With his new 20/20 Hindsight

Maybe even Reverend John Danforth can see that William Pryor is psycho.

(Sorry, that’s “Judge Psycho”.)

William Pryor: Unfit to Serve. Part II.

This little cuppa of mea culpa got my attention when commentary from John Danforth from March 30, 2005 was run on Air America yesterday. John Danforth, is a former United States senator from Missouri, former US ambassador to the United Nations and is an Episcopal minister. Danforth is no Liberal by any stretch of the imagination, and might be best known for bringing his considerable clout to bear to insure the appointment of “Fat Tony” Scalia’s most reliable sock puppet – Clarence Thomas – to the Supreme Court (Thomas was an aide to and protégé of Danforth.)

In the Name of Politics
By John C. Danforth
The New York Times
St. Louis - By a series of recent initiatives, Republicans have transformed our party into the political arm of conservative Christians. The elements of this transformation have included advocacy of a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, opposition to stem cell research involving both frozen embryos and human cells in petri dishes, and the extraordinary effort to keep Terri Schiavo hooked up to a feeding tube.
Standing alone, each of these initiatives has its advocates, within the Republican Party and beyond. But the distinct elements do not stand alone. Rather they are parts of a larger package, an agenda of positions common to conservative Christians and the dominant wing of the Republican Party.
…
High-profile Republican efforts to prolong the life of Ms. Schiavo, including departures from Republican principles like approving Congressional involvement in private decisions and empowering a federal court to overrule a state court, can rightfully be interpreted as yielding to the pressure of religious power blocs.
…
It is not evident to many of us that cells in a petri dish are equivalent to identifiable people suffering from terrible diseases. I am and have always been pro-life. But the only explanation for legislators comparing cells in a petri dish to babies in the womb is the extension of religious doctrine into statutory law.
…
The problem is not with people or churches that are politically active. It is with a party that has gone so far in adopting a sectarian agenda that it has become the political extension of a religious movement.
When government becomes the means of carrying out a religious program, it raises obvious questions under the First Amendment. But even in the absence of constitutional issues, a political party should resist identification with a religious movement.
…
Take stem cell research. Criminalizing the work of scientists doing such research would give strong support to one religious doctrine, and it would punish people who believe it is their religious duty to use science to heal the sick.
During the 18 years I served in the Senate, Republicans often disagreed with each other. But there was much that held us together.
…
But in recent times, we Republicans have allowed this shared agenda to become secondary to the agenda of Christian conservatives. As a senator, I worried every day about the size of the federal deficit. I did not spend a single minute worrying about the effect of gays on the institution of marriage. Today it seems to be the other way around.
The historic principles of the Republican Party offer America its best hope for a prosperous and secure future. Our current fixation on a religious agenda has turned us in the wrong direction. It is time for Republicans to rediscover our roots.

Well that was refreshing, although does confirm that Republicans really do put their balls in a blind trust at the Jerry Falwell Savings and Loan, and only get them back once they leave government service and no one pays them any attention anymore. Rather like Tom Ridge’s admitting that he was pressured into jacking up the Terrorist Alert levels during the Bush Reelection Campaign…and admission that he made only after Bush was safely back in office and Ridge was retired and safe from retribution.

What fucking cowards these men are. Seriously, what utter Astroglide-spined tube-worm belly crawlers they are…and they’re the brave ones. The best of the defective lot.

In public life, however, there appear to be only two flavors of Republicans left: the proudly and loudly theocratic and a swarm of conscienceless little opportunists who spend their whole career desperately pretending that the theocrats aren’t really there.

Or that that 300-lb. tumor that has consumed their entire party is really just a sunburn or a summer cold.

Or that they’re really still in charge.

Or that however ruinous the hellmouth into which the likes of James Dobson is marching them might be, the Democrats are somehow Just As Evil, despite the complete absence of any rational basis for this kind of belief. They are so hip-mo-tized by their own deranged, hatemongering rhetoric and are so smothered in their own lies that every time the Randall Terry wing of the party moves a step closer to complete victory, these auto-blinded Moderate Republicans re-invent yet again another iteration of the fictional Liberal Enemy out of whole-cloth so that they can convince themselves that only giving the Devil 90% of what he demands is somehow a moderate, middle position.

Let me make it even simpler: as of 2004, if you have a conscience, you can’t be a Republican. And if you are a Republican, you are either an evil wingnut Shining Path goon, or you are a stooge for the evil wingnut Shining Path goon squad.

Your Party is owned an operated by nutty bastards who are making a serious run at destroying the country you claim to love. They are trying – with a frightening degree of success – to replace our glorious democratic experiment with a Wahabi Christian State, where every check on government power will be eradicated, and in the New Fundamentalist Confederacy we will all have to bend a knee to the likes of Randall Terry and James Dobson.

The people running your Party make absolutely NO SECRET of the fact that this is the plan, but they depend on you – YOU Moderates Republicans – to abet them in the annihilation of the country you say you love.

Listen to what your fellow traveler, JAN LARUE of Concerned Women For America had to say about the subject of creating an official State Religion said when she was interviewed on NOW:

BRANCACCIO: So in my efforts here to understand, sort of, where your limits are on this, you wouldn't support a state that wanted to establish an official religion would you?

JAN LARUE: Well, you know, the interesting thing is that the founding of our country, there were state churches. That's what it's all about, in a country where the people get to rule, and if you, you know, you're in a state you don't like then you get to move to another state…

So she see’s nothing wrong with the establishment of a state religion, but you would be allowed to leave you home and family, your friends and job and flee to another state if you wanted.

This is the true face of your Party and every time you go into the voting booth and vote Republican, you tell these scumbags that you personally approve the establishment of a theocracy.

Every time you turn on Rush to lobotomize yourself a little further you tell the world that you are a spineless little pussy who is so terrified of the truth that you’ll do anything, listen to anyone, swallow any rat poison you are offered rather that deal with what you personally have unleashed in the world.

Every time you send a check to the RNC, you’re giving Randall Terry a big, wet kiss on the mouth.

This weekend we celebrate the sacrifice of the tens of millions of Americans who have taken up arms to defend our Free and Democratic nation. And every time you side with the madmen who have taken over your party and want to use the mandate you personally gave them to destroy America, you side against every man and woman who ever served the nation in uniform to defend it against the very kinds of people to whom you are now delivering us up, gift-wrapped and on a silver platter.

So will stand with these enemies of your own country and your own ideals? Or do you stand up for what you actually believe in and against the thugs who defile Christ’s name every time it comes out of their hateful mouths?

And what does this have to do with William Pryor?

Because he is your poster-child.

He is a proud, out-loud theocrat and has made no secret about it.

George Bush had to sift through thousands of qualified applicants to find him, so his selection is no accident. Bush settled on him deliberately, has fought to get him on the Federal Bench for years, and William Pryor is all the proof any rational person should ever need that the GOP is knowingly handing the United States over to the worst, most extreme, most violent, most hateful and most irrational group of people ever to wield this much power in our history.

And they want more. They want it all.
Funny how the same people who think that’s kind of a bad thing in Saudia Arabia and Iran, or in Syria and Afghanistan, are so eerily comfortable with handing over control of the most powerful nation in the history of the Universe to just such people here at home.

Don’t believe me?

Well, as Al Smith said almost 80 years ago, “Let’s take a look at the record…”