They are the worst bigots. They justify their hatred under the cloak of religion and god. They know not god. They know emotional control of others by blugeoning their morality as if correct when all they seek is political ridicule of their opposition. They are facsits who would see someone like me as fearing a 'ghost' and needing pity. Pity until they are somehow allowed to end their irritation.
A Nation cannot have a democracy with racism and bigotry.
It's impossible.
An interview with, Rick Santorum, the third ranking Repuglican in the Right Wing.
A Vile Extremist.
What Aaron Brown never asks is where are the limits of intolerance of others? There are none.
BROWN: Sam Rayburn, the legendary speaker of the house of representatives was legendary for many things, but is remembered for saying this if you want to get along, go along. Safe to say our guest tonight rarely gets called the get along/go along type. Rick Santorum, the junior senator from Pennsylvania is fiercely partisan, openly devout, frequently outspoken. He's also the third ranking Republican in the United States Senate, and now the author of "It Takes a Family: Conservatism and the Common Good." We're pleased to see him always, and pleased that he's with us in New York tonight. Nice to see you.…
BROWN: You can't know. I'll talk a little about the book, a little about other things. I saw a poll the other day that said 60 percent of the country wanted to know how Judge Roberts felt about Roe v Wade. It's a settled case. Do you think the country's entitled to know whether he believes that that case was decided correctly?
SANTORUM: You know my feeling is, you have to look at the standard of what's been applied in the past. And what judges in the past have been forced to answer is, you know, how they felt about, you know, sort of the black letter law, if you will. Not really looking at, how would you rule in cases.
BROWN: I'm not asking how you'd rule. This is a settled case. Roe v Wade is a settled case, it is settled. Is this a fair question, do you agree that that case was settled correctly? Is that a fair question to ask him?
SANTORUM: Well, let me put it this way. That question was asked of Judge Ginsberg, it was asked of Judge Breyer and neither of them answered the question.
BROWN: So the answer is no you don't think the country is entitled…
SANTORUM: Well I think, what's good for the goose is good for the gander. I mean, it's remarkable that we have an ACLU lawyer, not just someone who -- I mean, an ACLU lawyer who gets a pass on their ideology for the United States Senate and we have a lawyer who is really a lawyer's lawyer, he's been all over the place, is clearly not someone with an agenda and all of a sudden they have to answer litmus test kinds of questions. Is that fair? I would say it's not fair.
I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT HIS RANTINGS ARE ABOUT.
There is an ACLU lawyer in the Senate.
I would like to know who that is.
I don't mind.
I find it highly objectionable to think John What's his name, Oh, yeah, Roberts. John Robert's is a LAWYER'S LAWYER. I guess that is like being a MAN'S MAN, huh? So a Lawyer's Lawyer is someone who is all over the place in deciding cases. Is that right? Well, I guess you might want to say that to a-kin him to Sandra Day O'Connor, but, there are some of us who weren't born yesterday Ricky.
BROWN: All I want to know is if -- it's really a simple question.
SANTORUM: I'm giving you the answer. The answer is no. If it wasn't answered in the past, it shouldn't be answered in the future.
BROWN: OK. So we're not entitled to know whether he thinks that was settled correctly, no. Why? Isn't that a good thing to know? Because people vote for and against that.
SANTORUM: I think you should know about how a judge makes a decision and what he takes into consideration in making that decision. But as far as applying it to a specific case...
BROWN: Even if that case has been decided?
SANTORUM: Right, you know, I think even if that case has been decided, yeah. I think you want -- you want to look at -- this is not a test of how judges feel about certain issues. You get to elect members of the Congress. We have to answer those questions.
BROWN: Do you think there's a right to privacy in the Constitution?
SANTORUM: No -- well, not the right to privacy as created under Roe v. Wade and all...
BROWN: Do you think there's a right to privacy in the Constitution?
SANTORUM: I think there's a right to unreasonable -- to unreasonable search and seizure...
THIS IS WHERE people like Santorum lose their arguments as they want to see the USA Constitution as a RULE BOOK.
It's not.
It has guidelines to apply to the life we live but it isn't a dictatorial tool.
