January 20, 1961

“Washington is a city of northern charm and southern efficiency,” said John F. Kennedy about the nation’s capital. The city’s southern efficiency had never been so much needed as the night before the charming northerner took the oath as President. The city had been blanketed with eight inches of snow the night before the Inauguration. The army, city employees and 1,700 Boy Scout volunteers moved stranded cars, shoveled paths, and swept snow off the Inaugural stands.

At noon on that frigid Friday, the temperatures stood at just twenty-two degrees. The brilliant mid-winter sun glinted off the snow, almost blinding the frail poet Robert Frost as he tried to read his tribute to America. Boston’s Cardinal Cushing offered a lengthy invocation–the first time a Roman Catholic prelate could pray for a new President of his own faith. During the Cardinal’s prayer, the lectern actually caught fire.

When John F. Kennedy rose to take the oath from Chief Justice Earl Warren, the white-haired jurist was administering the historic words to the youngest man ever elected the nation’s Chief Executive. Watching the vigorous Kennedy that day, hatless, coatless in the cold, his forefinger jabbing the air as clouds of breath steamed forward, few would dream that Warren would write the multi-volume report that tried to quell public doubts about Kennedy’s death by assassination in less than three years time.

This day, though, was all ruffles and flourishes. Kennedy the liberal Democrat was determined to show that he could be as strong in standing up to communist tyranny as the old warrior, Dwight D. Eisenhower, had been. To a listening world, he vowed: “We shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” Summoning Americans to a long twilight struggle, he challenged his people: “My fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you–ask what you can do for your country.”

Americans were stirred and thrilled by his words. They nodded in agreement when he said: “The rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God.” No one complained about Kennedy’s violating the separation of church and state. No one called him divisive. All Americans believed his words then. Have we stopped believing them?

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March 4, 1933

Not since Abraham Lincoln’s first Inauguration in the secession winter of 1860-61 had a President come to power in such a crisis atmosphere. President Herbert Hoover was thoroughly thrashed in the 1932 election. He won just six states (out of forty-eight) and a mere 59 Electoral Votes. Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Governor of New York, had racked up an invincible 472 Electoral Votes. Roosevelt’s mandate was deep and broad. His fellow Democrats had rolled over their opponents in elections for Congress, Governorships, state legislatures. There were even candidates for Recorder of Wills in Sleepy Eye County, Minnesota who were eager to grasp FDR’s coattails.

As the winter deepened, so did the economic crisis. President Hoover was increasingly desperate. Banks were failing daily. The government had to put armed guards on U.S. Mail Trucks. Then, just days before the Inauguration, the President-elect faced an assassination attempt while riding in an open car in Miami. FDR was unhurt, but he calmly ordered the Secret Service to take the mortally wounded Mayor of Chicago to a hospital.

When Roosevelt finally took the oath in Washington, all eyes in the nation were on him.

His rich baritone rang out: “Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself!” His words were like an electric charge running through the country.

Many of his policies were wrong. Many failed. Still, Roosevelt’s indomitable confidence, his commanding presence, his unquestionable courage are what made millions of Americans love and support him. They honor his memory to this day.

FDR’s confidence was not in himself alone. He concluded his inspiring address with these words: “We humbly ask the blessing of God. May He protect each and every one of us. May He guide me in the days to come.”

Thus did the nation’s most liberal President conclude this First Inaugural Address. He alone would deliver three more Inaugurals.

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The homosexual Episcopal bishop Gene Robinson will offer a prayer at a pre-inauguration event at the Lincoln Memorial on Sunday. Here’s part of what he told National Public Radio about his preparation (thanks to David Brody of CBN for this link.):

Robinson: I have actually read back over the inaugural prayers of the last 30 or 40 years and frankly I’ve been shocked at how aggressively Christian they are. And my intention is not to invoke the name of Jesus but to make this a prayer for Christians and non-Christians alike. Although I hold the scripture to be the word of God, those scriptures are holy to me and Jews and Christians, but to many other faith traditions they have their own sacred texts. And so rather than insert that and really exclude them from the prayer by doing so, I want this to be a prayer to the god of our many understandings and a prayer that all people of faith can join me in.

 

NPR Host: The god of many understandings?

Robinson: “Yes. I was treated for alcoholism three years ago and grateful to be sober today. And one of the things that I’ve learned in 12 step programs is this phrase, ‘the god of my understanding’. It allows people to pray to a God of really many understandings. And let’s face it, each one of us has a different understanding of God. No one of us can fully understand God or else God wouldn’t be God.”

