Lessons of the Heritage Foundation's Implosion

Over the last two days, there has been a massive wave of resignations and departures of scholars and staff from the Heritage Foundation, once one of the nation's most respected conservative think tanks. Those leaving include the leadership of Heritage's Meese Center for Legal and Judicial  Studies,  leading economic policy scholars, my former student and Volokh co-blogger Josh Blackman (editor of the Heritage Guide to the Constitution), and more. This wave of departures follows in the wake of others, such as that of Princeton Princeton professor and prominent conservative political theorist Robert George, who resigned from the Heritage Board last month. Many of the Heritage refugees have moved to Advancing American Freedom (AAF), an organization led by former Vice President Mike Pence.

The immediate cause of the exodus was Heritage President Kevin Roberts' defense of anti-Semitic "influencer" Tucker Carlson and his support of Nick Fuentes, an even more virulent anti-Semite. As it has become clear that Roberts refuses to break his ties with Carlson and unequivocally condemn right-wing anti-Semitism, and that the Heritage board won't remove Roberts,  more and more people have left Heritage.

Read the rest here.

Tucker Carlson just threw gasoline on the simmering GOP divide over Israel and antisemitism

NEW YORK (AP) — As Republicans accuse Democrats of tolerating antisemitism in their party, the GOP on Friday was roiled by its own schism after the leader of a powerful right-wing think tank defended prominent conservative commentator Tucker Carlson for his friendly podcast interview with a far-right activist known for his antisemitic views.

The comments from Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, sparked outrage from some Heritage staffers, senators and conservative activists. But they also reflect increasing skepticism toward Israel and of Jews among some on the right, complicating the GOP’s efforts to cast the Democratic Party as antisemitic.

The outrage began when Roberts on Thursday posted a video in which he denied his group was “distancing itself” from the former Fox News host, one of the most powerful voices on the right, after Carlson’s podcast hosted Nick Fuentes, whose followers see themselves as working to preserve America’s white, Christian identify.

“The American people expect us to be focusing on our political adversaries on the left, not attacking our friends on the right,” said Roberts, adding that, while antisemitism is wrong, conservatives do not need to always support Israel.

The video drew sharp rebuke from Heritage staffers and multiple Republican senators, as well as top Jewish leaders in both parties.

Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, the highest-ranking Jewish member of Congress, called the Roberts statement “deeply disturbing.” Matt Brooks, CEO of the Republican Jewish Coalition, said in a statement to Jewish Insider that he was “appalled, offended and disgusted.”

The flare-up comes as criticism of Israel and blatant antisemitism have risen in right wing circles. Activists such as Fuentes and Candace Owens have seen the popularity of their podcasts and videos grow, particularly among young conservatives who are increasingly skeptical of the notion that the Republican Party should stand by Israel’s side and support its war in Gaza, given President Donald Trump ‘s “America First” agenda.

Read the rest here.

Terrorist Attack on Minneapolis Catholic Church/School

There has been a planned attack on a Catholic Church in Minnesota, almost certainly motivated by anti-Catholic hatred. At least seventeen people, mostly children, were shot and wounded. Two children were killed. While these holy martyrs are in no need of our prayers, their devastated families and the wounded are. 

Kyrie Eleison.

Anti-Semitic violence is rising on and near college campuses

University of Pittsburgh students Asher Goodwin and Ilan Gordon were walking to the first Shabbat service of the school year on Aug. 30 wearing yarmulkes. As they made their way to the campus Hillel building, they said, an older man wearing a keffiyeh approached them from behind and started to beat them with a large glass bottle. 

“He grabbed my Star of David necklace that I was wearing and ripped it off,” Goodwin told NBC News. “I am struck on the back of my neck and the bottle shatters. Glass shards cut across my neck.”

The man, whom police later identified as Jarrett Buba, a 52-year-old white man from Pittsburgh, also allegedly struck Gordon in the right cheek, according to court papers. Buba was charged with two counts of felony assault. A judge denied Buba bail, and he remains in custody.

