Judicial Roundup
For those of you not keeping up with the stream of ideologues nominated by the Bush administration, here are a couple of highlights.
Bush has nominated Claude Allen, press secretary for Jesse Helms' 1984 re-election campaign. In response to Hunt's referring to Helms' supporters as right wingers, Allen claimed that Hunt had ties "with the queers." Doesn't sound to me like Mr. Allen has quite what is called judicial temperament.
Also nominated is Bill Pryor, Alabama Attorney General, who submitted an amicus brief in support of Texas' anti-sodomy laws. He also submitted an amicus in support of Colorado's anti-gay ballot initiative. And, it seems that Pryor shares Senator Santorum's view of homosexuality, comparing it to "prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography, and even incest and pedophilia (if the child should credibly claim to be 'willing)."
Either the White House is completely tone deaf, which I don't think is the case, or else this President really has cast his lot with the bigots and homophobes of his Party. These religious fanatics would like nothing more than to exclude homosexuals from society, much like the Islamofascists have done in the Middle East. They yearn for a theocratic state, based on their perverted readings of the Bible. They care little about constitutional rights or individual liberty, especially when it allows for behavior outside of what they judge to be acceptable. They do not believe in a forgiving, tolerant god; they hold to the type of god described in Jonathan Edwards' Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. They are the Puritans of the modern era and this President has decided to follow them down the path of self righteous rage directed at others. How un-Christian and how un-American.

(Allen story here; Pryor story here; Edwards' sermon here)