NPR Host: I’m not sure that a God of many understandings has been invoked at an inauguration before?

Robinson: Well, I’ve done a lot of things for the first time in my life and I will be proud to do this one.

Let me note a couple of things here. Robinson says he is “shocked at how aggressively Christian” inaugural prayers” of the last 30 or 40 years” have been. Forty years ago would have been the inauguration of Richard Nixon, which was probably the first inauguration I ever watched, and I think I’ve watched all but two of them (when I was overseas) since. I haven’t actually done the research Robinson has, but I don’t remember any as “aggressively Christian.” My impression is that prayers at such events tend to be blandly, generically monotheistic, while perhaps also being “aggressively” patriotic. Giving an altar call would be “aggressively Christian.” Simply praying “in Jesus’ name,” or quoting from the Bible, is not.

Secondly-does it strike anyone else as odd that a Christian clergyman, a bishop no less, takes his theology from a twelve-step program? Such programs have helped a lot of people, and I’m glad Bishop Robinson got help for his alcoholism-but didn’t the man ever go to seminary? A Christian seminary, even?

Robinson is right in a certain sense when he says, “No one of us can fully understand God or else God wouldn’t be God.” But Christians believe that our own incapacity as finite humans to figure out God on our own is the very reason why God took the initiative to reveal himself to us, both in the person of Jesus and in the words of Scripture. That’s where Christian theology goes beyond the twelve-step theology.

With that said, though, Bishop Robinson seems to be mis-applying even the twelve-step theology. The idea is for each individual to pray to “the god of my understanding.” That is not the same as one individual praying to “a God of many understandings,” which is what Robinson is pledging to do.

I would submit that when a Christian clergyman prays at a public event “in Jesus’ name,” he is doing exactly what the twelve-step program calls for-praying to the “[G]od of [his] understanding.” It is those who would deny him that right-not the Christian clergyman-who are guilty of the worst form of intolerance.

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Kevin Martin has proven himself to be an unwavering ally for families throughout his tenure at the Federal Communications Commission. He has crossed party lines to protect consumers and families from indecent and obscene programming. He has never hesitated to go up against corporations and networks when necessary.

Martin consistently demonstrated a genuine concern for the impact of telecommunications on the family. I thank him for safeguarding the public’s right to make the airwaves suitable for viewing and listening. It is our hope that Julius Genachowski, Obama’s pick to head the FCC, follows in Martin’s footsteps and continues this commitment to the American people.”

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POSITION: PRESS SECRETARY

NOMINEE:  Robert Gibbs

Born:  March 29, 1971 in Auburn, Alabama

Occupation: Political consultant, most recently the communications director for Senator Barack Obama and Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign

Family: Married, one child

Education: B.A., North Carolina State University (majored in political science), graduated cum laude

Career: Robert Gibbs has spent his career working as a communications specialist in the campaigns of various politicians. Prior to becoming involved in Obama’s presidential campaign, he served as the communications director for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. He served as the campaign spokesman for Fritz Hollings in 1998 and was the press secretary for Representative Bob Etheridge. He was John Kerry’s press secretary during his 2004 presidential campaign. He has worked with Obama since 2004.

On Homosexual “Marriage”

“One of the sponsors of the bill (Illinois Non-Discrimination Bill Senate Bill 2597, formally SB 101, which would give special rights in housing, employment and public accommodations on the basis of one’s sexual orientation.) is Keyes’ opponent Obama.

Robert Gibbs, spokesman for Obama, said Obama is against discrimination.

While Obama supports laws that guarantee basic rights to same sex couples, including recognition of domestic partnerships, Obama opposes gay marriage.

‘Our position on gay marriage is the same position held by John McCain and Dick Cheney, who are opposed to gay marriage, but are also opposed to a constitutional amendment that is unnecessary,’ Gibbs said.”  [source (from Senator Obama's Senate campaign in 2006)]

On Homosexuals in the Military

“In a response to a question on the Web site Change.gov asking whether Obama would get rid of the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy, Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs said: ‘You don’t hear politicians give a one-word answer much. But it’s yes.’