Goodwin said he doesn’t think his school is doing enough to protect Jewish students. “Currently we have low expectations for any kind of university pre-emptive response, or actions, to ensure [things] don’t get out of hand,” Goodwin said. 

Read the rest here.

Anti-Catholic bigotry is alive in the U.S. Senate

Those who want to understand how Democrats manage to scare the hell out of vast sections of the country need look no further than the story of Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.), Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) and the Knights of Columbus.

In considering the confirmation of Brian Buescher to a federal judgeship last month, Harris and Hirono submitted written questions that raised alarms about his membership in “an all-male society comprised primarily of Catholic men.” “Were you aware,” Harris asked, “that the Knights of Columbus opposed a woman’s right to choose when you joined the organization?” And: “Have you ever, in any way, assisted with or contributed to advocacy against women’s reproductive rights?” And: “Were you aware that the Knights of Columbus opposed marriage equality when you joined the organization?”

For those who know the Knights of Columbus, this is a bit like accusing your Aunt Harriet’s knitting circle of being a Mexican drug cartel. In most of the country, the Knights of Columbus is a respected fraternal organization consisting of men who hand out coats to needy children, promote devotion to the Virgin Mary, support crisis pregnancy shelters and protest doggedly each year in the March for Life.

Hirono regards the traditional moral views of the Knights as “extreme positions.” The difficulty with this line of reasoning is that they are exactly the same positions of the Catholic Church itself. So why wouldn’t a judge’s membership in the Catholic Church — with its all-male clergy, opposition to abortion and belief in traditional marriage — be problematic as well?

The difficulty with a reductio ad absurdum comes when people no longer find it absurdum. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) has made the argument bluntly. In raising concerns in 2017 about appeals court nominee Amy Coney Barrett’s Catholic faith, Feinstein said, “When you read your speeches, the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you.”

So is it fair to say that Harris, Hirono and Feinstein would want judicial nominees to quit religious organizations that hold “extreme positions” or recuse themselves from all matters of morality that the senators regard as tainted by religious dogma? That sounds like an exaggeration. But here is a question that Hirono asked both Buescher and Paul Matey, another appeals court nominee: “If confirmed, will you recuse yourself from all cases in which the Knights of Columbus has taken a position?”

This is not just a liberal excess; it is a liberal argument. Religious liberty, in this view, reaches to the limits of your cranium. You can believe any retrograde thing you want. But you can’t act on that belief in the public square. And you can’t be a member of organizations that hold backward views and still be trusted with government jobs upholding the secular, liberal political order.

Read the rest here.

David Brooks: I Am Not Charlie Hebdo

The journalists at Charlie Hebdo are now rightly being celebrated as martyrs on behalf of freedom of expression, but let’s face it: If they had tried to publish their satirical newspaper on any American university campus over the last two decades it wouldn’t have lasted 30 seconds. Student and faculty groups would have accused them of hate speech. The administration would have cut financing and shut them down.

Public reaction to the attack in Paris has revealed that there are a lot of people who are quick to lionize those who offend the views of Islamist terrorists in France but who are a lot less tolerant toward those who offend their own views at home.

Just look at all the people who have overreacted to campus micro-aggressions. The University of Illinois fired a professor who taught the Roman Catholic view on homosexuality. The University of Kansas suspended a professor for writing a harsh tweet against the N.R.A. Vanderbilt University derecognized a Christian group that insisted that it be led by Christians.

Read the rest here.

Good points. Defending someone's right to be an anti-religious bigot should not be seen as an endorsement. And freedom of expression runs in every direction, something that far too many liberals don't want to acknowledge.

Excuse me... what year is this?

I ask because I just read an op-ed piece that is so breathtaking in its anti-Catholic bigotry that I am wondering if I might not have been caught in some sort of time warp. The article in question would have been par for the course, in say 1928 when Al Smith was running for president and the Klan was sounding the alarm about the dual allegiance of those liquor loving papists. But that something like this could be written in our day and age, by a journalist for a respected weekly news magazine, AND get by the editor is shocking.

