’s speech.
Whatever his critics hurl at Akin, there is almost universal agreement that he believes what he says, especially about his religious faith and his deep distrust of government.
“He certainly is a strong Christian,” says Phyllis Schlafly, a conservative activist who has emerged as one of Akin’s top defenders. “We can count on him to do what he thinks is right, despite all kinds of pressure.”
Akin’s overt religiosity can be a strategic advantage.
“The evangelical vote is enormous. It’s about 38 percent in this state,” says Ken Warren, political scientist at St. Louis University. “He’ll probably get close to 80 percent of it. That’s a huge bloc.
“He has no hope of winning the middle, so he has to get out as much of his base as possible.”
That strategy was in play at one Chesterfield campaign event last month. The opening prayer was a mix of religion and politics, asking God for protection for Akin from “slander and falsehood of his political opponents,” and for “a victory this fall.”
A succession of female speakers, including Schlafly, fervently disputed the Democratic narrative of Akin as poster-child for an alleged GOP “war on women.”
“(The real) `war on women’ … is pornography, it is sex trafficking, it is abortion,” said one of the speakers, Heather Kesselring of St. Louis. She told the women in the audience to “do what women do best, and that is talk to other women. We want to share the heart and the truth about Todd Akin.”
Akin’s political problems with women stem, of course, from his remark about “legitimate rape.” It was in an interview that aired Aug. 19 on KTVI, the St. Louis Fox affiliate. Interviewer Charles Jaco asked Akin about his hard-line stance on abortion, favoring a prohibition even in cases of rape or incest.
Akin answered: “First of all, from what I understand from doctors, (pregnancy) is really rare (in rape cases). If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”
Medically, the comment had no basis in fact, as Akin himself would ultimately acknowledge. But his repeated apologies didn’t stop national Republican leaders from abandoning him in droves.
That in turn opened up another Akin strategy that has had some success on the trail: to run against “the party bosses” in the GOP.
“It probably is a reasonable strategy,” says Warren, the SLU professor, because Akin’s base includes a lot of Tea Party voters who don’t consider themselves tied to traditional Republican leadership. “He’s standing up to his own party. That plays well in the Show-Me State.”
Another strategy, of course, has been to attack McCaskilll.
He has kept his central attack away from abortion, focusing instead on his claims that McCaskill is pro-tax, pro-regulation and pro-big government.
“We have a choice of more freedom and more jobs and less government,” Akin told the Post-Dispatch editorial board this month. “I believe the approach that Claire is taking is an approach that has proven to limit jobs, limit freedom , increase taxes and more government… . If I was Senator, I would go in the other direction.”
But since Akin made the comments on abortion, no strategy has resulted in big fundraising totals. In the most recent three-month reporting period for contributions, Akin took in just $1.6 million, less than a third of McCaskill’s $5.8 million haul over the same period.
The records show Akin’s money is coming in from all over the country, indicating that the controversy has spawned support for him from conservatives nationwide.
h/t: STLToday.com
Eagle Forum’s Phyllis Schlafly believes that Al Franken never would have been elected to the U.S. Senate in 2008 if Minnesota had a voter ID law and that there is now “reason enough for the U.S. Senate to use its constitutional power in Article I, Section 5 to unseat Franken.” Franken won by a mere 225 votes against incumbent Norm Coleman, but Schlafly says in her latest column that it’s because felons cast illegal votes to push him over the top and that only Voter ID laws, which she claims are beloved by minorities, can remedy the situation.
Schlafly cited a report by the right-wing organization Minnesota Majority; however, the study has been largely dismissed as “frivolous” by experts, who also note that voter ID laws will do nothing to stop convicted felons from voting illegally and that the report’s “data include cases associated with the 2010 election, and are not limited to cases involving felons who voted illegally.” People For the American Way’s report The Right to Vote Under Attack also observes that Minnesota’s “Supreme Court wrote in its decision affirming Franken’s victory that neither Franken nor his opponent claimed voter fraud took place and ‘found no allegations or evidence of fraud or foul play and no evidence to suggest that the Election Day totals from the precinct are unreliable.’” Not to mention, how would Schlafly know that nearly every single felon who voted in Minnesota supported Franken?
After all was said and done, Minnesota discovered that 289 convicted felons had voted illegally in Hennepin County, 52 had voted illegally in Ramsey County, and many others voted illegally who were dead or who voted multiple times. That is reason enough for the U.S. Senate to use its constitutional power in Article I, Section 5 to unseat Franken.