Gibbs on Wednesday expanded on his answer, saying, ‘There are many challenges facing our nation now and the president-elect is focused first and foremost on jump-starting this economy.  So not everything will get done in the beginning but he’s committed to following through” with ending the policy against being openly gay in the military.’” [source]

Quotes about Gibbs:

“He’s the last person Barack talks to when he’s thinking about how to handle reporters’ questions,” says Linda Douglass, a campaign spokeswoman. “We call him the Barack Whisperer. He completely understands his thinking and knows how Barack wants to come across.’” [source]

“Robert is the guy I want in the foxhole with me during incoming fire…If I’m wrong, he challenges me. He’s not intimidated by me.” – Barack Obama  [source]

“His aggressive communication skills; while close to Mr. Obama, Mr. Gibbs does not always share his boss’s steady temperament, and this has caused dust-ups during the presidential campaign. Mr. Gibbs’s friends say he is working at being calm under pressure, a vital skill for a press secretary who stands at the White House podium as the face of the administration.” – [source]

Quotes by Gibbs:

“I’ve always wanted to be in a position where as a staffer I could always speak freely and in an unvarnished way with whoever I was working for…I don’t think you serve somebody well if you don’t feel like you can.”

- On his reputation as one of the few people who can challenge Obama [source]

“It was requisitioned for a higher purpose. I have never gotten that back and I never had the illusion that I would.”- On the light blue tie hijacked by Obama for his 2004 convention speech.  [source]

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March 4, 1865

The Capitol dome now finished; it was topped by a 19-foot Statue of Freedom. Those young black men who first muscled that statue into storage were slaves in the District of Columbia. But by the time they hoisted her into position atop the Capitol, they were free. Four long and bloody years had accomplished this much, and so much more. Not all the President’s hearers had come to applaud. John Wilkes Booth can be seen in grainy photographs of the event.

President Lincoln, defying all expectations (including his own), had been powerfully re-elected the previous November. Four years after appealing to “the better angels of our nature” to avoid civil war, 620,000 young Americans had fallen in a war of brother against brother.

Suddenly, at noon on that overcast Inauguration Day, the sun broke thought the clouds. Seeing victory in sight, Lincoln sounded no note of triumph, gave no hint of self righteousness. The war came, he said, and it was a judgment of heaven upon north and south alike. God could have given the victory to either side, many times. But it was not His perfect will. It would be our task, the President said, “to bind up the nation’s wounds.” He continued: “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in.”

The seven hundred and one words of Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address have been carved in stone in his memorial. Every American should read them every year. After the ceremony, Frederick Douglass, the great abolitionist orator and editor, went to the President’s House. He wanted to shake Lincoln’s hand. He was the first black man invited to a Presidential Inaugural. Barred from entry by an officious policeman, Douglass simply climbed through an open window. Lincoln spotted him in the receiving line and called out to him: “There’s my friend, Douglass.” The President asked for his opinion of the speech, and Douglass replied: “It was a sacred effort.” And so it remains. Just weeks later, Abraham Lincoln would belong to the Ages.

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March 4, 1861

Wheezing old General Winfield Scott, gouty but doughty, was determined. The hero of a score of battles since 1812 would not let rebels disrupt the inauguration of the first Republican President. Virginia-born but Army-bred, great Scott stationed sharpshooters on the roofs of all the prominent buildings along the inaugural route. If anyone tried anything, Scott thundered, he would use his cannon to “manure the Virginia hills” with their bodies.

Scott’s brave show worked. Abraham Lincoln’s path to power was unimpeded. Lincoln rose before the as-yet-uncompleted Capitol building. As he spoke, seven states had already declared themselves out of the Union. They had set up their own rival government in Montgomery, Alabama. Lincoln weighed his every word. If he came down too strongly, he could tip Virginia and Maryland against the Union–and then the nation’s capital would itself be surrounded. But if he did not take a strong enough stance, his own supporters would be disheartened.

Holding Lincoln’s stovepipe silk hat on that Inaugural stand was his defeated rival, Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois, the Democrat. Another Democrat, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, author of the infamous Dred Scott decision, would administer the oath. Taney had said “the black man has no rights which the white man is bound to respect.”

Lincoln appealed to reason. Secession, he said, was illegal. And it was impossible. A husband and wife can get a divorce, but how can sections of the same country separate? He spoke eloquently of those “mystic chords of memory stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone.” He urged his “dissatisfied fellow-countrymen” not to take the momentous step of civil war, reminding them: “You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most solemn one to ‘preserve, protect, and defend it.’” Finally, he called upon “the better angels of our nature” to avert the looming catastrophe. Those better angels would not abandon this troubled land–despite four long and bloody years of fratricidal conflict.

