I really wonder what it would take for Senate Dems to take a good look at Sen. Zell Miller (D-Ga.), consider his record, and boot him the hell out of the caucus.
I know the guy is retiring, and he’ll probably be replaced by a real Republican in November, but in the meantime, he’s becoming increasingly loony and gradually more right wing as time goes on.
The fact is, there is now no difference between Miller’s ideology and that of Jerry Falwell and other conservative religious right ideologues. The only difference is Miller has a Senate seat and an undeserving “D” after his name.
The last straw, at least for me, is the so-called “Constitution Restoration Act of 2004,” a new measure that would restrict the federal courts’ ability to even hear cases regarding a state-sponsored “acknowledgment of God.”
In other words, conservatives in government would be free to promote their version of Christianity — First Amendment be damned — and no one would be permitted to take the matter to the federal courts because judges wouldn’t have the authority to consider the case.
This is part of an insane policy called “court stripping.” It’s a scheme whereby Congress decides that it’ll take away the judicial branch’s power when lawmakers don’t like the way judges are ruling on cases. Never mind all that stuff you learned in civics class about “separation of powers” and “co-equal branches”; far-right Republicans no longer care about those antiquated bedrock principles of American government.
And who is the driving force behind this new Senate initiative? Everyone’s favorite theocrat: former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore.
Moore apparently “volunteered” to help shape and write the proposed legislation, and was on hand for an Alabama event where the bill was unveiled.
It’s difficult to put into words just how absurd this is. Supporters of the initiative are proving one thing clearly: today’s right-wingers are not conservatives, they’re radicals. In American history, Congress has never taken an entire area of federal law and eliminated the court’s authority to hear cases on it.
I guess it’s not surprising that it would come to this. In recent years, conservatives have tried desperately to make it easier for government to promote and endorse religion. They’re not satisfied leaving matters of faith to individuals, families, and religious groups; they believe religion needs government’s “help” to thrive.
Obviously, they’ve been ignoring over two centuries of American and world history. They see the principle of church-state separation and see a constitutional principle that hurts religion. Unfortunately, this is backwards. By creating a secular government that remains neutral on matters of faith, the founders of our government created an environment whereby religion could flourish without aid or interference from the state.
But the far right has a different idea. Not only will they ignore the separation of church and state by having the government promote religion, they’ll ignore the separation of powers by gutting judicial authority to even consider church-state cases, turning the idea of an “independent” judiciary on its head.
In the Senate, this fanatical proposal has 6 sponsors. Five of them are predictable, ultra-conservative Republicans (Inhofe, Brownback, Lindsey Graham, Shelby, and Allard). The other is Zell Miller, who at least claims to be a Democrat.
This is entirely unacceptable. At the event to unveil this scheme, Miller said he has “great respect and admiration for [Roy] Moore” and welcomed his assistance in writing the legislation. Miller seems either unaware or unconcerned that Moore actively ignored a federal court order last year because he thought he was above the law.
What’s worse, Miller launched into a lengthy tirade on the Senate floor last week, with remarks that could have just as easily been uttered by Falwell from his pulpit in Virginia.
“I stand shoulder to shoulder not only with my Senate co-sponsors and Chief Justice Roy Moore of Alabama but, more importantly, with our Founding Fathers in the conception of religious liberty and the terribly wrong direction our modern judiciary has taken us in,” Miller said. He also railed against the “culture of far-left America,” while praising an untrained pseudo-historian who argues that the U.S. Constitution, which does not even mention God, was written to reflect “basic Biblical principles.”
Miller made a right turn at Democrat-In-Name-Only and ended up as an embarrassment to himself and the Democratic Party. In a just world, the real Dems would vote him out of the caucus.