Thank you Alice for taking this on.

The issue of "religion" feels to me like the other half of the curtain that hides Alito's danger to us. Roe v. Wade is the other.

These two areas of law are so very important. And I don't mean to minimize their importance. It is their use as rallying cries by those in power that makes me think of cutains hiding the real intent of having Alito on the court.

What keeps coming to mind is pre-election time, the autumn of '04. I would drive by a home that had a professional designed "Bush-Cheney" sign right beside the hand-painted "Rabbits 4 Sale" sign.

I can imagine how those folks are struggling. And yet "religion" and "abortion" can be used to get them to support someone who will do them harm.

And Alito...he grew up in Trenton, NJ, a working city. There used to be a sign, "Trenton Makes and the World Takes." Maufacturing jobs were the allure for many.

I grew up in a similar kind of city. Not elegant, not clean - a place that immigrants came because there was work. There were attempts to unionize and strikes.

And the celebration when John Kennedy was elected president - a Catholic president! Why? In part, because Catholics were a minority, minimalized.

How did Alito end up this way? How can he have no empathy for others? A mystery to me.

I really like both quotes you have included in your letter.

Thanks for the link to the reference.

Well done.

Those who dance are considered insane by those who can't hear the music. (George Carlin)

This is a very nice letter, Alice.  And wow, is there a lot of frightening information about Alito's record on the issues related to religion.

As I have no idea what your second letter will contain, all I can offer is this:  The issue that is possibly not addressed here is the great extent to which early settlements in this country were done by persons who had experienced religious perscution for the particular forms of their beliefs.  At present, there seems to be a push in this country for a particular type of religion. I wonder what the early Quakers and Lutherans of Pennsylvania would have thought of this? Or the Catholics who settled in Maryland? Or the Baptists, French Huguenots and Jews who took refuge in Rhode Island? Part of the genius of the Constitution's authors was that they allowed for many voices in and out of religion to be heard, but specifically excluding primacy of any one group, via among other things, not laying any religion as the official party of the state. Some clearly wanted that to happen, but wiser voices prevailed.  

I suspect from Alito's positions, that he would support whatever the power structure put into place at a deep (e.g. federal) level, in a very authoritarian fashion.

Great letter, Alice.  I'm copying, printing, and faxing it today.


"Little people are very stuff-intensive."

Fantastic appeal Alice.
You've captured and expressed the disturbing consequences of a Supreme Court tilted or skewed toward religeous, fanatical facsism.

Green Grass and High Tides Forever

The letter is great Alice. I agree that not everything should look like a legal brief. We are trying to appeal to a broad range of differetn people, and that is why a broad rang of different writers with different ideas.

I am going to be doing a few things today and I'll help put this out later on. Just doing a drive shout out to let people know. Apparently some nut spends a half a million dollars on a Christmas light show every year near my sisters house so we will be down visiting her and checking that out.

Support BooTrib

go alice!  i'll definitely get dembloggers - where else does this still need to go?

p.s. here is some fun addtitional info:

http://cedwyn.blogspot.com/2005/11/we-knew-it-was-coming.html

lots of juicy details about the party the dominionists are throwing over this nomination.

Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate - William of Ockham

At Howard-Empowered People, we have been talking about wanting to have action items to focus on, and I'd like to add something about the 12 days of Justice to our sidebar. Is there any one post to link people to as a starting point? My impression is that this is a cross-blog effort with a number of people writing diaries, but it would be spiffy if there was a link I could put in the sidebar that wouldn't need to keep changing.

should be an honorary day:

http://www.politicalcortex.com/story/2005/12/13/115716/20

it discusses how alito apparrently refused to meet with the congressional black caucus.  CAP, anyone?

Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate - William of Ockham

from a letter I wrote to the Miami Herlad, published immediately before the '04 election (I hope it is a useful contribution to this thread.  I am also posting it in day 7, freedom of religion):

The Establishment of Religion

The Supreme Court of the United States will undergo significant changes in the next few years.  Two of the Justices, including the Chief Justice, are 80 or older, and two are over 70.  Two of the youngest members are Justice Scalia and Justice Thomas, and Justice Scalia has been mentioned by many as a candidate to replace Chief Justice Rehnquist on his retirement.  A new Supreme Court will soon begin to consider issue of significance to all Americans, including the role of religion in our public lives.  This term the Court agreed to hear a case considering the public display of the Ten Commandments.  This decisions, and many others, will be decided based upon the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution. It is, therefore, of interest to consider how a new Court might rule on such issues.

The First Amendment, in relevant part, states, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...."

The Fourteenth Amendment, in relevant part, states, "*No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; ...."

