By now, everyone’s heard about Bush signing a controversial anti-abortion provision into law yesterday.
The lawsuits have already been filed, an injunction has already been issued, and I’m confident this law will ultimately be rejected by the federal courts.
Bush’s decision to sign the bill into law is not what caught my attention yesterday. The signing ceremony, however, did pique my interest.
As Newsday noted, the bill-signing ceremony wasn’t in the White House, where presidents ordinarily put their signatures on legislation, but rather was held in the Ronald Reagan Building in DC. I don’t imagine this was just a coincidence. I suspect the White House was paying homage to the president who once promised to ban all abortions in the United States. (Or maybe this was just one last slap at CBS? Nah.)
Of course, Reagan was also instrumental in bringing the religious right political movement into the Republican Party’s mainstream. And who did the White House invite did attend the bill-signing ceremony? This photo (which I found via TBogg) shows some of the religious right’s most prominent activists were on hand yesterday — Adrian Rogers, former head of the Southern Baptist Convention; Lou Sheldon, head of the Traditional Values Coalition and a certified lunatic; Janet Parshall, religious right talk-show host; Jay Sekulow, head of the American Center for Law and Justice (Pat Robertson’s legal group); and, of course, the Rev. Jerry Falwell, one of the nation’s most despicable people.
Despite all the rhetoric about “compassionate” conservatism, Bush’s ties to the religious right are as strong as they can be.