Honestly, some heads (plural) need to roll over this.

N. Ireland: Dozens Injured in Anti-Catholic Riots

BELFAST, Northern Ireland (AP) — Protestant hardliners attacked lines of Belfast riot police Friday as Northern Ireland's annual mass marches by the Orange Order brotherhood reached a furious, chaotic end with running street battles at several conflict zones.

In north Belfast, police in flame-retardant suits and helmets deployed a half-dozen armored cars to block a road so that Protestant Orangemen could not march past the edge of Ardoyne, a militant Catholic district that has become the most bitterly contested spot on the city map.

Men jumped on top of the armored barricade and, as hundreds of marchers and supporters formed a sea of often alcohol-fueled fury behind them, wielded pipes, golf clubs, wood planks and even ceremonial swords to vandalize the police vans.

Emboldened, some threw bottles and bricks point-blank into police lines. Many in the mob cheered as one policeman, struck and knocked semiconscious, was dragged to safety by colleagues.

Read the rest here.

In Scotland football (soccer) rivalry is deep and bitter

GLASGOW — It was a normal Saturday game at Ibrox Stadium, home of the Rangers soccer team. A prematch fight broke out on the subway. The crowd lobbed trash onto the field. Fans of Rangers and their mutually despised opponents, Aberdeen, abused one another with traditional chants, songs and obscene gestures.

At times, it seemed that the only thing preventing a violent free-for-all was the heavy presence of police officers and security guards. And lest the message — control yourself, or face the consequences — was lost on anyone, there was a direct request from Rangers authorities.

“If you witness any form of unacceptable or offensive behavior, including sectarian singing,” a notice inserted into the ticket envelopes said, “please advise a steward or police officer.”

No one yet has been able to defuse the visceral hatred that runs through Scottish soccer. But in its latest effort to tackle game-related violence, the Scottish government recently passed a law making it illegal for fans to attack one another using religious, ethnic, regional or violent historical slurs in songs, chants, Internet postings or even stray remarks at a stadium or pub.

Read the rest here.

More nanny state foolishness.  I have no objection to some restrictions at the games themselves.  Inciting a riot has never been protected speech.  But this pretty much just feeds any concept of freedom of expression into the shredder.  Even sadder though is the image of a stadium packed with Protestants and Catholics, but not a Christian to be found anywhere.

Legal loony land in Minnesota

A follow up on some earlier posts...

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A judge ordered the arrest of a Minnesota attorney with a small Wisconsin-based religious group who repeatedly made anti-Catholic slurs in court filings and failed to show up for a Wednesday hearing on whether she should be sanctioned for her statements.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Nancy Dreher held Naomi Isaacson in contempt for her absence. Isaacson was already in contempt for failing to turn over documents in a long-running bankruptcy case involving a subsidiary of the Shawano, Wis.-based group, the Dr. R.C. Samanta Roy Institute of Science and Technology. Dreher said Isaacson will remain jailed until she produces the documents or gets someone else to do it.

The judge also ordered Isaacson and another attorney, Rebekah Nett, to pay $5,000 apiece in penalties.

Dreher had ordered them to appear Wednesday to show cause why she should not sanction them for a memo they filed in November that the judge said was “replete with unsupported and outrageous allegations of bigotry, deceit, conspiracy and scandalous statements against this court … and bankruptcy courts in general.”

The memo repeatedly referred to “Nancy Dreher, the Catholic judge” and called her a “black-robed bigot” and “a Catholic Knight Witch Hunter.” It also called one trustee in the bankruptcy case a “Jesuitess” and another trustee a “priest’s boy” and accused them of conspiring against the group, known as SIST.

Ex-members describe the group, which is led by an Indian immigrant who goes by the name Avraham Cohen, as a cult. Its bankrupt subsidiary, Yehud-Monosson USA Inc., used to own gas stations and convenience stores.

