Think Progress

Ken Buck Can’t Explain How Government ‘Goes Too Far’ In Separating Church And State

Yesterday, ThinkProgress noted the anti-Constitution stance taken by the Republican Senate candidate in Colorado Ken Buck, who said that “I disagree strongly with the concept of separation of church and state.” The story quickly gained mainstream media attention.

Spokespeople for the Buck campaign insist that the comments were “taken out of context,” and Buck gave an interview to CNN yesterday to defend his comments:

BUCK: My problem isn’t with separation of church and state. It is with how far we have gone in that area. I think when you have a soup kitchen for example that is run by the Salvation Army which has religious ties in town and you have another soup kitchen in town which is purely secular. For the federal government to give one organization money but not the other because one has ties with a religious group is wrong. The idea is that we need to have compassionate programs for people. And if religious organizations are performing some of those functions without proselytizing then I think the federal government should include both.

Buck’s comments were not taken out of context. The original post included the entirety of his comments on the separation of church and state. A video of his entire answer — which was not about the First Amendment, but rather the government’s role in preserving culture — can be found here. As Denver Post columnist Mike Littwin observed, noting Buck’s recent attempt to take back comments he made about global warming, the campaign’s “default position” is “that whenever Buck is quoted as saying something he wished he hadn’t said, he must not have actually meant it.” (As the Wonk Room noted, Buck also said he wanted to privatize Social Security, then insisted that he didn’t.)

Moreover, much like the deceit in his original comments, which falsely suggested that Obama renamed the White House Christmas tree, Buck is completely wrong with his Salvation Army example. According to their 2010 Annual Report, the Salvation Army received over $392 million in government funds last year. They are simply not allowed to use that money to proselytize, exactly as Buck recommends should be done, but certainly can use it to provide “compassionate programs” for people.

Buck has consistently said that the government has “gone too far” with the separation between church and state, yet he’s been unable to give a valid example. Perhaps he’s misinformed about current federal policy and would find it satisfactory. Alternately, perhaps he would like the government to get much more actively involved in promoting religion, but is afraid to give real examples of what that would look like.

AFP’s Phil Kerpen Accuses ThinkProgress Of Being A ‘Conspiracy Theorist’ For Citing Facts On AFP Website

On Monday night, ThinkProgess hosted a film screening of Astroturf Wars followed by a panel discussion featuring the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank, (Astro)Turf Wars filmmaker Taki Oldham, Americans for Prosperity’s Phil Kerpen, the Wonk Room’s Brad Johnson, moderator and ThinkProgress editor Faiz Shakir, and myself. Responding to the vitriolic racism openly aired at tea parties and captured in Oldham’s film, an audience member asked Kerpen why he refused to acknowledge the possibility that dangerous propaganda could spur life-threatening violence. Kerpen said he opposed racism and hate in the Tea Parties, but admitted that racists “might find a more receptive audience [at Tea Party rallies] because of all the paranoia and concern out there about government.”

In addition to the problem that Tea Parties are often open forums for neo-Nazis and white supremacists holding racist signs, I pointed out that Americans for Prosperity itself organizes events with proud bigots like Tom Tancredo and Jerome Corsi. Kerpen interjected, calling me a “full time conspiracy theorist,” and claimed that Americans for Prosperity had never held an event with Corsi and has no presence in South Carolina:

KERPEN: There is no problem we have a problem with extremism in this country. We have a problem with racism in our country, it goes back to our founding. Unfortunately, some of these people look at these Tea Party gatherings with all this concern about big government and think, this is where I ought to go to recruit. And perhaps they might find a slightly more receptive audience there because of all the paranoia and concern out there about government. That said, the overwhelming majority of Tea Party folks condemn racism. [...]

FANG: I applaud Kerpen for denouncing racism now, but it’s a problem when Americans for Prosperity funds, organizes rallies and their primary speakers are people like Jerome Corsi, who has written an entire book and has made a career out of accusing Obama of being a Kenyan, or — [Kerpen interrupts] Yes, you did in South Carolina.