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March 4, 1829

Do you think the campaign we’ve just witnessed was too long? How about a four-year long campaign? Do you think it was too dirty? How about charging one candidate with being an adulterer, bigamist, and killer? And calling his opponent a pimp? That’s how long and how bad the campaign of 1824-28 was. Ever since the House of Representatives chose Secretary of State John Quincy Adams to be President–and Adams promptly chose a defeated rival, Henry Clay, to be his own Secretary of State–backers of Andrew Jackson howled “Corrupt Bargain!” And they kept howling for four long years. To his enthusiastic supporters, Jackson was, simply, the Hero. He had won the Battle of New Orleans in 1815, saving Louisiana and the West, and really saving the young country from the British. For the four years of his single term, President John Quincy Adams lived in the shadow of Jackson’s inevitable triumph. Jackson championed democracy. His opponents feared “King Mob.” Adams’ backers, though not Adams himself, circulated all the old rumors of Jackson’s 1791 marriage to Rachel Robards, a woman whose divorce was not final. They circulated the infamous Coffin Handbill, showing nine black coffins with the names of men the hot-tempered Old Hickory had killed, in duels, or as an iron-willed military commander. Jackson’s people responded with the wholly false charge that John Quincy Adams had procured a young American virgin for the lecherous Tsar of Russia when Adams was our ambassador. Talk about ugly!

President Jackson’s demeanor on the day of his Inauguration, March 4, 1829, could not have been more dignified. He wore mourning black, in honor of his recently deceased wife. On seeing the newspaper accounts of her long-ago sin, Jackson’s beloved Rachel had suffered a heart attack and died. He would blame Henry Clay to his dying day–and hate him for it.

Jackson bowed to the inaugural crowds, but their conduct was not so dignified. They mobbed the President’s House, backwoodsmen with muddy boots standing on damask covered chairs to get a glimpse of their idol. Jackson’s friends had to form a flying wedge to keep the rescue the new President and keep him from being crushed by his admirers. Bowie knives cut souvenir tassels from elegant draperies.

Nothing we’ve yet seen of Obamamania has equaled the raucous first Jackson Inaugural.

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Here’s what we are reading this morning.

• “Gay marriage still linchpin issue for evangelicals,” James Kirchick, The Politico (January 16, 2009)
• “Against same-sex marriage? Think about the kids,” Karen Beaudoin, MaineToday.com (January 15, 2009)
• “Abortion opponents form clubs at Dallas-area schools,” Katherine Leal Unmuth, The Dallas Morning News (January 16, 2009)
• “What the FOCA?” Right Girls (January 15, 2009)
• “Evidence-based sex ed,” Janet Rosenbaum, The Baltimore Sun (January 16, 2009)
• “Religious Liberty in America: An Idea Worth Sharing Through Public Diplomacy,” Jennifer A. Marshall, The Heritage Foundation (January 15, 2009)
• “Judge kicks Newdow to the curb,” Lynn Vincent, World Magazine (January 15, 2009)
• “Churchgoing linked to lower suicide risk,” Jennifer Harper, The Washington Times (January 16, 2009)

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Are you looking to see politicians stand up for what they believe in? Then I suggest you rent “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” Otherwise here is an updated schedule for hearings and votes next week on HRH President-elect Barack Obama’s nominations. To watch the hearings as they are happening tune into the Committee websites or CSPAN.org

Timothy F. Geithner, nominee for Secretary of the Treasury
Hearing date: January 21st, 2009
10:00 A.M.
Location: Senate Finance Committee

Ray LaHood, nominee for Secretary of Transportation
Hearing date: January 21st, 2009
2:00 P.M.
Location: Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee

Scheduled committee vote on Susan Rice, nominee for Ambassador to the United Nations
Vote date: January 23rd, 2009
2:30 P.M.
Location: Senate Foreign Relations Committee

James B. Steinberg, nominee for Deputy Secretary of the Department of State;
Jacob J. Lew, nominee for Deputy Secretary for Management and Resources of the Department of State
Hearing date: January 24th, 2009
2:30 P.M.
Location: Senate Foreign Relations Committee

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Here’s what we are reading this evening.

• “Big Bang Evidence for God,” Frank Turek, Townhall.com (January 14, 2009)
• “Obama’s Gay Marriage Flip-Flop,” Sean Hannity, FOX News (January 15, 2009)
• “Is California ready for 2010 vote on gay marriage?,” Shelby Grad, The Los Angeles Times (January 15, 2009)
• “States Sue Over Provider Conscience Rule,” Rob Stein, The Washington Post (January 15, 2009)
• “Collier County denies Bible distribution on Religious Freedom Day,” Joni B. Hannigan, Florida Baptist Witness (January 15, 2009)
• “A New Faith Plan to End the Culture Wars in America,” David Brody, CBNNews.com (January 15, 2009)

