April 12, 2005

Dana Millbank: Anti-Conservative Ass

The Dana Millbank story on a conservative conference beating the (rhetorical) hell out of Justice Anthony Kennedy is the biggest hit piece I've ever read in the MSM. Millbank starts off with this sinister intro:

Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy is a fairly accomplished jurist, but he might want to get himself a good lawyer -- and perhaps a few more bodyguards.

Scary huh? That tarring of the conservatives attending the "Confronting the Judicial War on Faith" conference was based on one participant's use of a partial Joseph Stalin quote. About Kennedy Edwin Vieira said, "no man, no problem." The full quote is "Death solves all problems: no man, no problem." Millbank was "nice" enough to write, "Presumably, Vieira had in mind something less extreme than Stalin did and was not actually advocating violence." In the next sentence he continues, "But then, these are scary times for the judiciary." Then he mentions the recent violence toward judges in Chicago and Atlanta.

Millbank doesn't even mention if he tried to get a clarification from Vieira about his use of the Stalin quote. Vieira would have at least had a chance to reaffirm it or renounce violence toward judges. But such a clarification wouldn't fit with Millbank's vision of being on the scene at a conserative confab where attacks on judges are being planned.

There's also the fact the conference was a straw man. Who the heck is Vieria? The biggest name mentioned was Phyllis Schlafly who hasn't been an important political figure in 25 years.

Christian Conservatives are the red-headed stepchild of American politics. Anyone can pound on them with impunity. Andrew Sullivan slimed them by labeling them "theocons" and has called for a purge of them from the Republican Party. Imagine the heat a pundit would receive if they called for gay conservatives to be kicked out of the party. Yet the former is accepted even praised.

There's a whole lotta of talking past each other between the Christian Right and those who are deathly afraid of any mention of religion in politics. Quasi bigotry from Dana Millbank definitely doesn't help.

While no overblown, wacky rhetoric was noticed at the Constitution in 2020 conference, the ideas tossed around amounted to radical alteration of how our government acts towards its citizens. If "progressives" had their way what government did would be stood on its head. Where was Millbank the obvious socialist overtones at that legal conference?

"And the Verdict on Justice Kennedy Is: Guilty"

[Added to OTB's Beltway Traffic Jam.]