KERPEN: We don’t have a chapter in South Carolina.

FANG: We can send this around to anyone who would like to see.

KERPEN: Full time conspiracy theorist here.

FANG: I think it was like April 19th of this year, you had an event with him. But also you’ve invited Tom Tancredo, had him as an official speaker. He says he wants to deport Obama, says he’s an illegal immigrant. A lot of these folks. [...]

Watch it:

According to the Americans for Prosperity website, there is a South Carolina chapter of the group, and it indeed helped sponsor a rally with both Tancredo and Corsi in Greenville, South Carolina on April 17th of this year (view a screenshot here). At this particular Americans for Prosperity rally, Tancredo called Obama a lying, taxing, foreign-born, anti-American socialist, who should be sent back to his “homeland” of Kenya. At the Americans for Prosperity rally, Corsi declared, “we have an undocumented president in the White House.” In fact, Americans for Prosperity has sponsored multiple events with racist figures like Tancredo and Glenn Beck. For example, earlier this year Americans for Prosperity leader Tim Phillips hosted another Tea Party rally with Tancredo in Arizona to support “Americans for Prosperity Hero of the Taxpayer” State Sen. Russell Pearce (R-AZ), the sponsor of the racial profiling law SB1070.

A report, sponsored by the NAACP, chronicles the close relationship between racist hate groups and the Americans for Prosperity-supported Tea Party.

REPORT: 104 Republicans In Congress Want To Privatize Social Security

This is the second installment in a three-part series on legislation that may emerge from a GOP-controlled Congress. Click here for part one on ending birthright citizenship.

After their attempt to privatize Social Security in 2005 was met with widespread public outcry, the GOP’s strategy on Social Security has been two-fold. First, Republicans deny they are interested in privatization. Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) recently told the Wall Street Journal that “no one has a proposal up to cut Social Security,” (his own book proposes doing so), while conservatives in the media have tried to argue that Republicans don’t actually want to privatize Social Security.

The second tactic has been to obfuscate their privatization plans by sugarcoating them in flowery, palatable language. President Bush’s privatization plan is a prime example. In his 2005 State of the Union, President Bush said we needed to “save” Social Security and give younger workers a “better deal” by having “voluntary personal retirement accounts,” the poll-tested language for privatization. Bush now says his greatest failure was not privatizing Social Security.

However, such rhetoric belies their record. A thorough review of the voting records and statements of Republicans in Congress reveals a critical mass of GOPers who have supported privatizing Social Security. In total, 47 percent of House Republicans and 49 percent of Senate Republicans are on record supporting the privatization of Social Security. Some, including Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), want to go even further and “wean everybody” off of Social Security altogether.

As ThinkProgress noted yesterday, Republicans in Congress have long operated by the “majority of the majority” principle, whereby legislation is only advanced by a GOP Speaker if it is supported by a majority of Republicans. With many prominent GOP candidates in favor of privatizing or eliminating Social Security, including Rand Paul, Ken Buck, Dan Coats, Sharron Angle, Dan Benishek, Ben Quayle, Star Parker, and Jesse Kelly, it’s likely that a GOP-controlled Congress would have the necessary votes to revisit the issue.

Here are the 104 Republicans in Congress who support privatizing Social Security (leadership in bold):

Senate (20)

House of Representatives (84)

*- Reps. Gerlach and Paulsen initially co-sponsored bills that would privatize Social Security before withdrawing their co-sponsorships.

Asked If Being Gay Is A Choice, Joe Miller Dodges And Says ‘It Really Is A State Issue’ »

Last night on her MSNBC show, host Rachel Maddow was live from Alaska, where she interviewed all three candidates running for the state’s U.S. Senate seat — including Tea Party favorite Joe Miller. Maddow stressed throughout the program that trying to interview Miller was difficult. After weeks of pushing, Maddow said, “Today, I was finally allowed to ask Joe Miller a couple of questions while we moved from a roof, through a lobby, down an escalator, through another lobby, out a door, into an SUV and then it was over.”

