The Rise of the Religious Right in the Republican Party

TheocracyWatch is exposing the ideology driving the Christian Right.

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of Bush's presidency is its apparent disregard for normal functioning of democracy. The President refuses to provide critical information to Congress and investigative committees, he subverts the intentions of Congress, and outright lies.

To read about President Bush's religious mission, click here.

Articles

The Death of the First American Republic, Truthout, October 3, 2006.

Bush Pushes Nuclear Weapons Development in US, Truthout, September 1, 2006

  In the face of increased Congressional opposition to US nuclear weapons development, the Bush administration appears to be making an end run around governmental checks and balances.

The Court Under Siege, New York Times, July 29, 2006

Legal Group Says Bush Undermines Law by Ignoring Select Parts of Bills, New York Times, July 24, 2006

The Real Agenda, New York Times, July 16, 2006

Bush challenges hundreds of laws, Boston Globe, April 30, 2006:

President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution.

Ominous Sign: The President's Growing Disregard for the Law, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, January 20, 2006

Gore Says Bush Broke the Law With Spying, Washington Post, January 17, 2006

Basis for Spying in U.S. Is Doubted, New York Times, January 6, 2005

Campaign for religious state is no blessing, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, December 18, 2005:

Because of his high standing among conservative Christians, Bush is in an excellent position to remind those conservatives of the importance of protecting minority rights, of shoring up the wall of separation between church and state. He could help them remember that public spaces must protect the rights of all citizens -- Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, agnostics. He should remind them that they wouldn't want their children forced to pray to Mecca by a Muslim schoolteacher.

Instead, Bush panders to his base of ultraconservative Christians, encouraging their holy war on the Constitution. He whipped up a frenzy on gay marriage to draw them to the polls last year (and he has not mentioned the subject since); he supported congressional intervention in the heartbreaking case of Terri Schiavo, which had already been properly decided by Florida courts; last August, he told Texas newspaper reporters that he supports the teaching of intelligent design, though it is clearly an effort to inject religion into science classrooms.

For all his rhetoric about planting the seeds of democracy in the Middle East, Bush has no great appreciation for it here at home. Why should theocrats abroad heed his message when theocrats here appear to be running the place?

'We Do Not Torture' and Other Funny Stories, Frank Rich, New York Times, November 13, 2005

New Memos Detail Early Plans for Invading Iraq - British officials believed the U.S. favored military force a year before the war, documents show. Los Angeles Times, June 15, 2005

This is a letter from 88 members of Congress giving President Bush a chance to explain himself over a leaked memo indicating that he fabricated the entire Iraq war. PDF file, May 5, 2005

On Bush's claim that Congress had the same pre-war intelligence he had:

The President's Exclusive Access to Sensitive Intelligence, Truthout, November 20, 2005:

President Bush, in defense of his decision to use force in Iraq, contends that the Congress supported the decision and that it had access to the same intelligence available to the White House. Not true!

Bush Secretly Lifted Some Limits on Spying in U.S. After 9/11, Officials Say, New York Times, December 16, 2005

Congress doesn't see same intelligence as president, report finds, Knight Ridder Newspapers, December 15, 2005

How U.S. Fell Under the Spell of 'Curveball' The Los Angeles Times, November 20, 2005

The Iraqi informant's German handlers say they had told U.S. officials that his information was 'not proven,' and were shocked when President Bush and Colin L. Powell used it in key prewar speeches

More on the Downing Street memo -- a letter from Congressman John Conyers:

 First, the memo appears to directly contradict the Administration's assertions to Congress and the American people that it would exhaust all options before going to war. According to the minutes, in July 2002, the Administration had already decided to go to war against Iraq.

    Second, a debate has raged in the United States over the last year and one half about whether the obviously flawed intelligence that falsely stated that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction was a mere "failure" or the result of intentional manipulation to reach foreordained conclusions supporting the case for war. The memo appears to close the case on that issue stating that in the United States the intelligence and facts were being "fixed" around the decision to go to war. (Dailykos, May 27, 2005)

Proof Bush Fixed The Facts, TomPaine.com, May 4, 2005

Buying of News by Bush's Aides Is Ruled Illegal, New York Times, October 1, 2005

Creating non-existent Social Security crisis, Krugman, New York Times, January 4, 2005

From a New York Times Editorial, October 28, 2004: The New York Times's Tim Golden documented the way the Bush administration secretly created a parallel - and unconstitutional - judicial universe for Gitmo.

The White House was so determined to suspend the normal rights and processes for the hundreds of men captured in Afghanistan - none of them important members of Al Qaeda and most of them no threat at all - that it hid the details from Secretary of State Colin Powell and never bothered to consult Congress.

Supressing a CIA report until after the elction

By journalist Robert Scheer, Alternet, October 19, 2004:

It is shocking: The Bush administration is suppressing a CIA report on 9/11 until after the election, and this one names names. Although the report by the inspector general's office of the CIA was completed in June, it has not been made available to the Congressional intelligence committees that mandated the study almost two years ago.

Lied about the Cost of the Medicare Package

Knight-Ridder (3/11/04) published an article claiming that the President not only lied about the cost of the Medicare package, but also threatened to fire his top expert if he told the truth:

The government's top expert on Medicare costs was warned that he would be fired if he told key lawmakers about a series of Bush administration cost estimates that could have torpedoed congressional passage of the White House-backed Medicare prescription-drug plan.

New York Times, July 6, 2004:

An internal investigation by the Department of Health and Human Services confirms that the top Medicare official threatened to fire the program's chief actuary if he told Congress that drug benefits would probably cost much more than the White House acknowledged.

