Occupying Corporations: How to Cut Corporate Power and Return it To The People

Occupying Corporations: How to Cut Corporate Power and Return it To The People

“Corporations are people, my friend.” Mitt Romney at Iowa State Fair

Corporations are obviously not people.  But Romney is accurate in the sense that corporations have hijacked most of the rights of people while evading the responsibilities. An important part of the social justice agenda is democratizing corporations.  This means we must radically change the laws so people can be in charge of corporations.  We must strip them of corporate personhood and cut them down to size so democracy can work.  People are taking action so democracy can regulate the size, scope and actions of corporations.

One of the most basic roles of society is to protect the people from harm.  The massive size of many international corporations makes democratic control over them nearly impossible.

Corporate crime is widespread.  The New York Times, ProPublica and others have revealed Wall Street giants like JPMorgan, Citigroup, Bank of America and Goldman Sachs have been charged with fraud many times only to get off by paying hundreds of millions.  Professors at University of Virginia have documented hundreds of corporations which have been found guilty or pled guilty in federal courts.

Corporate abuse is even more widespread.  For example, Corporate Accountability International named six to its Corporate Hall of Shame, including: Koch Industries for spending over $50 million to fund climate change denial; Monsanto for mass producing cancer causing chemicals; Chevron for dumping more than 18 billion gallons of toxic waste into the Ecuadorian Amazon; Exxon Mobil for being the worst polluter; Blackwater (now Xe) for killing unarmed Iraqi civilians and hiring paramilitaries; and Halliburton, the nation’s leading war profiteer.
Making corporations responsible to democracy of the people is challenging considering Wal-Mart, the world’s biggest corporation, does more business itself annually than all but two dozen of the two hundred plus countries in the world.   Without dramatic changes, how can we expect people in small or even big countries to force corporations like Wal-Mart, Royal Dutch Shell, Exxon Mobil, BP, Toyota or Chevron to live by the same rules all the people have to?

Justice demands we make sure corporations do not harm people.  Democracy must require that they operate for the common good.

In order to cut corporations down to size, the people must strip corporations of the special artificial legal protections they have created for themselves.

The story of how corporations took the full rights of legal persons in one of the great perverse tragedies in legal history. Corporations have worked the courts mercilessly since 1819 to take a wide variety of constitutional rights that were designed to cover only people.  For example, the Fourteenth Amendment was passed in 1868 to make sure all citizens, particularly freed slaves and people of color, had full rights.  There was no mention of protecting corporations. But corporations jumped on this opportunity resulting in a questionable Supreme Court decision that granted them legal personhood.  At roughly the same time, the Supreme Court approved “separate but equal” racial segregation.  Thus in thirty years, African Americans lost their legal personhood, while corporations acquired theirs.

Corporations now claim: 1st amendment free speech rights to advertise and influence elections: 4th amendment search and seizure rights to resist subpoenas and challenges to their criminal actions; 5th amendment rights to due process; 14th amendment rights to due process where corporations took the rights of former slaves and used them for corporate protection; plus rights under the Commerce and Contracts clauses of the constitution.

The most recent corporate judicial takeover of constitutional rights is the 2010 Supreme Court decision in Citizens United versus the Federal Election Commission.  The court ruled that corporations are protected by the First Amendment so they can use their money to influence elections.

Because of the bad Supreme Court decisions, it takes a constitutional amendment by the people to change the laws back.  An amendment requires two-thirds of both houses of Congress to agree then three-quarters of the states must vote to ratify.  This will take real work.  But despite the growing size and unrestricted power of corporations, people are fighting back.

Dozens of groups are working to reverse Citizens United and restore limits on corporate election advocacy.  In January 2011, groups delivered petitions signed by over 750,000 people calling on Congress to amend the Constitution and reverse the decision.  More than 350 local events were held in late January 2012 to challenge the Citizens United decision.

Groups challenging this injustice include Code Pink, Common Cause, Free Speech for People, Moveon.org, Move to Amend, National Lawyers Guild, POCLAD, Public Citizen, People for American Way, The Center for Media and Democracy, and Women’s League for Peace and Freedom. 

Many groups are asking for a broad constitutional amendment that makes it clear that corporations are not people and should not be given any constitutional rights.  Representatives Ted Deutsch of Florida, Jim McGovern of Massachusetts and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont have sponsored bills in Congress to start the process for a constitutional amendment to make it clear that corporations are not people, are not entitled to the rights of people, and cannot contribute to political campaigns.

There are also many energetic actions at the state level.  People for the American Way list organizational efforts in nearly all 50 states to end corporate influence in elections or amend the constitution.

Massive corporations now rule the earth.  But they are recent arrivals which can and should be dispatched.  It is time for people to again take control.  The legal fiction of corporate personhood and the constitutional rights taken by corporations must cease.  Join the efforts to cut them down to size and restore the right of the people to govern.

It is always a good laugh to hear a conservative Republican say they stand for freedom or liberty. They are owned and operated by corporate masters who could care less about their personal liberty. Try fighting a corporation in court that has done you wrong. It will be corporate lawyers versus the little guy. You may actually grow old and die before they pay you for harm they have done you or your family. Complain about you right to privacy. Sure government intrusion has grown since 9-11, but corporations now regularly claim the right to spy on your every click and exchange information with other corporations. And you can always find a conservative or libertarian say that "private" entities have the right to do that - heck they may even go to the bother of offering up some bs about natural law.

Has Anyone Seen a Real Pro Life Conservative - Republican Fanatics Sentence Women to Death

Has Anyone Seen a Real Pro Life Conservative - Republican Fanatics Sentence Women to Death

The nation's leading breast-cancer charity, Susan G. Komen for the Cure, which has spent nearly $2 billion over the past 30 years for breast cancer education, health services, research, and advocacy, has announced that it will end its longtime partnership with the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. The announcement has sparked bitter debate among representatives from all concerned parties, highlighting the ongoing debate over abortion.

Planned Parenthood, currently the largest provider of reproductive health services in the United States, is widely known for helping women to obtain abortions and contraceptives. But those services, despite their high profile, account for only 38 percent (PDF) of the organization's work. And though Republicans often portray Planned Parenthood as strictly an abortion provider, using the phrase to incite anger among pro-life constituents and gain support for cuts to federal funding -- it comes largely through the Title X and Medicaid programs -- the fact is that the organization devotes most of its money and manpower to screening for breast, cervical, and testicular cancers; treating menopause; testing for sexually transmitted diseases; and more.