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March 4, 1801

Thomas Jefferson would wear no ceremonial swords to his simple swearing-in ceremony. He would ride in no stately coach-and-six, as President George Washington had enjoyed. “Mr. Jefferson,” as the simple Virginia republican preferred to be called, took breakfast at his Washington boarding house with all the other diners on Inauguration Morning, 1801. Then, he walked to the still unfinished Capitol, where he took the oath of office. He was the first President to take office in the new national capital. He was the first sworn in since the death of George Washington in 1799. Jefferson spoke in a barely audible voice (he was never the orator John Adams or Patrick Henry had been). Still, his listeners appreciated the way we soothed the ruffled feathers of a hard-fought election campaign. “We are all Republicans; we are all Federalists.” Jefferson had been elected only after weeks of balloting in the House of Representatives when the Electoral College failed to designate a clear winner. He spoke of religious liberty as one of the great achievements of the young republic. He and his close friend James Madison had blazed that trail with their work on the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom fifteen years earlier, in 1786. Now, Jefferson described God as “an overruling Providence [who] delights in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter…” He closed his inaugural address with a question: “[W]ith all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people? Still one thing more, fellow-citizens-a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.” These wise words can certainly be treasured by us two hundred years later, when national administrations of both parties are planning to add trillions to the national debt that will weigh down our children and our children’s children. Another point jumps out from Jefferson’s first inaugural address: It’s pretty hard to square his words about God’s “overruling Providence,” His delight in our happiness here and hereafter, with the scurrilous charges thrown at Jefferson during the 1800 campaign. It’s hard to see this man as an “atheist” of any kind.

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Our redoubtable second President, John Adams of Massachusetts, was inaugurated in Philadelphia on March 4, 1797. He followed two terms of the man revered as “Father of Our Country.” The bald and portly Adams was short, but powerfully built. Rising to the occasion, he wore a ceremonial sword for his swearing-in. Some of the senators sniped. “His Rotundity,” they called the man who was a genuine hero of the revolution. Adams, like Washington before him, attributed American independence to “the justice of their cause, and the integrity and intelligence of the people, under an overruling Providence which had so signally protected this country from the first.” While professing no religious ties himself, he said “a decent respect for Christianity [is] among the best recommendations for the public service.” In his diary, Adams later noted that the people who watched him take the oath were weeping. “[W]hether it was from grief or joy, whether from the loss of their beloved President [Washington], or from the accession of an unbeloved one…I know not.” Still, John Adams presided over the first peaceful transfer of political power. This was another of Washington’s great gifts to the nation. Four years later, in 1801, the defeated John Adams did not attend President Jefferson’s inauguration in the new capital of Washington, D.C. He left the vast, empty President’s House-in whose cavernous East Room First Lady Abigail Adams had hung her laundry-before dawn. He took the early coach home to the Bay State. Biographer David McCullough tells us that Adams was not the sore loser history thinks he was. He simply wasn’t invited to Mr. Jefferson’s inauguration. Even in this, however, Adams again made history. This was the first time the government had changed hands in a contested election, the first time the “ins” voluntarily stepped “out.” John and Abigail Adams were the first First Family to live in the President’s House. Leaving, John offered this prayer: “I pray Heaven to bestow the best of blessings on this house, and on all that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but wise and honest men every rule under this roof.”

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It’s that time of year again! Blogs 4 Life 2009 will be taking place on Thursday, January 22 from 8:30-11:30 a.m. at the FRC Headquarters in Washington, D.C. B4L will take place on the same day as March For Life, and will provide an amazing opportunity to hear from renowned conservative voices such as: U.S. Senator Sam Brownback, Amanda Carpenter, Jill Stanek, Michael New, Ph.D., Charmaine Yoest, Ph.D., Michael Illions, Chris Gacek, J.D., Ph.D., and Martha Shuping, M.D.

This is a great opportunity for bloggers to network and grow in their knowledge of how internet technology can be used to promote life and bring ideas into action in a post-Roe America.

If you are unable to make B4L will also have a webcast that will be live streaming on FRC’s website. Additionally, there will be a Twitter hashtag devoted to B4L (#B4L) for those who are interested.

I hope to see you there.

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Here’s what we are reading this morning.

