The Unholy Alliance Against the Filibuster

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Ok, did the Catholics among us know about this?? I find it too creepy for words, especially after what he did to torpedo JK during the campaign.

From yesterday's LA Times:

By Jack Miles, Jack Miles, an ex-Jesuit, now a practicing Episcopalian, is the author of "Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God" and "God: A Biography," which won a Pulitzer Prize in 1996.

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A key part of the Republican strategy is to claim that it is hatred of religion that has moved the Democrats to oppose these judicial nominees. "Justice Sunday: Stop the Filibuster Against People of Faith," a TV program produced by evangelical leaders, was simulcast Sunday via the Internet, just as Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist was preparing to call for a vote on the anti-filibuster measure. Evangelical Protestants have led the way in portraying Democrats as enemies of God, but the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has chimed in on the issue of judicial nominees in a mass mailing to parishioners timed to yield constituent letters just as the matter comes to a vote.

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No successful putsch ever announces itself as such. The putsch likely to be attempted soon will be presented as a simple change in the Senate rules, and it will succeed unless at least six GOP senators dare to break with the radicalism of the Bush administration and join with all the Democratic senators (and one independent) to defeat it: Arlen Specter, Olympia Snowe, John McCain? The roster of the brave is ominously short.

Last January, Fritz Stern — a German emigre historian who witnessed the rise of Nazism — was asked whether the United States could ever become an authoritarian state. Stern, who has steadfastly resisted facile comparisons, replied: "My hope is that the real conservatives of this country may catch fire, the ones who regard civil rights and the Constitution as fundamental, and that on those grounds they may rise up against the foreign and domestic excesses of this administration and say, finally, 'No! You are not going to get away with this!' Three or four senators could be enough to turn the tide." But will there be even that many?

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[whometense]

1. More to read

Here: excellent Digby post on this subject.

and

Here: More on Fritz Stern.

God had been drafted into national politics before, but Hitler’s success in fusing racial dogma with a Germanic Christianity was an immensely powerful element in his electoral campaigns. Some people recognized the moral perils of mixing religion and politics, but many more were seduced by it. It was the pseudo-religious transfiguration of politics that largely ensured his success, notably in Protestant areas.

German moderates and German elites underestimated Hitler, assuming that most people would not succumb to his Manichean unreason; they didn’t think that his hatred and mendacity could be taken seriously. They were proven wrong. People were enthralled by the Nazis’ cunning transposition of politics into carefully staged pageantry, into flag-waving martial mass. At solemn moments, the National Socialists would shift from the pseudo-religious invocation of Providence to traditional Christian forms: In his first radio address to the German people, twenty-four hours after coming to power, Hitler declared, “The National Government will preserve and defend those basic principles on which our nation has been built up. They regard Christianity as the foundation of our national morality and the family as the basis of national life.”