During that short and “strange” interview, Maddow noted that one of Miller’s staffers runs a website proclaiming to cure gays of their homosexuality and asked if Miller thinks being gay is a choice. Without answering the question directly, Miller simply said that “it really is a state issue.” After Maddow asked him to clarify, Miller said, “I think that’s up to the individual,” after returning back to his original claim that “it’s a state issue.”

Yet, later in the interview, Miller said he supports the Defense of Marriage Act, the federal law stating that marriage is between a man and a women. After Maddow noted this obvious contradiction on whether the government should be involved in these personal issues, Miller tried to weasel his way out, but ultimately said he would vote for a federal constitutional marriage banning gay marriage:

MADDOW: But you do want a federal role in restricting a state’s ability to legalize gay marriage but at the state level –

MILLER: That’s not what I said. I said that there is a federal role. There are obviously federal decisions that are made based on the status of marriage.

MADDOW: Do you think there should be a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage?

MILLER: That’s up to the people. You’ve got a three-quarters vote, ratified, I’d vote for it.

MADDOW: You would vote for it?

MILLER: Yeah, I would. But it would require an amendment to the Constitution.

Watch the interview:

Maddow also asked Miller about his belief that the 17th Amendment — which allows for public election of U.S. senators, rather than state legislatures — should be repealed. But again, Miller dodged. “That wasn’t the discussion,” he said, adding that “the discussion was about the kind of theory behind the 17th Amendment,” right before he got away in his SUV.

Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart recently observed the key component behind the conservative orthodoxy Miller espoused in his position on gay rights. Republicans “always hit the old platitudes of ‘we trust you the people,’ ‘it’s about freedom and liberty,’ ‘it’s about small government,’ and then you get in there, and you expand government,” he said, adding, that it’s a “fallacy that limited government is the principled stand of conservatives. It’s only limited to the shit they want to do.”

Transcript: More »« Less

Profiting Off Islamophobia: Pamela Geller Pitches Book On ‘How-To Guide To Fight Creeping Sharia’

Our guest blogger is Elon Green, a freelance writer living in Brooklyn.

Last October, right-wing hate blogger Pamela Geller signed a six-figure book deal with Threshold, Simon & Schuster’s conservative imprint headed by Mary Matalin. Geller, not known for scholastic writing or research, has gained recognition by scoring interviews with John Bolton, pontificating in a bikini, and bashing Muslims. The news that Threshold agreed to publish The Post-American Presidency was ignored, even by her conservative fellow travelers.

In an interview with Publishers Weekly, Geller’s agent predicted his client would justify the advance because “the book will appeal far beyond Threshold’s conservative base.” It hasn’t. The Post-American Presidency has sold approximately 5,000 copies, according to Nielsen — enough to warrant a second printing, but hardly an indication of crossover appeal. Simon & Schuster may have underestimated the demand for a book that refers to the President as ‘Barack Hussein Obama’ 52 times (even if it’s autographed) for the bargain price of $27.

ThinkProgress has now obtained the proposal for Geller’s next book, which has been submitted to a variety of other publishing houses. A review of the proposal for Stop Islamization of America: A Practical Guide for the Resistance suggests that the project is a step too far for Threshold. (A Simon & Schuster rep declined to comment.)

According to the proposal, Stop Islamization of America — to be ghostwritten by frequent collaborator Robert Spencer, apparently — will be:

[A] how-to guide to fight the creeping sharia in our schools, towns, culture, government, and economy. It will elucidate the stealth infiltration of Islamic supremacism into every aspect of American life and show Americans how to fight back.

Read the full proposal here.