The money provided by Susan G. Komen for the Cure went to just a fraction -- about 19 according to one report -- of Planned Parenthood's more than 85 affiliates. And it was all -- roughly $680,000 last year and $580,000 the year before that -- used for breast-cancer screening and other breast-health services for low-income, uninsured, and under-insured women.

    "It's hard to understand how an organization with whom we share a mission of saving women's lives could have bowed to this kind of bullying."

Koman has been criticized in the past for donating to Planned Parenthood and the official response has always been that, despite the controversy surrounding some of its programs, the organization was the only one working to provide breast-health services to women in need in dozens of communities around the United States.

So why the sudden change?

Cutting funds to Planned Parenthood is the result of a newly adopted policy to block grants to organizations currently under investigation by any local, state, or federal authorities, Koman spokeswoman Leslie Aun told the Associated Press. A statement released Tuesday evening added: "While it is regrettable when changes in priorities and policies affect any of our grantees, such as a long-standing partner like Planned Parenthood, we must continue to evolve to best meet the needs of the women we serve and most fully advance our mission."

The key factor behind Komen's decision, Aun told the Associated Press, is not ongoing protests of Planned Parenthood -- the Alliance Defense Fund was quick to praise Komen "for seeing the contradiction between its lifesaving work and its relationship with an abortionist that has ended millions of lives" -- but an audit launched by Rep. Cliff Stearns, chairman of the Energy & Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, to determine whether public money had been spent on abortions over the last decade.

When launched way back in late September, Stearns' review was described as the first-ever oversight on taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood. But his motivations have been questioned repeatedly. Rep. Henry Waxman called out (PDF) Stearns: "Your fervent ideological opposition to Planned Parenthood does not justify launching this intrusive investigation." And Cecile Richards, the president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA), has said that investigation was politically motivated; Stearns must bow to the demands of Florida's 6th congressional district, a largely Republican area of North Central Florida that includes parts of Ocala and Gainesville.

Perhaps best known for his position overseeing the investigation into the Solyndra loan guarantee, Stearns has spent more than 20 years in Congress. Over such a long period, his political opponents inevitably called him a number of negative things. Among them, "bully" might be the easiest to print.

"It's hard to understand how an organization with whom we share a mission of saving women's lives could have bowed to this kind of bullying. It's really hurtful," Richards told the Associated Press. More than confused, Richard was shocked to learn about decision in a phone call this past December. She called it "incredibly surprising" that Komen's president, Elizabeth Thompson, was unwilling to have a discussion about the quick shift.

According to Jezebel's Erin Gloria Ryan, however, the influence of another key player in the Komen organization goes a long way in explaining its decision to defund: Karen Handel, who ran for governor of Georgia in 2010 and lost, despite an endorsement by none other than Sarah Palin, has been Komen's senior vice president for public policy since April 2011. On her campaign blog (fire up the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine because, curiously, these pages don't exist anymore), Handel wrote: "I will be a pro-life governor who will work tirelessly to promote a culture of life in Georgia. ... I believe that each and every unborn child has inherent dignity, that every abortion is a tragedy, and that government has a role, along with the faith community, in encouraging women to choose life in even the most difficult of circumstances. ...since I am pro-life, I do not support the mission of Planned Parenthood."

Handel even "promised to eliminate funding for breast and cervical cancer screenings provided by" Planned Parenthood, according to Jezebel.

Some of those affected are still figuring out how to respond to Komen's decision. "We're kind of reeling," Patrick Hurd, CEO of Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Virginia, told the Associated Press. "It sounds almost trite ... but cancer doesn't care if you're pro-choice, anti-choice, progressive, conservative. Victims of cancer could care less about people's politics." And Hurd knows. Not just as the suit overseeing his organization's operations in one region, but as the husband of Betsi Hurd, a veteran of many Koman fundraising races and a current breast cancer patient.

Since Planned Parenthood refers women, who have expressed a desire to have an abortion, to clinics that perform them - to conservative fanatics that means they are somehow guilty of something. Conservatives seem to think PP should act like the fundamentalists in Iran, chain women to a bed and force government health care decisions on them. In the mean time these same conservatives - who for some inexplicable reason call themselves pro life, are sentencing women to the pain, suffering and death of cancer.

What Caused This Year’s Deficit? Hint: It Wasn’t an Obama 'Spending Binge'

Is it 2012 or 1968. You Can Hardly Tell By The Conservative Republican Candidates and Their Race Baiting

Is it 2012 or 1968. You Can Hardly Tell By The Conservative Republican Candidates and Their Race Baiting

It’s commonplace to note that Newt Gingrich’s dog-whistle appellation that Barack Obama is the “food stamp president” is both racist and politically cynical. But the stereotyping of black government dependency also serves the strategic end of discrediting the entire social safety net, which most Americans of all races depend on. Black people are subtly demonized, but whites and blacks alike will suffer.

Gingrich persists because it’s a dependable applause line, and because his political fortunes keep rising. Compare that to September, when Mitt Romney attacked then-candidate Rick Perry for calling Social Security a “Ponzi scheme.” Perry backtracked, insisting that he only wanted to bolster the program and ensure its solvency. But in his 2010 book “Fed Up,” Perry made his opposition to Social Security clear, calling it “a crumbling monument to the failure of the New Deal.” Scrapping entitlements is a core tenet of contemporary fiscal conservatism, but most of the time politicians only get away with attacking the most vulnerable ones: Medicaid, food stamps and welfare cash assistance, which are means-tested and thus associated with the black (read: undeserving) poor, although whites make up a far greater share of food stamp recipients. Government welfare programs with Teflon political defenses — Medicare and Social Security — are nearly universal entitlements and thus associated with “regular” (read: white) Americans.

“Ending welfare as we know it,” as Bill Clinton and congressional Republicans did in 1996, is one thing. “Ending Medicare,” Republicans were last year reminded, is something else altogether. “Keep your government hands off my Medicare,” declared a 2009 Tea Party town hall attendee who today might very well be an ardent supporter of Gingrich’s assault on food stamps. It is a political lesson that free-market fundamentalists have to relearn with some frequency. It was only 2005,  after all, when President George W. Bush launched his ill-fated proposal to privatize Social Security — a setback he later called his greatest failure.

Yet as more government programs of any sort are framed as pernicious, laissez-faire ideologues are again emboldened to get rid of everything.

As recently as November 2009, the New York Times reported that stigma around food stamps had faded; the program received strong bipartisan support as millions of newly impoverished Americans reached out for food assistance. But temporarily cautious politicians had only stashed the old playbook on the top shelf, and the revival of welfare queen demagoguery made for quick political results. Nationwide, state legislatures are moving to impose drug testing of welfare, and even unemployment insurance, recipients.