The Fourth Amendment if you will:The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/amendment04/
There is nothing complicated here and where the Religious Right Republican Party wants to 'getcha' is on the definition of 'Probable Cause.'
That is why Texas had a sodomy law. As long as it was illegal for men to make love together by the act in which they chose to express it, they could prove Probable Cause, make homosexuality illegal and jail people. Other than that being a human rights violation raises the issue what happens to repeat offenders.
The Religious Right is trying to 'capture' old 'colonial themes' and apply it to the USA Constitution as if this was a precept to understand the intentions of the Founding Fathers. They do that chronically. It's hideous and poor Justice Souter even felt he needed to defend against it in his argument regarding separating 'church and state.'
The past is not the direction the present takes. It is all too easy to find religious references. PRIMARILY Christian references in Colonial America.
The Jews didn't arrive until the beginning of the 1900s with the immigration movement and the domination of the Nazis in Europe. One of the largest and earliest Jewish congregations to come to this country was Rabbi Max Heller's congregation in New Orleans. Until that point Jews lived among Christians and were primarily poor and rejected by society but as with anything else there was safety and prosperity in numbers. As an asset to the culture and determined need to survive the earliest forms of medicine, law and media (newsprint) was mastered by the Jews.
Those three professions were least advantageous in an agrarian society that met at Church once a week for the news. Colonial America doctored with common sense and horse liniment. All those professions were on the margins and the reason newsprint was important is because it grew out of a community need to share letters from distant relatives. Rabbi Heller developed a huge community that lived very near their synagogue. The professions flourished with shared concerns and ideas. It was out of the Jewish communities these 'wonders' of medicine and communication grew.
And law.
Colonial America didn't concentrate on law the way society does today. The towns were small, the population less, they were gunslingers who ''smoked people out" into the open and then hung them after ganging up on them in a court of law. To practice law opposing judges was a social sin. Jews represented criminals because it was a living no one else wanted to perform. After the Jews arrived in American, the landscape changed dramatically.
No one ever says thank you.
I am not sure when the Muslim faith or Hindu or Buddist showed up in this country but they also lived in sequestered areas where they could worship as they wanted without causing too much oddity as Christians would see them. So, to even TRY to apply Old Colonial Realities to modern day is an outrageous and bigoted thought. The men who wrote the US Consitution were all Caucasian property owners and there were absolutely no women in the process. So, to see the US Constitution as a 'Rule Book' is to be bigoted and why this Evangelical Right Wing Movement does exactly that.
BROWN: For example, if you'd been a Supreme Court judge in Griswold versus Connecticut, the famous birth control case came up, which centered around whether there was a right to privacy. Do you believe that was correctly decided?
Griswold v. Connecticut
381 U.S. 479 (1965)
Docket Number: 496Abstract
Argued:March 29, 1965
Decided:June 7, 1965
Subjects:
Judicial Power: Standing to Sue, Personal Injury
Facts of the CaseGriswold was the Executive Director of the Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut. Both she and the Medical Director for the League gave information, instruction, and other medical advice to married couples concerning birth control. Griswold and her colleague were convicted under a Connecticut law which criminalized the provision of counselling, and other medical treatment, to married persons for purposes of preventing conception.
Question Presented
Does the Constitution protect the right of marital privacy against state restrictions on a couple's ability to be counseled in the use of contraceptives?
Conclusion
Though the Constitution does not explicitly protect a general right to privacy, the various guarantees within the Bill of Rights create penumbras, or zones, that establish a right to privacy. Together, the First, Third, Fourth, and Ninth Amendments, create a new constitutional right, the right to privacy in marital relations. The Connecticut statute conflicts with the exercise of this right and is therefore null and void.
http://www.oyez.org/oyez/resource/case/149/
THERE IS NOTHING COMPLICATED HERE EITHER.
Unless.
You oppose birth control and family planning. Then there is a lot wrong here but that is individual choice and PRIVACY. Get over it.
SANTORUM: No, I don't. I write about it in the book. I don't.
BROWN: The state of Connecticut had the right to ban birth control for a married couple.