“Across the country the court systems and particularly the Bankruptcy Court in Minnesota, are composed of a bunch of ignoramus, bigoted Catholic beasts that carry the sword of the church,” the memo said.

Dreher was indignant as she read aloud from that document and from the replies Isaacson and Nett filed last month in response to her threat of sanctions.

Isaacson, who identifies herself as chief executive of SIST and president of Yehud-Monosson, wrote that the attorneys weren’t calling Dreher a member of the Roman Catholic Church when they called her a Catholic judge.

“It is referring to a mentality and an adherence to a universal creed of White Supremacy,” she wrote.

The response from Nett, who represents Yehud-Monosson, took a similar tone, alleging that Catholics and the Jesuit order were behind the slave trade, the sinking of the Titanic, World War II, the Holocaust and U.S. involvement in the war in Vietnam.

Read the rest here.

1950's? Nope... try 2011 in Ohio

Read the story here.  This is simply disgusting.

HT: The Deacon's Bench

An Update

Back on Dec 1st I posted a news item about the idiot lawyer in Minnesota who filed a legal brief packed with anti-Catholic slurs.  So over the top was it that if I had not double checked the source I would have wagered money that it was from the Onion.  Now the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Bill Donahue of the Catholic League has filed a petition with the state bar to sanction the attorney in question.  And the judge has issued an order for the attorney to show cause why she should not be held in contempt of court and fined $10,000.  Under the circumstances I think the fine rather light, but otherwise I'm on board with the rest.

HT: Lowering the Bar

1928: Al Smith and the great anti-Catholic hysteria

Click on photo to enlarge.

...The response to this belief was public and private, during a campaign that lasted only two months, from September to November. Yet feelings were so strong that they swirled into a hurricane of abuse, a crescendo of fear and hate blasting through eight weeks. The school board of Daytona Beach, Fla., sent a note home with every student. It read simply: “We must prevent the election of Alfred E. Smith to the Presidency. If he is elected President, you will not be allowed to have or read a Bible.” Fliers informed voters that if Smith took the White House, all Protestant marriages would be annulled, their offspring rendered illegitimate on the spot.

Opponents blanketed the country with photos of the recently completed Holland Tunnel, the caption stating that this was the secret passage being built between Rome and Washington, to transport the pope to his new abode. Countless copies of a small cartoon appeared on lampposts and mailboxes everywhere. Titled “Cabinet Meeting — If Al Were President,” it showed the cabinet room, with the pope seated at the head of the table, surrounded by priests and bishops. Over in the corner was Al Smith, dressed in a bellboy’s uniform, carrying a serving platter, on top of which was a jug of whiskey. Summing up, the minister of the largest Baptist congregation in Oklahoma City announced, “If you vote for Al Smith you’re voting against Christ and you’ll all be damned.”

The Ku Klux Klan became actively involved in preventing a Catholic from ever getting near the White House, going all out to defeat Smith. One Klan leader mailed thousands of postcards after Democrats nominated the New Yorker, stating firmly, “We now face the darkest hour in American history. In a convention ruled by political Romanism, anti-Christ has won.” A Klan colleague in remote North Manchester, Ind., warned his audience, in booming tones, of the imminent arrival of the pope: “He may even be on the northbound train tomorrow! He may! He may! Be warned! America is for Americans! Watch the trains!” When I interviewed Hugh L. Carey, only the second Roman Catholic governor of New York, for my Smith biography, he remembered Klan parades in Hicksville when he was 9 years old and how frightened he was, because “there was a real anti-Catholic sentiment.”

Read the rest here.

Religious slurs in lawyer's memo have court up in arms

In the sedate and sober world of bankruptcy law, one lawyer's memorandum sticks out like a sore loser.

"Across the country the court systems and particularly the Bankruptcy Court in Minnesota, are composed of a bunch of ignoramus, bigoted Catholic beasts that carry the sword of the church," the Nov. 25 filing said.