“If you go apply for a job today, you are generally going to be drug-tested,” Florida Gov. Rick Scott said in October 2010. “The people that are working are paying the taxes for people on welfare. Shouldn’t the welfare people be held to the same standard?”

And and then came the push for cuts. Few noticed in April  2011 when House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., proposed cutting $127 billion from the food stamp program. The same went for the proposed dismantling of Medicaid, the healthcare entitlement for the nation’s poorest, which would be transformed into a block grant to the states with no coverage requirements.  Everyone was focused on Ryan’s audacious proposal to privatize Medicare, and conservative pundits were eager to sink the popular entitlement under the banner of pragmatic fiscal seriousness. “The Ryan budget,” David Brooks wrote at the time, “will put all future arguments in the proper context: The current welfare state is simply unsustainable and anybody who is serious, on left or right, has to have a new vision of the social contract.”

Republicans quickly backtracked. But the effort to dismantle the “poor black people” entitlements continues unabated. In Pennsylvania, Gov. Tom Corbett this month announced that people under 60 with more than $2,000 in savings or other assets — cars and homes generally excluded, savings very much included — will be barred from receiving food stamps. The move elicited widespread criticism from anti-hunger advocates but little concerted political resistance. Corbett’s administration also cut 88,000 Pennsylvania children from Medicaid.

But politicians have more trouble getting away with criticism of less stigmatized benefits. Corbett suggested on the campaign trail that “The jobs are there. But if we keep extending unemployment, people are just going to sit there.” Democrats pounced and he rushed to issue a clarification, though a  conservative think tank eagerly backed up his original position.

Unemployment benefits, however, are on the political cusp: Once somewhat invincible like Social Security and Medicare, some states have made cuts amid the campaign of stigmatization.  In South Carolina, state-funded jobless benefits were reduced from 26 to 20 weeks. Republican state Sen. Kevin Bryant blogged, “I’m disappointed that we have a significant segment of our society leeching [off] the system.” Arkansas, Missouri, Michigan and Florida have also reduced benefits. Yet it was just two months ago that Republicans suffered their greatest embarrassment of 2011 after nearly blocking the extension of unemployment benefits.

Welfare was “reformed” in 1996 because politicians, and many white Americans, were convinced  the program’s beneficiaries weren’t meritorious. Indeed, the entire history of  the American safety net is one of programs losing popularity as they are associated with poor black people. Initially blacks were largely excluded from New Deal welfare. It was when the War on Poverty broke down racial barriers that white public opinion turned against it. “Increasingly associated with Black mothers already stereotyped as lazy, irresponsible, and overly fertile,” writes Northwestern School of Law’s Dorothy Roberts, “it became increasingly burdened with behavior modification, work requirements, and reduced effective benefit levels.”

The same was true for public housing, which once received broad-based support. But in the 1950s, whites moved to segregated suburbs and blacks were left behind, and the projects became unpopular and underfunded. Housing benefits for upper-income Americans, like the mortgage interest rate deduction, are not, to be sure, subject to such negative stereotypes, and neither are the billions in federal and state dollars that have been spent on highways and federally subsidized mortgages for disproportionately white homeowners.

Or take public schools. If all of our children, black and white, rich and poor, were in one big system, that system would get ample support. But since many poorer students of color are segregated into separate, unequal and low-performing districts, policy solutions like charters and an obsession over standardized testing that would never pass muster in a wealthy district are advocated as pragmatic solutions.

Count yourself lucky that rich people still (for the meantime) breathe the same air as everyone else.

Rick Santorum has declared, “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money.” (He now says that he said “blah” people.) On Social Security, Santorum is making what appears to be a safe argument for reform: cutting rich people out of the program. Right now, Social Security belongs to everyone. Cutting rich people out is the first step to making it a program for the poor. Making something a program for the poor — see food stamps, Medicaid and welfare — is the first step toward eliminating it. While crazy Newt Gingrich talks about black people and food stamps, Mitt Romney (whom Brooks, of course, calls “serious”) resurrects a big idea: privatize  Medicare. That, of course, is why conservatives so fear single-payer universal healthcare: They know that once we got it, we would never let them take it away.

If some whites reap some cold comfort from Gingrich’s performance, the racial hostility on display comes at a much higher cost to the American people as a whole. We have long since traded the possibility of a decent society for fear and resentment. So watch out for the next attack on “the food stamp president.” The entitlement they end might be your own.


*Conservatives keep saying - in the middle of the second worse recession in our history, of which they caused - that since markets are perfect all Americans have to do is get off their lazy arses and get a job, we don't need a safety net with programs like Medicare and unemployment insurance. In other words do not believe what you see, do not believe reality, believe what conservative propagandists tell you to believe.

Little Rick Santorum Hangs Out With Wacky Black Supremacist and Former Cult Member Who Thinks Democrats Are Nazis

Little Rick Santorum Hangs Out With Wacky Black Supremacist and Former Cult Member Who Thinks Democrats Are Nazis

In a state known for its questionable contributions to national politics, Rick Santorum is really bringing the heat. The GOP candidate tried to court South Florida African-Americans on Sunday by aligning himself with an outspoken pastor who fell from grace with fellow conservatives and a former cult member once charged in two grisly murders -- and who announced Sunday at a Santorum event that Democrats are akin to Nazis.

"The Democrats, they're the worst thing that ever happen to the black man," Michael the Black Man told a Santorum rally in Coral Springs. "They're the slave masters."

The activist born Maurice Woodside is no stranger to headlines as a current tea party-loving pirate radio host who regularly claims "one-third of the black women is the devil," famously disrupted an Obama campaign stop in protest of Oprah Winfrey's (alleged!) plot to destroy the earth through Barack Obama, and in 1990 escaped murder charges leveled at himself and other then-members of Miami's notorious Yahweh Ben Yahweh cult, whose leader was convicted of conspiring to kill white people as an initiation rite.

After the rally, Michael expounded on his view to the Daily Caller, again comparing Democrats to Nazis:

    "Republicans were the ones that freed the black man," he said..."Democrats were totally against us. They were the slave masters. Why in the hell would I vote -- not one good, righteous Jewish would ever vote for any German from the Nazi Party... And no black man under any condition should work with any white man that's a Democrat -- under no condition."

View Michael's intro at Santorum's Coral Springs rally below: at link.

Michael the Black Man wasn't Santorum's only controversial African-American ally of his Sunday stops in Florida. After the candidate's morning visit to his Worldwide Christian Center in Pompano Beach, the Rev. O'Neal Dozier told the Palm Beach Post candidate Mitt Romney won't garner black votes as Mormons are racist:

    "Blacks are not going to vote for anyone of the Mormon faith," Dozier said. "The book of Mormon says the Negro skin is cursed."