SANTORUM: I think they were wrong. It was a bad law.
BROWN: But they had the right.
SANTORUM: They had the right. They had the right…
BROWN: Why would a conservative argue that government should interfere with that most personal decision?S
ANTORUM: I didn't. I said it was a bad law. And...
IT IS BAD LAW according to the Junior Senator because it doesn't match Rich Santorum's belief system.
His ego is so huge here that it fills up every available breathing space in the room.
Mr. and Mrs. Santorum doesn't have to do anything they don't want to and they have no right to impose their beliefs on others. Like I said, ' ... the Republican character is not condusive to democracy.' Bush/Cheney talk about spreading democracy but the way they practice it never brings with it peace.
BROWN: But they had the right to make.
SANTORUM: They had the right to make it. Look, legislatures have the right to make mistakes and do really stupid things...
BROWN: OK.
SANTORUM: ... but we don't have to create constitutional rights because we have a stupid legislature. And that's the problem here, is the court feels like they have a responsibility to right every wrong. When they do that, unlike a Congress, that if we make a really stupid mistake and we do something wrong, we go back next year or next month and change it, and we've done that. Courts don't do that. They only get cases that come before them and they have to make broad, sweeping decisions that have huge impact down the road.So, much self righteousness.
These people don't have modesty.
THAT LAST PARAGRAPH HE SPOKE IS 'JUSTIFICATION' TO REPEATEDLY PRESENT CASE AFTER CASE to the Supreme Court 'thinking' the entire time all the court needs is more exposure to change these decisions. That is how these morons continue to solicit their constituencies by PROMSING this is just the way of reversing 'bad law' and every time we approach the court it changes incrementally better.
"W"rong.
It is high time these legislators set their constituencies straight and tell them the law is set and it's time we live with everyone else and not just our standards.
That's what happened in Griswold. It was a bad law. The court felt, we can't let this bad law stand in place. It's wrong. It was. But they made a -- they created out of whole cloth a right that now has gone far, far from Griswold versus Connecticut.
THIS IS NOT BAD LAW.
However, he is right in stating there are stupid legislators. He provides a magnificent example of one.
BROWN: I'm going to do something I almost never do. The control room just -- we're going to go -- we're going to run long here. This is fun and interesting.
SANTORUM: OK.
BROWN: I want to talk about the thing you said about Boston for a second.
SANTORUM: OK.
BROWN: OK. I don't know if we have this. We can put it on the screen, but you said "when the culture is sick, every element becomes infected. While it is no excuse, the scandal" -- referring to the priest abuse scandal -- "it is no secret that Boston, the seat of academic, political, cultural liberalism in America, lies at the center of the storm."First of all, wasn't that a little over the top?
SANTORUM: Well, what's over the top is taking a three-year-old article...
BROWN: What's the context?
SANTORUM: And the context was, I was writing about the priest scandal and condemning the priest scandal, condemning the church...
BROWN: Well, of course you were condemning it. No one supports it.
SANTORUM: ... and talking about concrete things we need to do to fix it. I was out there. No other United States senator...
BROWN: Why so -- why Boston?
SANTORUM: Because, again, context. What was going on in 2002 -- not 2005, but in 2002 -- that's where the scandal was. It wasn't anywhere else. We weren't talking about it. In 2002, it was the epicenter. We didn't have the report by the bishops conference. We didn't have…
BROWN: So now you wouldn't say that?
SANTORUM: I wouldn't -- well, no, there's a lot of other cities that were involved. But the point is that cultural liberalism and what I talked about is a contributing factor to how people view sexual activity. And I am not the one that says that. Robert Bennett, in the report that he issued on behalf of the bishops conference, called the Bennett report, said exactly my words, except the word Boston wasn't in it.
BROWN: OK. But you wouldn't say that about Boston now. Is that right? Based on what we know about the scandal.
SANTORUM: I said it then, it was the...
BROWN: Not then, now?
SANTORUM: ... yeah, it was the epicenter, and there are many other cities that that would apply
.… and there are many other cities that that would apply
.… and there are many other cities that that would apply
.… and there are many other cities that that would apply.