"The Bush administration is classifying the documents to be kept from public scrutiny at the rate of 125 a minute." (The Dangerous Comfort of Secrecy, New York Times, July 12, 2005)

Refusal to Supply Congress with Documents

Vice President Cheney has denied the General Accounting Office of Congress access to any documents concerning the development of the Bush Energy policy. Bush refused to release Miguel Estrada's memos to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Since Estrada had no record of written legal opinions, the Committee had no basis with which to judge him.

"This administration is the most secretive of our lifetime, even more secretive than the Nixon administration. They don't believe the American people or Congress have any right to information," said Larry Klayman, chairman of Judicial Watch, a conservative group that is suing the administration to force it to reveal the members of the energy task force.

Bush Moves to Block Torture Probe, Reuters, September 30, 2005

Decoding Mr. Bush's Denials, New York Times, November 15, 2005

Faith-Based Initiative: Defying the Separation of Church and State, Ignoring the Civil Rights Act

The Bush administration has been defying the principle of church-state separation by funding agencies that proselytize. It has been ignoring the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by funding agencies that discriminate in hiring, and it has been subverting the intentions of Congress.

The Senate refused to overturn decades of anti-discrimination laws that prevent federal funds to go to charities that that discriminate in hiring. Unhappy with the Senate bill passed in 2003, the executive branch of the federal government has been disbursing funds to charities that proselytize and discriminate in hiring. In addition, the White House simply by-passed Congress's legislative functions in the year 2002. The Department of Health and Human set up a Compassion Capitol fund of $30 million that allocated funds released by Congress for a different purpose.

According Church and State, March, 2004, White House "Faith Czar," Jim Towey told reporters that faith-based organizations would have new access to tax funds to the tune of a whopping $40 billion dollars.

Roe V. Wade

Under the guise of providing health care benefits to poor pregnant women, the Bush administration has named a fetus a human being, thus flouting Roe V Wade and the authority of the courts.

War in Iraq

Bush mislead the American public about his reasons for going to war in Iraq. The Associated Press reported that Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski - a strong White House ally - now says he was "misled" about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction before the war.

The New York Times reported on April 2, 2004

The White House confirmed on Thursday that it had withheld a variety of classified documents from Mr. Clinton's files that had been gathered by the National Archives over the last two years in response to requests from the commission, which is investigating intelligence and law enforcement failures before the attacks.

Removing reports and distorting information from the Women's Bureau Web site:

The Bush administration is dismantling or distorting information on women's issues, from pay equity to reproductive healthcare, according to "Missing: Information About Women's Lives," a new report released
Wednesday by the National Council for Research on Women.

Lester Crawford lied to the Senate: At 3 p.m., when Congress was out of town and millions of Americans (and more than a few journalists) were headed for the beach or the mountains... Washington Post, August 30, 2005 (on FDA's announcement about morning after pill)

Expert Says He Was Told to Soften Tobacco Testimony, Washington Post, June 20, 2005

The Environment

Environmentalists Concerned about New EPA Appointments, BushGreenwatch.org, August 9, 2005

Examples of Bush administration double speak on the environment, from the Sierra Club RAW, ISSUE #66, August 11, 2004 :

On July 29, EPA Administrator Mike Leavitt traveled to Washington state to announce a $30 million research grant to fund studies on the health effects of air pollution. The grant comes on the heels of the administration seeking to allow coal-fired power plants to put three times more mercury in our air than the current Clean Air Act allows and weakening the law that requires power plants to install modern pollution controls to curb air pollution.

On August 4, the administration announced in Minnesota that the Department of Agriculture would expand the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) to allow enrollment of 250,000 acres of wetlands. This announcement comes in light of the Bush administration eliminating Clean Water Act protection from 20 million acres of wetlands to unchecked pollution. Also, the CRP only protects sensitive habitat for 10 years while the Wetlands Reserve Program (WRP) permanently protects wetlands. But the administration's fiscal year 2005 budget proposed cutting WRP by 50,000 acres.

On August 5, Interior Secretary Gale Norton showed up in Las Vegas to publicize a $27 million grant for environmental restoration work at the Las Vegas Springs Preserve. Pay no attention to the billions of dollars the Bush administration wants to spend dumping 77,000 tons of nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, only 60 miles from Vegas.

His efforts to circumvent environmental statutes laid down by NEPA demonstrate an unwillingness to abide by laws drafted by Congress and signed by a former president.

A Look at the President's "Pioneers"

CauseNET for April 7, 2004

Building a media empire is no simple task. But it helps to know the right people. Our story today is about Clear Channel Communications, the media conglomerate notorious for its vast network of radio stations, but which is increasingly spreading its tentacles across a broad array of music, advertising, and other media. Not surprisingly, this story includes profiles of two brothers closely connected to the Bush administration, which has been very supportive of allowing media conglomerates to grow even larger.

CONNECTIONS COUNT:

The Hicks brothers and the Bush Administration have had a mutually beneficial relationship for at least a decade.  Tom Hicks, vice chairman of Clear Channel, and his brother Steven Hicks, who built and sold a radio empire, together raised about $200,000 for Bush's presidential campaign in 2000, giving them "Pioneer" fundraiser status.  Their connections, however, go much deeper than that.

Sworn to Secrecy:

President Bush's nominee to be archivist of the United States - an ordinarily low-profile job that includes overseeing the release of government documents, including presidential papers - is generating an intense controversy among historians, some of whom accuse the White House of trying to push through a candidate who is prone to secrecy.

Bush's Veil Over History, New York Times, October 10, 2005

Bush Above the Law, Los Angeles Times, December 17, 2005