Dozier, who has been an outspoken critic of homosexuality, Islam, and abortion, was removed from a Jeb Bush-appointed position on a Broward County judge-nominating commission and the campaign committee of former Gov. Charlie Crist after referring to Islam as a 'dangerous religion' and 'cult' in 2006. In 2004, he famously said homosexuality was "something so nasty and disgusting it makes God want to vomit." Though fellow conservatives Jeb Bush, Charlie Crist and Herman Cain have all distanced themselves from the controversial pastor, Santorum not only attended WCC on Sunday morning but spoke about the moment he "laid eyes on his wife" in a message from the pulpit that focused on family values.

    Dozier believes Santorum's sermon at the Worldwide Christian Center was a step toward making him the preferred choice of black conservative voters.

    "He came to a predominately black church, and he began his campaign at the most impoverished, HIV-invested area of South Florida," Dozier said. "That will be a big boost to blacks Americans. The conservative blacks want a man who is principled."

 Neither one of Santorim's friends seem to have read any news or followed any politics that occurred after 1929. There has been a major realignment of political parties since then. Conservative Republicans have become the regressive party that holds democratic republicanism in contempt. Democrats have largely become the party of Lincoln and progressiveness. Both parties used to have conservatives and liberals. Democrats had southern right-wing Dixiecrats and Republicans had liberals like Nelson Rockefeller. Both of these radical right-wing nuts definitely belong in the conservative movement - they have beliefs based on hate, ignorance and hate for the liberal democracy established by our Founders.

How Conservatives Betrayed Jesus To Create a Corrupt Plutocratic Economy

How Conservatives Betrayed Jesus To Create a Corrupt Plutocratic Economy

In recent weeks Mitt Romney has become the poster child for unchecked capitalism, a role he seems to embrace with relish. Concerns about economic equality, he told Matt Lauer of NBC, were really about class warfare.

“When you have a president encouraging the idea of dividing America based on the 99 percent versus 1 percent,” he said, “you have opened up a whole new wave of approach in this country which is entirely inconsistent with the concept of one nation under God.”

Mr. Romney was on to something, though perhaps not what he intended. [ Holly Gressley)] (Photo: Holly Gressley)

The concept of “one nation under God” has a noble lineage, originating in Abraham Lincoln’s hope at Gettysburg that “this nation, under God, shall not perish from the earth.” After Lincoln, however, the phrase disappeared from political discourse for decades. But it re-emerged in the mid-20th century, under a much different guise: corporate leaders and conservative clergymen deployed it to discredit Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal.

During the Great Depression, the prestige of big business sank along with stock prices. Corporate leaders worked frantically to restore their public image and simultaneously roll back the “creeping socialism” of the welfare state. Notably, the American Liberty League, financed by corporations like DuPont and General Motors, made an aggressive case for capitalism. Most, however, dismissed its efforts as self-interested propaganda. (A Democratic Party official joked that the organization should have been called “the American Cellophane League” because “first, it’s a DuPont product and, second, you can see right through it.”)

Realizing that they needed to rely on others, these businessmen took a new tack: using generous financing to enlist sympathetic clergymen as their champions. After all, according to one tycoon, polls showed that, “of all the groups in America, ministers had more to do with molding public opinion” than any other.

The Rev. James W. Fifield, pastor of the elite First Congregational Church of Los Angeles, led the way in championing a new union of faith and free enterprise. “The blessings of capitalism come from God,” he wrote. “A system that provides so much for the common good and happiness must flourish under the favor of the Almighty.”

Christianity, in Mr. Fifield’s interpretation, closely resembled capitalism, as both were systems in which individuals rose or fell on their own. The welfare state, meanwhile, violated most of the Ten Commandments. It made a “false idol” of the federal government, encouraged Americans to covet their neighbors’ possessions, stole from the wealthy and, ultimately, bore false witness by promising what it could never deliver.

Throughout the 1930s and ’40s, Mr. Fifield and his allies advanced a new blend of conservative religion, economics and politics that one observer aptly anointed “Christian libertarianism.” Mr. Fifield distilled his ideology into a simple but powerful phrase — “freedom under God.” With ample support from corporate patrons and business lobbies like the United States Chamber of Commerce, his gospel of godly capitalism soon spread across the country through personal lectures, weekly radio broadcasts and a monthly magazine.

In 1951, the campaign culminated in a huge Fourth of July celebration of the theme. Former President Herbert C. Hoover and Gen. Douglas MacArthur headlined an organizing committee of conservative all-stars, including celebrities like Walt Disney and Ronald Reagan, but largely comprising business titans like Conrad Hilton, J. C. Penney, Harvey Firestone Jr. and J. Howard Pew.

In an extensive public relations campaign, they encouraged communities to commemorate Independence Day with “freedom under God” ceremonies, using full-page newspaper ads trumpeting the connection between faith and free enterprise. They also held a nationwide sermon contest on the theme, with clergymen competing for cash. Countless local events were promoted by a national “Freedom Under God” radio program, produced with the help of the filmmaker Cecil B. DeMille, hosted by Jimmy Stewart and broadcast on CBS.

Ultimately, these organizers believed that they had made a lasting impression. “The very words ‘freedom under God’ have added to the vocabulary of freedom a new term,” they boasted. Soon the entire nation would think of itself as “under God.” Indeed, in 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower presided over the first presidential prayer breakfast on a “government under God” theme and worked to promote public religiosity in a variety of ways. In 1954, as this “under-God consciousness” swept the nation, Congress formally added the phrase to the Pledge of Allegiance.

In the end, Mr. Romney is correct to claim that complaints about economic inequality are inconsistent with the concept of “one nation under God.” But that’s only because the “1 percent” of an earlier era intended it that way.

What did these purveyors of the plutocracy, the people who got rich off the labor of millions accomplish? They have killed the American dream of upward mobility -  Harder for Americans to Rise From Lower Rungs

More Anti-American Godless Conservatism - Kansas Conservative Republican House Speaker ‘Prays’ That Obama’s ‘Children Be Fatherless And His Wife A Widow’

More Anti-American Godless Conservatism - Kansas Conservative Republican House Speaker ‘Prays’ That Obama’s ‘Children Be Fatherless And His Wife A Widow’

ThinkProgress reported last week that Kansas House Speaker Mike O’Neal (R) was forced to apologize to First Lady Michelle Obama after forwarding an email to fellow lawmakers that called her “Mrs. YoMama” and compared her to the Grinch.