The work “lays bare the chilling details of the Muslim Brotherhood’ s strategy of steady subversion and erosion of our freedoms,” the ‘evidence’ for which includes construction of “mega-mosques all over the U.S.,” “expansion of ‘hate crime’ and ‘hate speech’ laws” and “Muslim Brotherhood infiltration of the Defense Department, State Department, and other government agencies.” The proposal reveals a few of the section headings and their corresponding chapter titles:

Stealth Jihadist Members of Congress (Chapter Two, “Infiltration”)

Telling the truth = hate speech (Chapter Four, “Silencing the jihad’s foes”)

Why CAIR and other Brotherhood groups need hate crimes (Chapter Five, “Hate crimes as weapons”)

Fashionista jihad (“Chapter Seven: Cultural jihad”)

Even children run the risk of subversion by the Brotherhood, via the “introduction of Islamic observances into public schools under the guise of pedagogical ‘role-playing.’” This may explain the need for “guidelines that are far from politically correct, but are our only option for survival as a free people.” Indeed, Stop Islamization of America will be “a much-needed wake-up call about a sinister, subversive agenda that could do nothing less than destroy the United States.”

This time around, the target audience is relatively narrow. Geller predicts Stop Islamization of America will find favor with “readers of The New York Post, the Washington Times, National Review, the American Spectator, The Weekly Standard, Human Events, American Thinker, Big Government, Newsmax, and publications in that general ideological range.” (It should be noted: this “range” is not vast — roughly from the far right to the far-far right.) Geller promises blurbs from conservative luminaries including John Bolton, James Woolsey, Andrew McCarthy and Geert Wilders.

Despite the limited audience, the optimistic Geller believes that Stop Islamization of America will be successful enough to warrant another book:

Based on the success of Stop Islamization of America, Pamela Geller is planning a book on the recent and ongoing proliferation of honor killings among immigrants to the West from Muslim countries, tentatively entitled Sex, Murder, and Islam: Honor Killing in America.

Contacted by ThinkProgress, Geller declined to comment. Her agent, Scott Mendel, could not be reached.

REPORT: 130 Republicans In Congress Want To Consider Ending Birthright Citizenship

This is the first installment in a three-part series on legislation that may emerge from a GOP-controlled Congress.

In late July, Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-SC) call to end the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of citizenship for everyone born in the United States set off a firestorm in the press. Last week, a coalition of Republican state lawmakers announced a nationwide effort to “develop model state legislation” that will eliminate what they see as a “misapplication” of the 14th Amendment in granting birth citizenship to children of undocumented immigrants. More and more right-wing conservatives have taken this radical position, despite the fact birthright citizenship has long been settled law.

After conducting a thorough review of the voting records of Republicans in Congress over the past 15 years, ThinkProgress has identified a large majority of them have at one point called for hearings and legislation to alter the constitutional guarantee of citizenship for everyone born in the United States. An analysis of past records found that 63 percent of House Republicans, 44 percent of Senate Republicans, and 59 percent of all GOPers in Congress support reconsidering birthright citizenship.

Republicans in Congress have long operated by the “majority of the majority” principle, whereby the GOP Speaker of the House advances legislation only if it is supported by a majority of Republicans. With many prominent GOP Senate candidates favoring an end to birthright citizenship, including Rand Paul, Ken Buck, Mike Lee, Kelly Ayotte, Joe Miller, and Sharron Angle, it’s likely that a GOP-controlled Senate would indeed have a majority who support revisiting the issue.

Ending birthright citizenship is no idle belief in the GOP caucus. Rather, Republicans have been pushing this idea for nearly two decades, introducing 28 separate bills to eliminate birthright citizenship since 1995. Here are the 130 incumbent GOPers who favor reexamining the 14th Amendment (leadership in bold):

Senate

House of Representatives

One point to note is that none of the GOP’s minority congressmen – Reps. Djou, Cao, Ros-Lehtinen, and the Diaz-Balart brothers – support ending birthright citizenship. Still, though a few have criticized Graham, including his mentor Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), this report from ThinkProgress makes clear that the GOP congressional caucus has the South Carolina senator’s back. For 130 Republicans in Congress, “Born in the U.S.A.” apparently no longer applies.