…
Minorities are actually among those most eager to implement photo ID. Former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young said, “You cannot be part of the mainstream of American life today without a photo ID.” The sponsor of Rhode Island’s photo ID law was Harold Metts, who is the only African-American in the state senate.
Just think of all the many occasions when we all must show photo ID: when stopped by the police for a traffic violation, to make a credit card purchase, to check in for any medical treatment, to check into a hotel room, or to board an airplane. Isn’t it just as important to assure that only American citizens are allowed to vote, and to prevent non-citizens from canceling out your vote, and to prevent crooks from voting twice or voting in the name of a dead person who is still registered?
h/t: Brian Tashman at RWW
Back in July, Eagle Forum Collegians hosted their 2012 Annual Leadership Summit at the Heritage Foundation where Rep. Michele Bachmann delivered a speech warning of the Muslim Brotherhood’s supposed infiltration of the U.S. government, her baseless pet cause. Bachmann told attendees that the Obama administration’s meeting with an Egyptian lawmaker, who was vetted by the Secret Service and both the State Department and Department of Homeland Security, was part of a string of “outrageous, unbelievable actions on the part of the administration to allow influence by the Muslim Brotherhood at the highest levels of power: the State Department, the White House, the Pentagon, the FBI.”
She then attacked the media for “saying we’re going after individual personalities and that we’re being mean to Muslims.” But Bachmann did in fact specifically name individuals, including Secretary Clinton’s deputy chief of staff, and other Muslims serving in the administration as part of a witch hunt denounced by Democratic and Republican leaders alike, including the Republican Speaker of the House and the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Bachmann went on to explain that “every day I’m in trouble for something, who cares, who cares?”
Later, the Congresswoman suggested that attendees read “everything Phyllis Schlafly has ever written,” calling her an “absolute genius,” and also recommended books by extremist commentator Ann Coulter and disgraced pseudo-historian David Barton.
h/t: Brian Tashman at RWW
One of the main stories to come out of the 2012 London Olympics was the outright dominance of American female athletes, another sign of the success of the Title IX, which barred discrimination between men’s and women’s educational programs and is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year. But Title IX has always provoked the ire of Phyllis Schlafly and the Eagle Forum. In a radio alert today, Schlafly claims Title IX in fact “weakened our competitiveness” at the Olympics.
The US won 104 medals in London (58 for women and 45 for men), which Schlafly believes shows that male athletes suffered a severe injustice. “Feminist-imposed gender quotas hurt us at the Olympics in events which our Nation once dominated,” Schlafly claims, “While our Nation won the most medals for the fifth consecutive Summer Olympics, many of our medals were in contests of dubious value like beach volleyball. Title IX quotas have hurt our competitiveness in sports that are most helpful to the development of our young men.” Schlafly points to the US failure to win medals in wrestling as a sign of Title IX’s allegedly disastrous impact; however, throughout Olympic history the US has never dominated wrestling in the Olympics” And while Schlafly believes that the policy wreaked havoc on male collegiate sports, female athletes and women’s teams still receive significantly less financial support compared to their male peers.
But although tens of thousands of high schools have thriving wrestling programs for boys, at the college level Title IX gender quotas have cancelled wrestling at all but a fraction of colleges. Many hundreds of successful college men’s wrestling programs have been eliminated, not for financial reasons, but due to Title IX gender quotas. These quotas typically require that the percentage of men and women in intercollegiate sports at a college equal the percentage of men and women enrolled as students, even though many colleges have become 60% women and only 40% men.
H/T: Brian Tashman at RWW
In a radio segment released Tuesday, conservative anti-feminist writer Phyllis Schlafly claimed that President Barack Obama is “trying to treat Christians like smokers” by eradicating “all evidence of religion from public places.”
She pinned her theory on a speech given by President Obama in 2010 in which he misquoted the Declaration of Independence by leaving out a reference to man’s “creator.” That, Schlafly suggested, is indicative of a secret intent to wage a silent war against followers of his own religion.
“I think Obama is trying to treat Christians like smokers. You can do it in the privacy of your own house and maybe inside your church, but never where the public can see you. The Founding Fathers were very public about their religion, and we have the right to be, too.”
Her latest book, “No Higher Power: Obama’s War on Religious Freedom,” chronicles what she calls “the greatest assault on American liberty in our time.” In it, the popular conservative personality explains that President Obama’s second term will lead to every Christian military chaplain being court marshaled, every Catholic hospital being shut down and every pro-life doctor being forced to assist in abortions.
