beware Brownback
Rolling Stone has a fine article by Jeff Sharlet on Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas. He is the Right’s new darling, as Sharlet details:
Pat Robertson has tapped the "outstanding senator from Kansas" as his man for president. David Barton, the Christian right's all-but-official presidential historian, calls Brownback "uncompromising" -- the highest praise in a movement that considers intransigence next to godliness. And James Dobson, the movement's strongest chieftain, can find no fault in Brownback. "He has fulfilled every expectation," Dobson says.
The “Constitution Restoration Act” —more accurately a “First Amendment Evisceration Act”—which Brownback co-sponsored, would remove the judicial check on legislative activism:
If passed, it will strip the Supreme Court of the ability to even hear cases in which citizens protest faith-based abuses of power. Say the mayor of your town decides to declare Jesus lord and fire anyone who refuses to do so; or the principal of your local high school decides to read a fundamentalist prayer over the PA every morning; or the president declares the United States a Christian nation. Under the Constitution Restoration Act, that'll all be just fine.
The rest of the profile is also excellent, and Sharlet should be proud; he gets deeper into Brownback’s scripturally based politcal opinions than anyone else I’ve seen to date. We would be better off as a nation with more in-depth articles like these, and far fewer soundbite-driven hit pieces.
(Thanks to Tristero at Hullabaloo for the tip.)