View From the Sky

The Carpetbagger Report has an interesting discussion of MoveOn's newest ad campaign.

I haven’t always loved every single MoveOn.org ad and/or initiative, but this one strikes me as a good idea.

Liberal activists are taking the fight over judges to the backyards of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) this week, running ads in the leaders’ home states asking them to repudiate televangelist Pat Robertson’s recent comments that federal judges are more dangerous to American democracy than terrorists.

As the latest salvo in the escalating partisan war over the federal judiciary’s power and Democratic filibusters of judicial nominees, the initial $50,000 ad buy — paid for by MoveOn.org’s political action committee — will run in Nashville, Tenn., Houston and Washington, D.C., on cable television starting today. MoveOn PAC officials said they hope to buy more ad time as their fundraising numbers for the project go up.

The ad script asks whether Frist and DeLay will “continue to pander to the radical fringe or will they have the guts to repudiate Pat Robertson and all the others who are threatening our federal judges?”

I think this is a winner on a variety of levels. First and foremost, Republican leaders have, for too long, cozied up to some radical characters that most Americans would find repulsive. It’s only fair to start asking these lawmakers to start repudiating the lunacy coming from their friends. If a Dem leader were hanging out with Ward Churchill, you better believe there’d be some ads calling on him or her to renounce the guy’s rantings.

What I find most interesting is that when the Bush administration sees people who force their extreme religious beliefs on a people, they are quick to attack or at least repudiate it. But, apparently that does not apply to their allies in and out of Congress. The Founding Fathers created a system where the independent judiciary was a check on the elected executive and legislative branches. Apparently, some in the Fox party feel it is better to have the judges under their control. After all, if you are doing God's work, why should a judge be allowed to disagree?