Earlier that same week, the Lawrence Journal-World was sent another email that O’Neal had forwarded to House Republicans that referred to President Obama and a Bible verse that says “Let his days be few” and calls for his children to be without a father and his wife to be widowed.

Nick Sementelli at Faith in Public Life notes that Psalm 109, which is a prayer for the death of a leader, became a popular conservative meme after Obama’s election. The “tongue-in-cheek” prayer for the president was seen on bumper stickers. The relevant part of the psalm reads:

    Let his days be few; and let another take his office

    May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow.

    May his children be wandering beggars; may they be driven from their ruined homes.

    May a creditor seize all he has; may strangers plunder the fruits of his labor.

    May no one extend kindness to him or take pity on his fatherless children.

O’Neal forwarded the prayer with his own message: “At last — I can honestly voice a Biblical prayer for our president! Look it up — it is word for word! Let us all bow our heads and pray. Brothers and Sisters, can I get an AMEN? AMEN!!!!!!”

O’Neal’s office refuses to apologize for the email, insisting that the message was only referring to Obama’s days in office. Sementelli notes the response of a Rockford Register Star columnist who explains why this excuse won’t do.

Speaking to a reader he writes, “You say that verse 8 of Psalm 109, as applied to President Obama, does not suggest a wish for his death. But the first five words of verse 8 are: ‘Let his days be few.’ And verse 9 says: ‘Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.’…You suggest yourself that scripture should not be ‘taken out of context.’ Well, the context of Psalm 109 is a wish for someone’s death.”

Conservative Republicans are not happy just be a group of anti-American fanatics who would like to end America as a democratic republic. They have moved on to perverting the Christian principles preached by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. Conservatism: the movement of fake patriotism and sick twisted
values.

Some good news this week - Obama Administration Comes Out Against SOPA And Protect IP

Mitt Romney is The Best Darn Plutocrat Money Can Buy

Mitt Romney is The Best Darn Plutocrat Money Can Buy

Mitt Romney's $12 Million Mystery Super-PAC Man
Meet Carl Forti, the publicity-loathing mastermind helping the Republican front-runner and conservative groups raise millions in dark money.

Republican strategist Carl Forti has been described, variously, as "Karl Rove's Karl Rove" (Politico), "one of the smartest people in politics you've never heard of" (Karl Rove), and "the Alexander the Great of the Republican independent expenditure world" (Republican operative Bradley Blakeman). You can add one more to the list: President Obama and the Democrats' worst nightmare in 2012. A pioneer in the post-Citizens United world of super-PACs and dark money, Forti is one of the lead architects of the GOP's outside-spending strategy and an operative who has for years tested the boundaries of campaign finance law.

GOP Primary Predictor
Think you're smarter than a CNN pundit? Predict the next winner with our interactive app.

Forti first waded into the outside-money wars while working for the National Republican Congressional Committee. During the 2006 election cycle, he managed an $82 million independent-expenditure campaign—the largest in the committee's history. Through the Black Rock Group, the strategic communications firm he cofounded, Forti has gone on to advise an all-star roster of conservative outside-spending groups, including the 60 Plus Association (the "conservative AARP") and Americans for Job Security. Forti is also the political director of American Crossroads and advocacy director of Crossroads GPS, the Rove-inspired outfits that reported spending nearly $39 million together during the midterms. The groups have already begun running ads bashing Obama and vulnerable Democrats and plan to dump $240 million into 2012 races.

Most recently, Forti helped launch Restore Our Future, a pro-Mitt Romney super-PAC that raised $12 million in the first half of 2011. "I don't know of anybody who's got as important of a role with the major outside organizations, both in 2010 and in 2012," says the group's treasurer, Charles Spies.

Like Spies, Forti is an alum of Romney's 2008 presidential campaign. As the campaign's national political director, Forti masterminded Romney's 11 primary and caucus wins. After the former Massachusetts governor dropped out, Forti moved on to Freedom's Watch, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit group bankrolled by right-wing casino mogul Sheldon Adelson. Founded with the goal of spending as much as $200 million to counter labor unions and progressive heavyweights like MoveOn.org, the group ran ads defending George W. Bush's foreign policy and supporting Republican congressional candidates. In the end, internal squabbling, a bloated infrastructure, and Adelson's discontent with the group's leadership doomed Freedom's Watch. It shut down in December 2008—but its legacy lived on, in the form of the gaping loophole it helped create in campaign finance law.

During the 2008 campaign, the group, with Forti spearheading its issue advocacy campaigns, ran a series of ads attacking Louisiana Democratic House candidate Don Cazayoux. Up until that point, organizations like Freedom's Watch typically revealed the donors behind such ads in their filings with the Federal Election Commission. Yet Freedom's Watch tried something different: It simply left that section blank. In a move that dismayed campaign finance reformers, the FEC's three Republican commissioners, prompted by a complaint about Freedom's Watch filed by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, ruled that outside-spending groups don't have to reveal their donors unless those donors earmark their contributions for specific ads. The move upended years of precedent. "It was a deliberate effort to weaken the rules, and it worked," says Craig Holman, a lobbyist for the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen.

During the next election cycle, Forti hatched an audacious plan to circumvent campaign spending rules. Under the law at that time, individuals were free to spend as much as they pleased on TV ads, mailers, and other political messaging without filing as a political action committee. But once a group of individuals pooled their money and coordinated their spending, they became subject to contribution limits. Forti proposed a plan intended to evade contribution rules while also implementing a coordinated strategy. Black Rock would be used as a middleman, crafting a comprehensive game plan and then advising individual donors on how and where to spend their money.

The FEC ultimately declined to give its blessing to the plan, but the episode underscored Forti's penchant for pushing the boundaries of campaign finance law. "He's one of the guys, through Black Rock and others, who apparently sees his role as being always out there trying to figure out where the loophole is and how to use it to his party's or favorite candidate's benefit," says Meredith McGehee, policy director of the Campaign Legal Center.

It's perhaps not surprising that Forti, who has worked so diligently to keep political donors in the shadows, detests publicity and fiercely guards his privacy. He declined to be interviewed for this story, telling me in a brief phone conversation that he had a strict no-profile policy and would discourage his colleagues from speaking with me as well. "I've always tried to stay behind the scenes," he told me, "and I intend to keep it that way."
Andy Kroll
Reporter

Romney and other conservatives who claim to have Biblical inspired family values might remember that passage about reaping what you sow - Galatians 6: 7-8. Conservatives wanted the Citizens United ruling - passed by an extreme right-wing court to open the door to unlimited money from secret organizations. Now the conservatives who are dead set against Romney can eat the mud they made.