• “USCCB Calls ACLU Suit Against Health and Human Services Meritless, Affront to Religious Liberty,” PRNewswire (January 15, 2009)
• “In Defense of Death,” David Brooks, The New York Times (January 12, 2009)
• “ACLU Sues HHS over Anti-Human Trafficking Partnership with Catholic Bishops,” Matt Cover, CNSNews.com (January 14, 2009)
• “Early Show: Abstinence Okay for Adults, Doesn’t Work for Teens,” Erin Brown, NewsBusters (January 14, 2009)
• “‘No Religion’ signs draw little public reaction in Portland,” Nancy Haught, The Oregonian (January 15, 2009)
• “‘Keep the numbers up!’,” Janie B. Cheaney, World Magazine (January 17, 2009)
• “Rick Warren Reaches Out to Gene Robinson,” Jacqui Salmon, The Washington Post (January 14, 2009)
• “What the Futurists Neglect to Tell Us,” Pedro Blas Gonzalez, Intellectual Conservative (January 15, 2009)

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POSTION:  Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legal Counsel

NOMINEE:  Dawn Johnsen                                                   

Education:  summa cum laude B.A. in economics and political science, Yale, 1983; J.D. Yale, 1986, Article & Book Review Editor, Yale Law Journal

Family:  N/A

Experience: law professor, Indiana University School of Law-Bloomington, 1998-present; Acting Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legal Counsel, United States Department

of Justice, Washington, D.C., 1997-1998; Deputy Assistant Attorney General, 1993-1996; Legal Director, National Abortion & Reproductive Rights Action League (currently

NARAL Pro-Choice America), Washington, D.C., 1988-1993; Law Clerk to the Honorable Richard D. Cudahy, United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, Chicago, Illinois, 1986-1987

Clinton White House: From 1993 to 1998 she worked in the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), including a stint as Acting Assistant Attorney General heading the OLC

Obama Campaign:  After election, named to Obama transition’s Department of Justice Review Team.

Affiliations:  American Constitution Society for Law and Policy, National Board Member; National Co-Chair of Project on The Constitution in the 21st Century; Co-Chair of Separation of Powers/Federalism Issue Group. NOTE: This group is the relatively new Leftist answer to the Federalist Society.

From her article on fetal rights:

“In recent years, however, courts and state legislatures have increasingly granted fetuses rights traditionally enjoyed by persons.  Some of these recent ‘fetal rights’ differ radically from the initial legal recognition of the fetus in that they view the fetus as an entity independent from the pregnant woman with interests that are potentially hostile to hers.” D. Johnsen, “The Creation of Fetal Rights:…”, 95 YALE L.J. 599 (1986).

“Until recently, the law did not recognize the existence of the fetus except for a few very specific purposes.”  D. Johnsen, “The Creation of Fetal Rights:…”, 95 YALE L.J. at 601.

“In thus treating the fetus, courts have glossed over crucial differences between fetuses and persons, and have lost sight of the interests that narrow legal recognition of the fetus traditionally has attempted to protect.  They have ignored alternatives to equating the fetus with a person that would have more appropriately served their goals.”  D. Johnsen, “The Creation of Fetal Rights:…”, 95 YALE L.J. at 610.

Granting rights to fetuses in a manner that conflicts with women’s autonomy reinforces the tradition of disadvantaging women on the basis of their reproductive capability.  By subjecting women’s decisions and actions during pregnancy to judicial review, the state simultaneously questions women’s abilities and seizes women’s rights to make decisions essential to  [*625]  their very personhood.  The rationale behind using fetal rights laws to control the actions of women during pregnancy is strikingly similar to that used in the past to exclude women from the paid labor force and to confine them to the “private” sphere. 

D. Johnsen, “The Creation of Fetal Rights:…”, 95 YALE L.J. at 624-25.

On Alito Hearings:

We have squandered a rare opportunity for public education. The Senate’s focus on the formal status of Roe, while understandable, masks the extent to which the court has already gutted the right to choose and what the confirmation of Alito most immediately would mean for reproductive liberty.

            D. Johnsen, Slate, “The Outer Shell: The hollowing out of Roe v. Wade,” Jan. 25, 2006.

On Reducing the Number of Abortions:

My point was that the kind of legislative initiatives that come out of the “Republican coalition” you were discussing does not actually accomplish a reduction in abortions.  (And that the primary prochoice organizations do work hard toward that goal.)  That may also well reveal that some (not all) such political forces are more interested in objectives other than reducing the number of abortions.  Among them may be controlling the nature and understanding of motherhood and diminishing women’s equality and sexual freedom (and even where those are not objectives, they may provide strong influences).  For the many who sincerely would like to reduce the number of abortions, that desire provides the basis for education about the true effects of the legislation and the possibility for instead forging common ground policies that promote pregnancy prevention and healthy childbearing.

