The Filibuster: Tool of Satan

My monitor problems are ongoing. I’m posting this from a borrowed computer--like it or not, I’ve made a commitment to myself to make at least one post a day, and I’m not going to let something stupid such as not having a computer stop me.

It may be just as well, but my limited computer access has kept me from adding my comments to the flap over Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist’s joining the conservative Christian Family Research Council’s nationwide simulcast rally next week to stop what they're calling “The Filibuster Against People of Faith.” That’s right. The Democratic filibuster against less than a dozen of Bush’s judicial nominees is no longer just an unpopular position on the right. And it’s not just un-Christian, it’s anti-Christian. (Although, if we look at the language they’re using, perhaps that’s not true, either. The Family Research Council is not saying the filibuster is against any religion in particular, it's labeling it against “people of faith” in general. Perhaps the filibuster is also anti-Jewish, anti-Muslim, anti-Buddhist, anti-Hindu. . . .) I’m sure they felt just as strongly when Strom Thurmond set the Senate record for filibustering against a civil rights bill in 1957 (which passed regardless, by the way).

Frist’s adding his voice to the rally gives it an appearance of respectability that it doesn’t deserve, but the story’s advanced since yesterday, so I’ll advance along with it. As I said above, perhaps it’s just as well. Via Article 19, I see the Clergy and Laity Network and DriveDemocracy is organizing a response. Here’s part of their press release:

Such an action is immoral, deceitful, and beyond the pale of even politics as usual. We call on Senator Frist to immediately cancel his plans to attend the event, and we urge all elected Republicans to condemn this wholesale attack on the religious practices of their political opponents.

In a related statement, Rev. Albert M. Pennybacker, executive director and chair of Clergy and Laity Network, said, “Attacks by Republicans on the religion of those who differ politically are offensive in America.” He’s right, and so blatantly so that we shouldn’t even need to discuss it, but here we are. One of these days the religious right will overreach so obviously that moderate Christians (and they do exist--I’ve seen them) will disassociate themselves from the fundamentalists who are speaking in their name. Tom DeLay may have started the process already. Will Bill Frist add to it on Sunday, April 24?