Best line: "The president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, William Donohue, suggested a constitutional amendment to say that "unless a judicial vote is unanimous, you cannot overturn a law created by Congress."
The court is trying to "take the hearts and souls of our culture," he said."
Bill Donohue is a giant bag of hot air.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/n...ationworld-hed
Rally targets `arrogant' judiciary
Conservative Christians denounce power of nation's judges during `Justice Sunday II' event
From Tribune news services
Published August 15, 2005
NASHVILLE -- A group of conservative Christian speakers took aim Sunday at the power and decisions of the nation's judges, and especially the Supreme Court, using a "Justice Sunday II" telecast to denounce what House Majority Leader Tom DeLay called "judicial autocracy."
America's judicial system is "unelected, unaccountable and arrogant," Focus on the Family founder James Dobson told the thousands of people who packed a Nashville church for the televised rally.
The goal of the rally was to educate evangelical Christians about the U.S. Supreme Court and get them talking to friends and elected officials about what they want from their justices, said organizer Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council.
Many of the speeches targeted the Supreme Court's power and what the writers of the Constitution intended for the justices to do.
The president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, William Donohue, suggested a constitutional amendment to say that "unless a judicial vote is unanimous, you cannot overturn a law created by Congress."
The court is trying to "take the hearts and souls of our culture," he said.
Dobson evoked the framers of the Constitution, saying: "These activist, unelected judges believe they know better than the American people about the direction the country should go. The framers of our great nation did not intend for the courts to have absolute and final power over us."
Protesters also were vocal Sunday, both outside Two Rivers Baptist Church where the rally was held and across town, where a group of religious leaders held a separate event.
"This is so Americans can see the `Justice Sunday' sponsors and Tom DeLay don't have any exclusive hold on religion," said Glenn Smith, an organizer of the Community of Faith and Unity Gathering.
The first "Justice Sunday" event, held in April at a church in Louisville, was aimed at stopping a potential filibuster of several nominees for the federal bench.
A speaker at that event, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), had threatened to try to change Senate rules to prevent certain filibusters if Democrats persisted.
Frist, a surgeon, wasn't invited to address "Justice Sunday II" because he angered the events' organizers by voicing his support for expanded human embryonic stem cell research.
Although some rally organizers once talked about using it to support Supreme Court nominee John Roberts Jr., most speakers at Two Rivers mentioned him only in passing.
The shift in the focus of the telecast indicates the difficulties for both right and left in discerning Roberts' legal views from his limited judicial record.
Perkins summed up his more cautious support for President Bush's choice in an e-mail message to supporters: "Trust but verify." In an e-mail message on Friday about the telecast, Perkins clarified that the event's focus would be bigger than Roberts. "This will be no pep rally for his confirmation," he said.
DeLay questioned the Supreme Court's power to strike down federal laws if it deemed them unconstitutional.
The Constitution assigned Congress the power to make laws, DeLay said, but "this fact ... has been forgotten in recent decades by too many members of the American judiciary, including, most notably, the United States Supreme Court itself."
As evidence, he and others cited Supreme Court decisions about abortion and religion in public life. "That's not judicial independence," DeLay said. "That's judicial supremacy, judicial autocracy."
But after the disclosure of memorandums Roberts wrote for the Reagan administration arguing that the Constitution could allow Congress to remove areas like abortion or school prayer from the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, advocates close to the White House pointed reporters to other memorandums Roberts later wrote suggesting he did not consider such proposals wise policy.
Speaking at the "Justice Sunday II" telecast, however, Phyllis Schlafly, the veteran Christian conservative organizer, argued for just such a proposal, which critics call "court stripping."
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