            D. Johnsen, Slate, “Reducing Abortions,” March 22, 2008.

In his book, Bearing Right, William Saletan notes that in the late 1980s, Dawn Johnsen and Marcy Wilder, top lawyers at NARAL, “drew a hard line on parental involvement” in abortion decisions.  Saletan quotes an internal NARAL memo by Johnsen and Wilder:  “In practice, both consent and notification laws amount to a parental veto power over a minor’s decision to an abortion.  Do not, as part of an affirmative legislative strategy, introduce even a liberalized version of a parental consent or notification law.”

William Saletan, Bearing Right, p. 289 (Memo, Dawn Johnsen and Marcy Wilder to NARAL Staff and Consultatns, “Pro-Choice Legislative Strategy for Minor’s Access to Abortion Services,” 9/5/89).

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George Washington was keenly aware that he “walked on untrodden ground.” Everything he did would create a precedent, for good or ill. He had to borrow money to make the journey from his beloved Mount Vernon to New York City, where the new government made its temporary headquarters. Washington’s inaugural route was a great celebration. He passed under flowered bowers, past cheering throngs, and saluted by thirteen white-clad maidens, each one representing one of the original states. Thirteen strong rowers conveyed the new President across the river from the Jersey shore to New York. The Federal Building in lower Manhattan had been specially refurbished by Maj. Pierre L’Enfant, a French immigrant, for the occasion of the first Presidential Inauguration. It would be held on April 30, 1789.

Washington did not wear the blue and buff uniform he had worn as commander of the Continental Army. He had been firm in resigning his military commission to Congress meeting at Annapolis more than five years earlier. Instead, he wore a new brown suit, made for him from American fabric by American tailors.

With our recent flap about prayers at a Presidential Inauguration in mind, it’s interesting to speculate on what today’s atheizers-those people who want to impose their atheism on the rest of us—would make of Washington’s Inauguration. Appearing on the balcony before a large crowd, Washington added to the Presidential Oath of Office four significant words. They don’t appear in the oath as it is written in the Constitution. But every President since George Washington has followed his leading: “So help me God.”

Then, in the full view of a cloud of witnesses, Washington kissed the Bible.

Inside Federal Hall, Washington delivered his Inaugural Address. He openly prayed to God as “that Almighty Being who rules over the Universe, who presides in the Councils of Nations, and whose providential aids can supply every human defect” Washington asked God for “his benediction [which] may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the People of the United States, a Government instituted by themselves…” Even the precious gifts of Independence and free government Washington attributed to the hand of Providence. In fact, he spoke of “the sacred fire of liberty” being entrusted to Americans.

That sacred fire is now handed down to us. With the Inauguration of Barack Obama, we have the forty-fourth President in direct line from George Washington. Ours is the oldest constitutional government in the world. Yet we still recognize that our government is what Washington called it: an experiment. And it needs our prayers and our earnest efforts to sustain it.

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Here’s what we are reading today.

• “Gay Bishop Gene Robinson will not invoke Jesus in Inaugural Event Prayer,” David Brody, CBNNews.com (January 14, 2009)
• “Short gain = more spousal benefits for same-sex couples,” Jim Brown, OneNewsNow.com (January 13, 2009)
• “Battle over gay marriage shifts to Maine,” Jason Szep, Reuters (January 14, 2009)
• “Labor unions, churches to fight gay marriage ban in court,” Jessica Garrison, The Los Angeles Times (January 13, 2009)
• “ACLU Seeks To Prohibit Free Exercise Of Religion,” Michael P. Tremoglie, The Bulletin (January 14, 2009)
• “President Bush declares Religious Freedom Day,” Catholic News Agency (January 13, 2009)
• “What was accomplished?,” Maggie Gallagher, The Washington Times (January 11, 2009)
• “A Pro-Life View of Death,” Michael Gerson, Townhall.com (January 14, 2009)
• “Anti-Abortion Forces Target Planned Parenthood,” G. Jeffrey MacDonald, BeliefNet.com (January 13, 2009)
• “MSNBC’s Olbermann Attacks Pro-Life Advocates on Obama Picking Schiavo Atty,” Steven Ertelt, LifeNews.com (January 14, 2009)

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Richard Neuhaus offered many lapidary phrases to enliven our public debates. He’s credited, of course, with the influential book, The Naked Public Square. His title and his arguments have influenced the views of many religious and political thinkers for a generation.

We see evidence of the ceaseless demand for such nakedness in the silly lawsuit filed to prevent prayers from being offered at President Obama’s Inauguration later this month. We see it more menacingly in the offhanded godlessness of the new Capitol Visitor Center, whose vast empty spaces are almost literally a naked public square. Rev. Neuhaus warned of what might come to fill that space if religiously derived principles were ruled out of order. Public life would not remain a vacuum. Predictably, we have seen that void filled with political correctness and unprincipled concessions to what can be termed soft jihadism.