The issue, then is the meaning of the First Amendment, and its application to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment.  To date, the Court has applied the Establishment Clause through the Fourteenth Amendment, prohibiting the establishment of state religions, particularly in cases related to school prayer, graduation day prayers, and the Pledge of Allegiance.  Justice Thomas and Justice Scalia, in different opinions, have suggested a different conclusion, a conclusion that would permit individual States to establish public religions, and to delegate state authority to churches.

Lee v. Weisman

In a dissenting opinion in Lee v. Weisman, 505 U.S. 577, 112 S.Ct. 2649, 120 L.Ed.2d 467 (1992), Justice Scalia castigated the majority of the Court for deciding its opinion in a graduation prayer case on the psychology of coercion rather than history.  The majority decision found that a graduation prayer was coercive, as students attending graduation were required to stand and either join the prayer or remain silent.  The Court considered evidence of psychological that this created a coercive atmosphere violative of the Establishment Clause.  Justice Scalia ridiculed the Court's decision, stating "[a]s its instrument of destruction, the bulldozer of its social engineering, the Court invents a boundless, and boundlessly manipulable, test of psychological coercion...."  He went on to state "interior decorating is a rock-hard science compared to psychology practiced by amateurs.  A few citations of 'research in psychology' that have no particular bearing upon the precise issue here cannot disguise the fact that the Court has gone beyond the realm where judges know what they are doing."  

Having first ridiculed the majority's decision, Justice Scalia turned next to the Establishment Clause.  "The Establishment Clause," he wrote, "was adopted to prohibit such an establishment of religion at the federal level (and to protect state establishments of religion from federal interference)."  The import of the last statement might well be hidden by its location in a parenthetical statement, but it can not be underestimated, for it is the heart of Justice Scalia's opinion.  His final position is that States are free to establish official religions.  Further, he would only limit such establishment to prohibit actual coercion, "acts backed by threat of penalty" by the State government.  In other words, short of statutory punishment, such as imprisonment or fine, a State could establish an official religion, and delegate to it official state functions.  Justice Scalia went on, arguing on behalf of public and institutional prayer.  He wrote "[c]hurch and state would not be such a difficult subject if religion were, as the Court apparently thinks it to be, some purely personal avocation that can be indulged, entirely in secret, like pornography, in the privacy of one's own room.  For most believers it is not that, and has never been.  Religious men and women of almost all denominations have felt it necessary to acknowledge and beseech the blessing of God as a people, and not just as individuals."  While, on its face, this argument has validity, combined with the establishment of an official State religion it legitimizes public devotion, not at individual churches or synagogues, but at public institutions and events.

Elk Grove

Justice Thomas built on Justice Scalia's Lee dissenting opinion in his own dissent in Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow, No. 02-1624. Argued March 24, 2004--Decided June 14, 2004, the recent Pledge of Allegiance "Under God" case.   He introduced his opinion stating "I would take this opportunity to begin the process of rethinking the Establishment Clause."  He wrote that he accepted the Free Exercise Clause as applied against the States through the Fourteenth Amendment, but "the Establishment Clause is another matter," and "it makes little sense to incorporate the Establishment Clause."  Justice Thomas opined that the Establishment Clause protects only the States, and not individual rights.  "[T]he Establishment Clause," he wrote, "is best understood as a federalism provision--it protects state establishments from federal interference but does not protect any individual rights."

Justice Thomas went on to discuss exactly what he meant by "state establishments," describing official endorsement of a particular religion throughout State governmental authority.  He began where Justice Scalia left off, discussing legal coercion, and finding (inconsistently with his thesis, that the Establishment Clause simply does not apply to States) that coercion through force of law and threat of penalty remained prohibited.  However, he went on to state, there were other ways for a State to establish a religion without coercion.  He wrote "[i]t is also conceivable that a government could 'establish' a religion by imbuing it with governmental authority, or by delegating its civic authority to a group chosen according to a religious criterion."  This opinion is disturbing for two reasons.  First, it encourages official public endorsement of, and delegation of authority to, an individual religion.  Second, and even more pernicious, the internal illogic hints that Justice Thomas' limitation against coercion is a temporary public sop, promising religion without Inquisition.  However, if his opinion is accepted at face value, the Establishment Clause simply does not apply to states, and therefore contains no limitations.  Individuals might remain protected by the Free Exercise Clause, indeed that might have been Justice Thomas' point, but his opinion as written does not state that.

Conclusion

The Supreme Court will consider issues of great importance to all Americans.  In the next few years, the Court will address issues of religion and State's establishment of religion, handing down decisions that will affect us for at least a generation.  These cases could be of particular import to any member of a religious minority,  be they Jewish, Moslem, Hindu, or even a non-Protestant Christian.  At least two present Justices interpret the Constitution to allow, not only official State endorsement of religion, but actual delegation of governmental authority to official churches.  This conclusion is derived directly from the writings, in Court opinions, of Justices Scalia and Thomas, and portends one possible future for our country.


Follow the money. It leads to the truth.