THE Rebuglican Right Wing wants to make example of "Blue State Strongholds" like New York City.
Like Boston.
Like San Francisco.
Like Los Angeles.
Like Chicago as 'epicenters' of SIN.
"Sin City" if you will. Bruce Willis made a movie not long ago entitled exactly that. Odd how this party thinks if they introduce a movie to the public it will all be over. The 'idea' behind defaming large cities as areas of sinfulness is to COST them their 'tourist' trade by a large aspect of the population, SUPPOSEDLY, who will boycott these cities until the morality changes. I find it very odd this is a topic of conversation beyond the allotted time considering there was an entire segment on "Paula Zahn NOW" regarding escorts in New York City and one in particular that was featured in "The New Yorker" that billed out at $2000 per hour.
Very odd indeed.
THE bad boys of Aaron and Rick decided on break they could 'get away' with clout enough to stretch the interview.
BROWN: What we were talking about in the break was that -- my belief that actually in many respects, the left and the right talk (INAUDIBLE), but they agree on a lot of things. It takes a child -- it takes a family and it takes a village, in fact, are both true. And I think you'd agree with that.
SANTORUM: And I say that, yeah.
BROWN: Right. And that the left doesn't believe it only takes a village any more than the right believes it only takes a family.
SANTORUM: It's where you start from. I think the left -- the left starts from the top down. Believes in the experts, believes in...
BROWN: What is the basis of that? Why do you believe that?
SANTORUM: Well, I mean, look at institutions dominated by the left. I mean, education.
IF THAT isn't the truth.
The Red States have the highest literacy rates, the highest divorce rates and the highest teen pregnancy rates. I mean no wonder these people are so religious. Nothing else is working for them.
I talk about this very much in the book. I mean, it was created very much as a way of having, you know, social control from the top, and modernizing it to -- into our culture, progressive children, and having state control of education. It's been a battle ever since for local control of schools, versus the experts on top trying to decide for us how to handle...
BROWN: Republican administration -- this -- your administration has exerted more federal control over schools than any in history.
SANTORUM: Yeah. I have serious -- serious problems and have had serious problems with federal legislation. And had very serious concerns about No Child Left Behind…
BROWN: Did you vote for it?
SANTORUM: I voted for it, because what it basically required was accountability. It didn't dictate how we get there. It dictated that you had the measure how you get there. And to me, that is basically holding folks accountable for what they do, as opposed to dictating what they do.
ACCOUNTABILITY.
Not important how you get there, just that you get there, including 'Teaching to the Test,' depriving schools ranked as unattainable from funding and causing greater hardship of those children while the Religious Right takes their chilfren to the 'Charter School' system and 'Voucher Programs.'
Men like Rick Santorum don't care about other children so much as his own and what he has to keep them free of secularism. You know it sort of reminds me of the way Rick Santorum runs his career as a legislator and the way Repuglicans run their agendas.
"It doesn't matter how you get there so long as you do."
BROWN: Do you really think that left and right have a dramatically different view of how a good child is formed?
A GOOD CHILD.
A GOOD CHILD.
Well, where there is a good child I suppose there is a bad child as well.
SANTORUM: I would say yes. The highest virtue of the left in the world today is tolerance, and that is -- that's acceptance of anything, and anything for any reason. Well, I don't believe on the right -- or I don't think most Americans, not just on the right -- I don't think most Americans see it that way.
Well, I don't believe on the right -- or I don't think most Americans, not just on the right -- I don't think most Americans see it that way.
Well, I don't believe on the right -- or I don't think most Americans, not just on the right -- I don't think most Americans see it that way.
WE WENT FROM 'RIGHT' to Most Americans. Well, if it's most Americans the only ones left need to change including 'the left' especially considering we all have to have THE SAME VIEW of a Good Child.
They are self righteous at the cost of others freedoms. There way is the only way to them. I've heard it all before.
I think most Americans want people to have certain virtues, honesty, integrity and all those other things.
There may be agreement, and certainly obviously the left wants honesty and integrity, but there is a lot of things they don't accept.Just ahead ,,,, other things to take care of. This is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Control room's recovering from its heart attack.