Why Anti-American Conservatives Hate American Cities

Why Anti-American Conservatives Hate American Cities

The Republican presidential primary has covered significant ground. Against a backdrop of Iowan cornfields, candidates have debated socialism, capitalism, immigration and American exceptionalism, and have even touched on the finer points of Shariah law and the Federalist Papers. One thing you don’t hear about is America’s cities and the ongoing, and growing, urban crisis.

There are some oblique references, like Newt Gingrich’s suggestion that child labor laws be modified so that poor children can work as school janitors. “Really poor children in really poor neighborhoods,” mused Gingrich, “have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works … They have no habit of ‘I do this and you give me cash,’ unless it’s illegal.”

Gingrich’s comment is a surviving dog-whistle politics that include new state laws to drug-test those on public assistance and the ongoing effort to cut food stamps (and Gingrich did call Obama the “food stamp president”). The specter of the black ghetto still scripts urban dwellers as villains (often as thieves robbing the citizen either directly, or as in this Rick Santorum comment, indirectly: “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them other people’s money”). But unlike the era of Ronald Reagan’s welfare queen, today cities are more ignored than attacked. And this goes well beyond Iowa.

“The core of the Republican constituency in metropolitan America are the growing, racially and economically exclusive ‘outer suburbs’ whose privileged status Republicans seek to protect at all costs,” says former mayor of Albuquerque David Rusk, now a consultant. He cited New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie as an exemplar of the trend.

Today’s Republican candidates are rarely city-dwellers.

Gingrich owns a Northern Virginia cul-de-sac mansionette that “tends toward the ornate” and includes a master bath entirely covered in mirrors, according to a recent New York Times article on candidate homes. Rick Perry moved into a high-end gated community in exurban Austin, Texas, while the governor’s mansion was under construction. Michele Bachmann lives in a McMansion with a builder’s description that “reads like a synonym finder for nouveau suburban glory, touting the home’s arched stone entry, hand-scraped walnut plank flooring, and a fully paneled library with see-through fireplace.”

Romney rose to the pinnacle of Massachusetts politics from the leafy and high-end Boston suburb of Belmont, where he had a bathroom with “vaulted ceilings and a soaking tub some might mistake for a lap pool,” a residence “heavy on cream-colored upholstery crowded with pillows. The curtains are pleated so precisely you might think they were styled by Mr. Romney’s barber.” The house, until recently one of four owned by Romney, has now been sold.

While Romney’s father, George Romney, served as secretary of Housing and Urban Development in President Nixon’s administration, the candidate has said nothing in particular about cities. As with so many other things, Romney once had a different opinion. According to the New Republic, he was a devotee of smart growth during his years in the governor’s mansion — transit-oriented development and anti-sprawl measures included. “We don’t want to become like Houston,” said Romney. “Not that there’s anything wrong with Texas.”

The neglect of the cities can be traced back a half-century to the apogee of mid-20th-century American liberalism. In the 1950s and 1960s, the captains of municipal state, flush with federal funds and armed with great confidence in modern planning and architecture, bulldozed miles of “blighted” neighborhoods (often non-white) and rammed highways through the centers of many American cities. The feverish remaking of the cities was a desperate attempt to compete against the suburbs and woo back the middle class, which had departed thanks to the federal dollars propping up millions of (whites only) mortgages and miles of highways. Tragically, it was the liberal federal government’s funding of suburban homes and highways, and bulldozer-heavy urban renewal programs, that paved the way for Nixon and Reagan’s abandonment. Black people and the left were suspicious, the rising conservative tide was contemptuous, and politicians changed the subject. So, then, went the neighborhood.

It was from these very suburbs that modern conservatism arose, then proceeded to wage war on the city. In 1964, Orange County suburbanites reaping the benefits of government-financed defense jobs mobilized against fair housing legislation, and for their Sun Belt champion, Barry Goldwater. Nixon’s more successful 1968 silent majority was a suburban one, legitimating the postwar success “earned” by white elites. He promised protection against school busing, and promised that they were not, like George Wallace’s rural poor disciples, bigots. Just because suburban conservatives had backed off from de jure segregation doesn’t mean they wouldn’t attack urban blacks: take, again, Ronald Reagan’s “welfare queen.” Save for Buffalo congressman, H.W. Bush HUD secretary, and 1996 vice-presidential nominee Jack Kemp, cities would get little Republican attention. In the two decades since the Los Angeles riots, urban issues are more often ignored. Concerns and paranoias now seem more abstract or diffuse: Shariah law, or the Mexican day laborer in the parking lot of your local Home Depot.

On the policy level, Reagan’s 1980s cutbacks were followed by modest and private-sector-focused initiatives under Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. The programs, dubbed “enterprise zones” under Bush and “empowerment zones” under Clinton, were a clear repudiation of the direct government intervention that characterized Roosevelt’s New Deal and Johnson’s Great Society. Whether prompted by resignation or opportunism, urban policy now caters to business-minded solutions: tax abatements and special service districts to encourage downtown development, and a fervent belief that young “creative class” professionals (think Portland, Ore., as national role model) and tourism (think Baltimore’s Inner Harbor) could serve as the foundation for a new urban economy.

“Republicans saw little gain by reaching out to minority voters (the quixotic efforts of GOP maverick Jack Kemp excepted) and Democrats feared that if they put too much effort into solving urban problems,” says University of Pennsylvania historian Thomas Sugrue, “they would reinforce their image as the party of ‘special interests.’”

President Obama has encouraged smart growth and regional cooperation between cities and suburbs, but the efforts have been fiscally and politically modest, and far from high-profile. One promising initiative has HUD, the Department of Transportation and the Environmental Protection Agency participating in a tri-agency Partnership for Sustainable Communities, which Rusk calls “an important initiative in re-orienting federal ‘urban policy’” toward metro-wide solutions. But he criticizes the Obama administration for being “much too cautious in setting their requirements” and called the $100-50 million in annual funding “a pittance compared with the $145 billion that the three federal agencies give out in annual grants-in-aid to state and local governments.”

One reason that cities don’t figure in today’s campaigns is simply because fewer people live in them: America is now a primarily suburban nation. But America’s suburban majority, which has also diminished urban clout in Congress and statehouses, distracts from something bigger and more important. As older suburbs decline and lose population to further sprawl, the line between urban and suburban issues blurs. The American electoral system obscures the shared conditions facing cities and older post-World War II suburbs.

“If the U.S. had a popular vote election, candidates would focus on saturating the major metropolitan media markets, a race to collect 51 percent of the votes by adding up the biggest population centers,” says George Washington University historian Christopher Klemek, author of “The Transatlantic Collapse of Urban Renewal.” “We wouldn’t be talking about swing states; in fact, we wouldn’t be talking about states at all. Cities — or at least the broad, decentralized (sometimes tri-state) metropolitan urbanized regions that most Americans now inhabit — would be at the center of the campaigns.”

