Tea party primer: Judicial Activism for theocrats

Dobbs: You've got a terrific idea that you're going to implement with the new Congress: a course on the Constitution for incoming Congressmen and women. Tell us about that.

Bachmann: We're going to do what the NFL does and what the baseball teams do: we're going to practice every week, if you will, our craft, which is studying and learning the Declaration, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.

Justice Scalia has graciously agreed to kick off our class. The hour before we cast our first vote in congress, we'll meet in the Capitol, we'll have a seminar on some segment of the Constitution, we'll have a speaker, we'll have questions and answers, we'll wrap our minds around this magnificent document [and] that'll set the tone for the week while we're in Washington.

I think it's great and I'm hoping all the members of Congress will partake; it's bipartisan

Bachmann: Every week we'll start our week with a class on the Constitution and how maybe bills that we're working on fit in with the Constitution - real time application.

Brody: One guest speaker on the list: influential Evangelical David Barton and his Christian perspective on American history.

Bachmann: The Judeo-Christian heritage isn't a belief. It's a fact.

Brody: And there's another fact Bachmann is bringing to the table.

Bachmann: One thing we know from the Book of Isaiah is that Isaiah tells us that the government is on His shoulders. "We can trust a holy, almighty God with our future and nothing is too big for Him."

David Barton ... has already come under scrutiny for addressing two white supremacist organizations.

Barton claimed in both circumstances that he was unaware of the group's white supremacist ties. But that doesn't mean he's not possessed of extreme views of his own. From 1998 to 2006, he served as vice-chair of the Texas Republican party, which is notorious for having one of the most zealously conservative platforms in the country.

In 2004, for instance, the platform advocated the following:

1. The abolition of the IRS and the repeal of the Sixteenth Amendment.
2. The elimination of the income tax, inheritance tax, gift tax, capital gains tax, corporate income tax, and payroll tax.
3. "an orderly transition to a system of private pensions based on the concept of individual retirement accounts, and gradually phasing out the Social Security tax."
4. The abolition of the Department of Education.
5. Eliminating the government's right to restrict public display of "the Decalogue" (a.k.a. the 10 Commandments).

The Texas GOP also "opposes the legalization of sodomy," and holds that "[h]omosexual behavior is contrary to the fundamental, unchanging truths that have been ordained by God, recognized by our country's founders, and shared by the majority of Texans."

Two days after the Election Day conservative tide, Newt Gingrich, David Barton, and Jim Garlow held a conference call for conservative Christian pastors to talk about what it all means. The call brought together Gingrich, an establishment Republican who has been courting the Religious Right for a future presidential bid; Barton, a long-time fixture of the Religious Right who has become a Tea Party celebrity thanks to Glenn Beck; and Jim Garlow, who hails from the dominionist wing of the Religious Right and led religious opposition to marriage equality in California. The elections, they said, were a rejection of secularism and evidence of a new religious Great Awakening that would move America to the right for decades to come.
[...]
All the speakers spoke of the elections as an embrace of the notion of a divinely inspired “American Exceptionalism” that Glenn Beck has been promoting and that a number of Tea Party-backed candidates were sounding as a campaign theme. Barton said that that 90 percent of the congressional freshman class is “pro-God, pro-life, pro-faith, and pro-family.” He repeated the theme that was pounded by speaker after speaker at the Values Voter summit – that fiscal and social conservatism can’t be separated.

In fact, Garlow and Barton went even further, asserting a biblical underpinning for an approach to economics that is probably even further to the Right than many Tea Party activists. Taxation and deficit spending, they said, amount to theft. The estate tax, Barton said, is “absolutely condemned” by the Bible as the “most immoral” of taxes. Jesus, he said, had “teachings” condemning the capital gains tax and minimum wage. This, he declared, was “a great election for biblical values.”