Consider the case of Georgetown University. Some time ago, we saw a celebration of Georgetown’s $15 million Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding with a full-page, four-color ad in The Washington Post. Georgetown’s great old Gothic spires topped by the cross were depicted under a night sky in which the Crescent Moon and five-pointed star of an ascendant Islam stood out most starkly.

Meanwhile, Georgetown’s law faculty went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court with a lawsuit challenging the Solomon Amendment. That law requires that institutions of higher education which accept federal funds must permit military recruiters to have access to students. Georgetown profs joined thousands of others from the nation’s leading universities in protesting this requirement. They were outraged by the U.S. military’s “don’t ask/don’t tell” policy on homosexuals. The Supreme Court slapped down their suit by a vote of 9-0. The best law professors in the nation had crafted an appeal so devoid of merit that it could not even command the assent of Justices Breyer and Ginsburg.

Still, no one asked Georgetown profs how they could deny our Armed Forces while welcoming on their campus Saudi Arabia’s Prince Alaweed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. After all, have the Georgetown Hoyas ever inquired about the status of homosexuals in the Saudi military? It’s safe to say, the Saudi authorities don’t ask; Saudi homosexuals don’t tell. And Georgetown doesn’t care.

The public square, when stripped of its Judeo-Christian raiment, will not long remain naked. We need only consult French and British police, many of whom fear to enter some neighborhoods in their largest cities. There, shari’ah holds sway.

Perhaps my favorite Neuhaus formulation is the phrase “welcomed in life and protected in law.” That was his way of describing the goals of the pro-life movement. We want a country where unborn children are, indeed, safely born and provided with the protections of law before and after birth.

There has been, frankly, too much emphasis on “creating a culture of life” as a precondition to passing protective laws. This lets half-hearted politicians neatly off the hook. Father Neuhaus certainly recognized the need for legal protections. He marched with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King in Selma, where all the freedom demonstrators needed legal protection. Dr. King himself famously pointed to the need for protective laws: “I know a law cannot stop a racist from hating me; but it can stop him from lynching me. And his chances of learning to love me are a lot better if he has not lynched me first.” Lynching was stopped in this country because federal law led to federal protection. The law led the culture.

That idea leads to the second function of the law: its teaching function. The inauguration of President Barack Obama would have been inconceivable had not Dr. King and Richard Neuhaus and so many others marched for the passage of good and just laws-laws that taught all Americans that it was wrong to judge our fellow Americans by the color of their skin and not by the content of their character.

There is nothing wrong and everything right with a culture of life. It can only be wrong if we argue that we must first create a culture of life before we can pass protective laws. Unless the laws teach us that life is to be protected, children will not be welcomed.

When young Pastor Neuhaus was marching with Dr. King, I was a college student at the University of Virginia. I had been shocked to find that though the University was de-segregated, the city of Charlottesville was not. When the Civil Rights Act of 1964-that

great charter prayed and labored for by Dr. King and Fr. Neuhaus-passed Congress overwhelmingly, a small number of Charlottesville’s restaurants and swim clubs resisted integration. Overnight they became “private clubs.” Anyone with five dollars and a white face could join one of these “exclusive” clubs. Some of my fellow students brazenly showed off their membership cards.

That bravado soon faded. Within a single year, all of those segregated clubs had folded. The good people of Charlottesville refused to patronize them. Membership in them was considered an indecent thing to do. Because the law taught us that racial discrimination was wrong, the racists quietly folded their tents.

It is not clear that such would have been the reaction if America in those days had had a naked public square. Richard Neuhaus was a leading clergyman even then, but his efforts to support Dr. King were joined by millions of believers, clergy and lay people alike. America’s great achievement in civil rights would have been impossible without them and without the religiously grounded motives upon which they acted.

So, we should understand Richard Neuhaus’ powerful formulation. Shall unborn children be welcomed in life? Yes, pray God they will be so welcomed. But they are more likely to be welcomed if they have not been slain first. The protection of law will teach all of us to extend that welcome. “Welcomed in life,” of course, “and protected in law.”

That is the legacy from my friend Father Richard Neuhaus that I will cherish. May he rest in peace in the richly adorned public square of Heaven.

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In the latest Mapping America, the National Survey of Children’s Health shows that parents of children who attend religious services at least weekly experience less parenting stress than parents of children who worship less frequently.

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