Yet the political debate is dominated by the exurbs, the pell-mell ribbons of home and office development that snake along the nation’s highways. While the original postwar suburbs were built for well-to-do commuters to the city, today’s exurbanites commute from gated home to office park.

The folksy country patter of politicians is of course about the aberrational power that we have bestowed on the microstates of Iowa and New Hampshire. But the affectations continue well through the general election. It is not so much about the countryside at all, but rather an appeal to the constantly fleeing, new-home-buying, SUV-driving denizen of the exurb, the newest home of a deeply held, though deeply hypocritical, American pastoralism. While the suburban dream was anti-urban, the exurban mind-set is simply non-urban. At least, that is, in mind-set. The frontier spirit masks a deep interdependence.

“Cities and metropolitan areas are the engines of our economy,” says Robert Puentes, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Metro Program. “The top 100 metropolitan areas alone claim only 12 percent of our land mass but harbor more than 65 percent of our population, 74 percent of our most educated citizens, 77 percent of our knowledge economy jobs, and 84 percent of our most recent immigrants. They also generate 75 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product.”

Rick Perry, for all of his thickly lacquered rural charm, in reality rules over one of the nation’s largest metropolitan conglomerates. “Growth in Texas,” Ryan Avent notes in “The Atlantic Cities,” “has really been about growth in its biggest cities,” Austin, Houston, Dallas and San Antonio. Texas is the most urbanized state per capita.

Those cities have labor forces that are powered by immigrants. But on the campaign trail, the perception that cities are harboring Mexicans is a great liability. Gingrich has declared that he will block federal funding to any “sanctuary city.” Romney has gone after bleeding-heart municipalities since 2007 when he ran ads criticizing Rudy Giuliani’s tenure in New York. In response, Giuliani noted that Cambridge, Mass., Somerville, Mass., and Orleans, Mass., had declared themselves sanctuaries. Cities, by virtue of progressive leadership or brown skin, still have the power to attract conservative opprobrium. Think about what Republicans mean to convey when they say “San Francisco.”

American cities also receive attention when a candidate visits New York to raise money or eat bad pizza with Donald Trump. Yet much of Manhattan — like San Francisco — is thoroughly gentrified, and the deepening and unresolved problems of urban poverty and violence are kept well out of sight. The same goes for Washington, D.C., where a rapid influx of young and party-going policymakers has demographically transformed neighborhoods where shootings once dubbed my home city “Murder Capital of the World” and prompted our NBA team, the Washington Bullets, to change its name to the deflating “Wizards.” The emergence of the city as playground for the young and well-to-do masks the fact that for poor and working class city-dwellers, nothing much has changed. This is just as true now that many live in the suburbs. But you won’t hear it from any Republican presidential candidate.

Fed Up With Congress? Get Rid of One of Its Worse Congressmen, Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin

Can Paul Ryan—and His Radical Anti-Middle-Class Agenda—Be Beat?

House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, is the poster boy for the assault on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. His budget plan, which laid the groundwork for the undermining of those essential programs and their eventual privatization, speaked a national outcry earlier this year. A historically Republican Congressional seat in western New York fell to the Democrats in a special election that turned largely on the question of Ryan’s austerity agenda.

But could Ryan himself be beat in 2012?

It’s possible. His southeastern Wisconsin district has elected Democrats in the past. It voted for Barack Obama in 2008. And even after a Republican-friendly redistricting, it is still home to traditionally Democratic towns such as Racine, Kenosha and Janesville.

Ryan faces a determined challenger in Democrat Rob Zerban, a local elected official in Kenosha who has been running hard all year. And a new poll suggests that Zerban, who has made the defense of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid the core theme of his campaign, poses a genuine threat to the Republican incumbent.

Pollster Paul Maslin writes, on the basis of his survey of 405 voters in Ryan’s district, that the fight over Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid has “weakened incumbent Paul Ryan, who used to enjoy electoral and image majorities well over 60%. Ryan’s favorable rating has declined to 54% positive, his job rating is 55% and his reelect is 54%—all this before the beginning of an active campaign against Ryan. When voters hear positive information about Rob Zerban and Paul Ryan, Ryan’s support weakens further to 52%. Rob Zerban’s description receives a better than 3 to 1 positive reaction.”

Maslin adds that: “after respondents hear one additional paragraph description linking Ryan to the Republican leadership in Congress and describing his authorship of the House budget plan, his support falls below 50% and his favorable rating becomes like Obama’s and Walker’s—dead even at 46% positive and 46% negative. And… Rob Zerban trails Ryan by only six points after this very brief exposition of Ryan’s signature idea, 49-43%, with undecideds holding nearly unanimously negative views of Congress in general and more than 80% saying they have either a negative or neutral feeling toward Ryan at the end of the poll.”

America's Most Anti-American Sheriff Joe Arpaio Runs a Jail Responsible For Vet's Death

America's Most Anti-American Sheriff Joe Arpaio Runs a Jail Responsible For Vet's Death

More than eight hours of video footage released Friday showed it was one of Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s officers who used a Taser on a Latino military veteran that later died. The video also showed the veteran was nearly lifeless when officers put him naked in a cell and left him alone for about 11 minutes.

Two agencies were involved in an altercation with Ernest “Marty” Atencio when they tried to book him into an Arizona jail on suspicion of assault last week. But until now, neither the Maricopa County Sheriff’s office nor the Phoenix Police Department had admitted to using a Taser in the melee. That was despite the fact that an attorney for Atencio’s family said doctors found obvious signs that some sort of stun gun had been used.

Now, video released Arpaio’s office shows it was one of his men, not any of the Phoenix police officers, who used the Taser to try to subdue Atencio.

The veteran was taken to a Phoenix hospital after the scuffle. There, he was pronounced brain dead and kept on life support for days. On Tuesday, his family gathered by his bedside and gave doctors the order to remove him. He died a short time later.

A lawyer who viewed the video stated that while Atencio may have been loud and a little obnoxious he was not posing any physical threat that required as many as ten law enforcement officers to jump on him and eventually use a taser - that was may have been what triggered his physical reaction and death.

