The following is a reworked, lengthened, and more comprehensive stand-alone version of an article that I posted last year.  Traditional, old-style Republicans need to read this and see how vastly the party had changed and how classical conservative principles have been completely abandoned.

The most dangerous element of the far-right drive to tear down America's protective wall of separation between church and state is the relentless drive to neuter the Constitution of the United States -- and by so doing, deprive Americans of the basic human and Constitutional rights that most of us have grown up to take for granted.

The agenda is simple to understand:

• The theocratic Religious Right political movement that now dominates the Republican Party seeks to use the powers of the State to micromanage many of the most intimate areas of our personal lives
• The Constitution, especially the Bill of Rights, guarantees Americans that their basic rights and liberties shall not be violated, ignored, or taken away by the government
• Because the Constitution guarantees a wide range of individual rights, the Constitution has acted as a formidable and frustrating obstacle to the Religious Right's insistence on tightly regulating our personal decisions
• Therefore, in order to deprive Americans of their fundamental liberties of conscience and demand obedience to their version of religious law, they must render the Constitution toothless and unable to protect the rights of Americans.

Shamefully -- indeed negligently -- the major news media have given almost zero attention to this anti-Constitutional agenda.  What little has been reported has mainly mentioned the fact that Democrats were filibustering or otherwise opposing some of President Bush's nominees for the federal judiciary -- and nearly all of this reporting has portrayed Senate Democrats in a negative light.  Precious little attention has been given to exploring why Senate Democrats have sometimes resorted to that drastic tactic.

While the political Left has expended vast energy and blog space reporting the scandal surrounding the unconventional firings of federal prosecutors by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, they have all but completely overlooked the fact that Gonzales' alleged politicization of the Justice Department is in fact just one small symptom of the extreme Right's larger agenda of poisoning the judiciary -- a key component of their war on the Constitution.

The extreme Right is waging this war on the Constitution on many fronts at once.  The first front of this war has received almost zero publicity from the (nonexistent) "liberal media."  Only the political fire fights that it has created have been reported: the media's constant depiction of Senate Democrats as "obstructionists" to Bush's nominees to the federal courts.

The Bush Administration, and that one third of Republicans who sent him to Washington to destroy our Constitutional freedoms, want to see him appoint judges like Antonin Scalia and Robert Bork to the federal courts.  They want Bush to use these men as role models because their contempt for our Constitutional rights is total:  Depending on the context and on the person, the views they want sent to the federal bench range from recognizing very, very few Constitutional rights, to recognizing no Constitutional rights at all.

Making a lie of his oath of office -- to protect and defend the Constitution -- Bush has done his valiant best to fulfill quite an opposite mission, appointing corrupt, Constitutionally blind judges who will look the other way when the most basic of human rights are being stomped on.  And when Senate Democrats succeeded in blocking his most dangerous nominees, he has tried every trick in the book to appoint them anyway, whether through recess appointments or by just renominating and renominating the same candidates.  This is deliberate.

Antonin Scalia has written, in the legally significant body of Supreme Court rulings, that:

• The federal courts should have no power at all to overturn unconstitutional laws (Chicago v. Morales, 1999)
• The First Amendment does not apply if a lawmaking body feels that something is "immoral" (Erie v. Pap's A.M., 2000)
• The Constitution does not apply if a community deems something immoral (Lawrence v. Texas, 2003)
• Violating Constitutional rights is perfectly acceptable if it has been traditionally done in the past (i.e. "we have always done it this way")  (Lawrence, and others)
• Literally nullified any meaningful protection in the "free exercise of religion" clause in the First Amendment (Oregon Employment Division v. Smith, 1990) -- a ruling that led to passage of the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act -- which was itself struck down mainly by the right wing of the Supreme Court.

Robert Bork and/or others in the far right judicial mold, have opined that:

• State governments should be free to ignore the Bill of Rights
• Local majorities should enjoy virtually unlimited lawmaking power, regardless of one's human rights
• The definition of "freedom" itself is not freedom to choose your life and pursue happiness, but the "freedom" of elected governments to exert power over others.

The Center for Arizona Policy, a Religious Right group affiliated with Focus on the Family, has said as much:

"When Congress makes laws we do not like, we can remove the
objectionable members at the next election; we cannot do so to
renegade Supreme Court Justices who legislate from the bench. A
conservative judge does not impose his will over the will of a
popularly elected official..."

"Conservatives, however, do not value liberty which permits
licentiousness, but rather an ordered liberty which permits freedom
in the context of community values. Conservative judges respect
these values founded on tradition and history, and will respect them
when challenged by claims of individual rights."

The first excerpt is saying that judges should never overturn laws enacted by a legislature, whether it violates your Constitutional rights or not.  The second excerpt is saying that "community values" take priority over your Constitutional rights,  If your "community values" conflict with your Constitutional rights, the community values win -- and the Constitution loses.

Former Congressman and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX), in an interview reported in the Washington Times (article no longer available online), has flatly said the following:

"Not zealous. I blame Congress over the last 50 to 100 years
for not standing up and taking its responsibility given to it by the
Constitution. The reason the judiciary has been able to impose a
separation of church and state that's nowhere in the Constitution is
that Congress didn't stop them. The reason we had judicial review is
because Congress didn't stop them. The reason we had a right to
privacy is because Congress didn't stop them. "

"Judicial review" refers to the role of the federal courts in overturning unconstitutional laws.  Tom DeLay is joining many others on the extreme Right in saying that the federal courts should have no power to enforce the Constitution and protect your individual rights.

There you have it, in their own words.

The second front in this war on the Constitution is to cripple the courts' authority to protect our Constitutional rights.

Far right groups have directly advocated stripping the federal courts of their power to uphold the Bill of Rights against state and local governments.  The Conservative Caucus, whose views are well represented among Bush's advisors and in the GOP leadership, asks in a candidate questionnaire:

"20. As a member of Congress, would you vote to terminate the jurisdiction of the Federal judiciary with respect to appeals relating to alleged violations of the Bill of Rights by state and local government?"

You can't get any plainer than that.

Toward this end, the far right wing in Congress has worked diligently.  In the infuriatingly falsely titled "Constitution Restoration Act," the right wing of Congress attempted to strip the courts of any power to hear cases that would impinge upon the "Federal, State, or local government, or against an officer or agent of Federal, State, or local government (whether or not acting in official or personal capacity), concerning that entity's, officer's, or agent's acknowledgment of God as the sovereign source of law, liberty, or government."

You can't get any plainer than that.  They tried to strip the courts of their power to prevent an illegal theocracy in the United States.  This is a direct attempt to remove our access to the redress of grievances, a right guaranteed by the First Amendment.

And on September 19, 2006, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 2679 which, according to the Washington Post, provides that "attorneys who successfully challenge government actions as violating the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment shall not be entitled to recover attorneys fees. The bill has only one purpose: to prevent suits challenging unconstitutional government actions advancing religion."

This war on our Constitution is no accident.  Our "Republican" leaders, including our President, who have sworn to uphold our Constitution, are instead mounting a sustained, unrelenting campaign to destroy that same document.  By anyone's definition, this is treason -- not just by the current administration, but by the bigger part of an entire political party's leadership.

This is how total, comprehensive, and overarching is their campaign to destroy the Constitution and the rights it affords.

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