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Title: Senate Passes Hate Bill! Yet Democrats Compromise
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URL Source: http://republicbroadcasting.org/?p=3196
Published: Jul 17, 2009
Author: Rev Ted Pike
Post Date: 2009-07-17 10:15:38 by christine
Keywords: None
Views: 328
Comments: 27
Sen. Patrick Leahy’s hate crimes bill, amending the National Defense Authorization Act, effectively passed the Senate tonight at about eleven o’clock p.m. EDT. A call for cloture, or termination of debate after thirty hours, was passed 63 to 28. Clearly, the Senate majority had spoken. Once cloture is invoked there is usually little more that can be done to resist. There was no floor debate. A complete end run had been done around adequate Senate hearings, a Mark-up session and Rules Committee debate. Total Senate debate of the hate bill amounted to little more than a brief “kangaroo” hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee several weeks ago. Witnesses, which included Attorney General Eric Holder were stacked 4 to 2 against conservatives. Passage occurred despite massive protest from the Christian/conservative right (even more than yesterday) with only the very smallest percentage of calls today in favor of the hate bill. Yet Protest Made a Difference Earlier Thursday evening the Senate finally assembled a quorum and voted down, 62 to 29, Sen. Hatch’s amendment. It would require the federal government to conduct a study to determine if the states are not enforcing the law against violent hate crimes. Citing Attorney General Eric Holder’s recent testimony in Judiciary, Hatch confirmed that states are already “doing a good job.” Then Senator Sam Brownback submitted an amendment which would include in the hate bill the most specific statement (part of the “Religious Freedom Act,” passed in 1993 by Congress 97-3) that only speech that threatens imminent incitement of violence will be punishable under the hate bill. Speech that falls short of such actual incitement will be protected. Sen. Leahy earlier said he had no problem with inclusion of Brownback’s amendment. Although he voted against it, the amendment passed overwhelmingly 78-13. Approval of Brownback’s amendment is a great victory, testimony to the pressure put on liberals even in the past two days. Most Senate Democrats were clearly eager to mollify, to some degree, the overwhelming anger at the hate bill from their constituents this week. Their House counterparts, under far less pressure eleven weeks ago, would never have made such a concession. Inclusion of Brownback’s amendment should help safeguard free speech from the pulpit or airwaves, except in the cases of the most blatant, immediate incitement to violence. It helps neutralize the extremely threatening language of the 1968 hate crimes law, Title 18, sec. 2A, which says if anyone “induces,” through speech, commission of a violent hate crime the speaker will be tried “as a principal” alongside the active offender in federal court. S. 909 remains a massive invasion of state’s rights in law enforcement in violation of the 10th Amendment. It violates the 14th Amendment by exalting certain groups, including homosexual pedophiles, above the majority. But, thanks to massive pressure on liberal Senators, especially during the last two days, and the initiative of Sen. Brownback, at least the 1st Amendment may not be as imminently threatened as before.
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#23. To: christine (#0)
"CORNWALLIS TO GEORGE WASHINGTON: A HOLY WAR will now begin on America....." [sweetliberty.org] [Psalm 2] ANCIENT RITUALS: Rabbi Mordenchai Eskovitz (far left) presides over the daily morning service at Touro Synagogue in Newport, R.I. Built in 1763, Touro is the oldest synagogue in the US today. September 15, 2004 JOHN NORDELL - STAFF George Washington's lasting gift to generations of Jews By Christa Case | Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor NEWPORT, R.I. – In most of Colonial-era New England, it would have been about as hard to find a Jewish family as a grove of palm trees. But when George Washington visited Newport, R.I., in August 1790, the president found not just one Jewish family, but a Hebrew congregation with its own synagogue. They offered him a warm welcome to their community through a letter written by the leader of their congregation, Moses Sexias. Four days later, Washington penned a cordial response, assuring them they could enjoy full citizenship in the new United States of America - welcome news to a community whose ancestors had been expelled from the Iberian Peninsula during the Spanish Inquisition. Today, Jews still worship at the Touro Synagogue in Newport, and every August they - along with other supporters of religious freedom - file into the 18th-century Georgian building to read Washington's letter and to reflect on his words once again. "It is now no more that toleration is spoken of," Washington wrote, "as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights." He also declared that the government gave "to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance." After centuries of persecution in Europe, Jews welcomed Washington's message of equality, which set the stage for the US to become home to the largest, most prosperous Jewish community in the world. Washington's outreach to Jews was revolutionary, notes David Logan, dean of Roger Williams University's law school. America's Founding Fathers were unique in the world when they wrote freedom of religion into the laws of the new country, he says. "It's that pluralism and heterogeneity that make [America] a remarkable place." In the spirit of that pluralism, this year's letter-reading event was officiated and attended by people of a variety of faiths. The Rev. John Holt, a Methodist and executive minister for the interfaith Rhode Island Council of Churches, noted that the Touro Synagogue, dedicated in 1763 and the oldest surviving synagogue in the country, is "not a relic; it's a symbol of continuing religious tolerance." It was America's religious freedom that allowed Jews eventually to be appointed to the highest bench in the country, said US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the keynote speaker. But she also referred to "the persecution Jews have endured throughout history." She contrasted her experience on the bench with that of Louis Brandeis, the first Jew to become a member of the Supreme Court. He graduated from Harvard Law School in 1876 at the age of 20 with the highest scholastic average in the history of the school. Despite his qualifications, he faced open anti-Semitism among his colleagues, one of whom refused to stand next to him for a Supreme Court photo. In contrast, Justice Ginsburg said, she and her coreligionist, Justice Stephen Breyer, faced no such opposition. Eliot Barron of West Hartford, Conn., seated in the synagogue's balcony, nodded emphatically at Ginsburg's remarks about Jews' persecution, almost sending his yarmulke flying into the crowd below. To Dr. Barron and his wife, Vida, both of whose parents immigrated to the US from Eastern Europe, the occasion was a meaningful reminder of the refuge America provided their relatives and fellow Jews. Logan, too, can bear witness to that. His father was a Sorbonne-educated lawyer from the Czech Republic who escaped the Nazis by working as a clown's assistant. He later fled to the US, where he worked as a busboy. Logan credits the social mobility of Jewish immigrants such as his father to the religious freedom guaranteed by the American government. "There were definitely individuals, even powerful individuals, who behaved in an intolerant way," he said. "There remain intolerant individuals. [In the US,] someone has the right to be intolerant, but they can't have the government help them." http:// http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0915/p12s01-lire.html PATRICK HENRY: "I SMELL A RAT" http://ismellarat.com link to George Washington and Free Masonry Behold, I say, how they reward us, to come to cast us out of thy possession, which thou hast given us to inherit. bible.cc/2_chronicles/20-11.htm Obama will stamp it with a "signing statement". Showdown coming.
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