It went on to call one bankruptcy judge "a Catholic Knight Witch Hunter," said one trustee was "a priest's boy" and claimed another trustee is a "Jesuitess."

It got worse from there.

Hastings lawyer Rebekah Nett also called U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Nancy Dreher and other court personnel "dirty Catholics." Then she expressed concerns over what might transpire at a hearing docketed for next week, writing, "Catholic deeds throughout the history have been bloody and murderous."

People who spend their time writing and reading legal documents were stunned.

"I've never seen anything in 30 years of practicing law like this," said Brian Leonard, a bankruptcy trustee. "This is so far over the line, it's in another world."

Nett got her law degree from the University of Minnesota in 1999 and is licensed to practice in Minnesota and Wisconsin. There is no record of any disciplinary action against her in either state.

Read the rest here.

This is so bizarre (not to mention repulsive) that at first I seriously suspected it was some sort of prank or satire.

HT: A blog reader.

Evidence of demonic possession?

Maybe. I am more inclined to that view than reading a lot of socio-political-religious themes into him. Sometimes in life, the simplest explanation is the right one. In any event the man (or whatever is making him tick) is purely evil.

Archbishop Dolan blasts anti-Catholicism of New York Times

Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York has again criticized The New York Times for “the common, casual way [it] offends Catholic sensitivity, something they would never think of doing — rightly so — to the Jewish, Black, Islamic, or gay communities.”

In an October 19 blog post, the archbishop criticized the newspaper for an “insulting photograph” of a nun and for a

"...glowingly reviewed not-to-be missed “art” exhibit comes to us from Harvard, and is a display of posters from ACT UP. Remember them? They invaded of St. Patrick’s Cathedral to disrupt prayer, trampled on the Holy Eucharist, insulted Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger when he was here for a conference, and yelled four letter words while exposing themselves to families and children leaving Mass at the Cathedral. The man they most detested was Cardinal John O’Connor, who, by the way, spent many evenings caring quietly for AIDS patients, and, when everyone else ran from them, opened units for them at the Terence Cardinal Cooke Health Care Center and St. Clare’s Hospital. Too bad for him. One of the posters in this “must see” exhibit is of Cardinal O’Connor, in the form of a condom, referred to as a “scumbag,” the “art” there in full view in the photograph above the gushing review in our city’s daily"

Source

See also Archbishop Dolan's blog.

Do I think the NY Times is anti-Catholic? Is the Pope... oh never mind.

Mark Shea blasts the hysterical xenophobia of the radical right

Hat Tip: The Young Fogey

...Am I the only person who thinks that this is, well, barking mad? Does anybody outside the right wing nuthouse really think kicking 18 million people out of America for no other reason than "they're Muslim" is a great idea, the core of Truly Truly Americanism *and* of Truly True Catholic charity.

The Right is going insane. A hundred years ago, when Chesterton was asked "What's Wrong with the World?" his answer was succinct: "I am." Now the answer is from more and more of the Right is, "They are!"

We've been hearing for weeks that all people were saying was "Don't build the mosque at Ground Zero." Now it's starting to look more and more like the real message to all Muslim citizens from What's Wrong with the World is "Don't breathe American oxygen. Doesn't matter if you've never done a thing. Doesn't matter if you've been an exemplary citizen. Doesn't matter if you fought for your country. Doesn't matter if you have been a good neighbor. You are Other and you must leave." And who says so? Why Americans who are such truly true *real* Americans that they want to shred the Bill of Rights and then blame it on the people they mean to shove into the Atlantic when they are done shredding it.

No thanks. They tried that xenophobic crap 150 years ago...

Read the rest of this excellent post here.

I have been and remain a staunch critic of Islam as a religion and a culture. But what has been going on in recent weeks and months is nothing less than good old fashioned bigotry and 19th century Know Nothingism repackaged. As an American I am both disgusted and deeply embarrassed.