How Conservatives Define Capitalism - Republican "family values" Leadership Selling His Endorsement of Candidates

How Conservatives Define Capitalism - Republican "family values" Leadership Selling His Endorsement of Candidates

Bob Vander Plaats’ endorsement of Rick Santorum has produced a backlash among conservatives in Iowa, some of whom are accusing the FAMiLY LEADER president of engaging in “pay for play” schemes and selling his coveted support to the highest bidder. Earlier this week, Santorum admitted that Vander Plaats approached the campaign with an indirect solicitation of money to help promote his support, but now other sources familiar with the talks between Vander Plaats and GOP candidates are characterizing the tactics as “corrupt.”

“Clearly the endorsement was for sale — without a doubt,” one source told ABC News’ Shushannah Walshe and Michael Falcone, stressing that Vander Plaats had tried to receive money for his support in past election cycles:

    Though Santorum did not specify the dollar amount he and Vander Plaats discussed, multiple sources said he was soliciting as much as $1 million from Santorum and other candidates.

    In an interview with the Des Moines Register this week, Vander Plaats said that it was his “ethical responsibility” to essentially put some money where his mouth is. “You can’t say, ‘We endorsed you. Now see you later,’” Vander Plaats told the Iowa newspaper. “That’s not going to do a lot in the long run.” But one long-time Iowa conservative activist told ABC News, “There is no way he could buy enough ad space in Iowa for a million dollars — couldn’t buy that much advertising in a week and a half in Iowa.”

    ABC News has learned that Vander Plaats tried to solicit money for his endorsement during the last presidential cycle too. A former staffer for Mitt Romney’s 2008 presidential bid who is currently unaffiliated with a campaign said Vander Plaats came to them seeking money for his backing if he supported the former Massachusetts governor. “He wanted to be paid,” the former staffer said. “He was clearly looking for a paycheck. There was a conversation about him getting a title, but being a paid consultant was much more important.”

Meanwhile, Rick Santorum revealed yesterday that Michele Bachmann was not the only candidate Vander Plaats called to suggest she drop out. Both he and Rick Perry received similar requests:

This seems to also raise speculation about who exactly Vander Plaats actually wanted to endorse. Last month, he indicated that he had narrowed the endorsement down to four candidates: Santorum, Bachmann, Perry, and Newt Gingrich. During the weeks after that announcement, The FAMiLY LEADER’s attention seemed to be focused entirely on raising support for Gingrich, saying “he’s had a life transformation,” accepting that he “asked God’s forgiveness” for his infidelities, and accepting his affirming letter of the group’s “marriage pledge.”

While Santorum may be correct that conservatives like Vander Plaats were just trying to unite social conservatives, it may be that Vander Plaats was building support for Gingrich, the thrice-married former speaker whose complicated marital past raised concerns for certain Evangelical leaders. After all, Gingrich donated $350,000 last year to his campaign against the Iowa Supreme Court Justices who ruled in favor of marriage equality, which is quite the “pay for play.” Santorum, Bachmann, and Perry have the social conservative credentials Vander Plaats would want to endorse without the baggage of Gingrich’s infidelities, but if they had dropped out, he could have endorsed Gingrich without it looking like blatant quid pro quo.

What did we learn about conservative values and capitalism to day kids? Republicans see those things a lot like European princes during the reign of monarchs. Vander Plaats simply wants to play king maker like the good old days. If he has to buy his way into influence, hey why not use the money they people send in as donations, with the naive idea that Plaats cares about or has any American values.

Like Most American Conservatives Newt Gingrich Admires the Tools of Tyrants

Like Most American Conservatives Newt Gingrich Admires the Tools of Tyrants

Newt Gingrich and His 'Rock, Paper, Scissors' Constitution

The candidate is selling a wrongheaded plan for legislators to bully the judiciary

 "[T]he surest curb on judicial activism, for those who fear it, is executive and legislative activism in defense of constitutional liberties. The courts possess only so much power as the other branches relinquish."
                                                                           -U.S. District Judge Frank Johnson, 1979

The closer Newt Gingrich gets to the Republican nomination for president, the more unhinged become his attacks on the independence of the federal judiciary. In early October, when Gingrich was nowhere in the polls, he ginned up a patently unconstitutional argument for subpoenaing judges to come before Congress to justify and explain what Gingrich considers their "radical" decisions. "The spectacle would be like a dog walking on its hind legs," said Bruce Fein, the respected conservative attorney and former Reagan official, when asked about Gingrich's plan. "You are surprised not that it is done ineptly, but that it is attempted at all."

Now, leading most polls, but evidently still needing his own radical pitch, Gingrich has doubled down on his crackpottery. On Sunday morning, he told Bob Schieffer of CBS News' Face The Nation that the Capitol police, or federal marshals, could and should come and arrest those judges if they refuse to respond in person to a subpoena seeking to publicly shame them for making unpopular decisions. He also delivered this shuddering version of the Constitution, an unfamiliar Rock-Paper-Scissors version, in which the promise of separation of powers is akin to a playground game:

    Here's the key -- it's always two out of three. If the president and the congress say the court is wrong, in the end the court would lose. If the congress and the court say the president is wrong, in the end the president would lose. And if the president and the court agreed, the congress loses. The founding fathers designed the constitution very specifically in a Montesquieu spirit of the laws to have a balance of power not to have a  dictatorship by any one of the three branches.

Poof, just like that, the leading candidate's "key" to nowhere. What Gingrich really is saying, under the guise of blasting "elitist" judges, is that the Bill of Rights would no longer be used to protect individual rights because the judges who help ensure those (often unpopular) rights can be outvoted by the White House and the Congress. In President Gingrich's world, evidently, the Supreme Court would not have the final say on the law. The majority, as represented by the popularly elected branches, would have the ultimate vote. Not in every case, Gingrich says, just in some. Does that reassure you the way he meant it to?

Here's the Face The Nation video from this morning in which Gingrich says "... there's no reason the American people need to tolerate a federal judge who who is that out of sync with an entire culture...."

There are two possibilities for this level of jeremiad. Either Gingrich actually believes this nonsense, in which case he would be a constitutionally dangerous president, or he doesn't, in which case he's committing constitutional heresy just to win a few primary votes. Either way, it is conduct unbecoming a president. Close your eyes for a second and imagine if a Democratic candidate for the White House suggested that the judiciary be neutered by the White House and Congress; if a "liberal" running for president suggested that individual liberties and minority rights would hereafter be defined by Washington. Wouldn't Gingrich be first in line with his pitchfork and torch?

Gingrich's view is simply an appeal to the mob. Which way is public opinion blowing? Well just forget judges ruling on the merits of the law and the structure provided by the Constitution and the courts, let's just go with what the mob wants on any particular day. Not exactly what the Founders had in mind when they established the SCOTUS. Modern conservatism is literally infested with this constant attacks on American values, wrapped up in plastic patriotism. It is mind boggling how many people fall it.