{"id":25,"date":"2008-08-25T16:50:01","date_gmt":"2008-08-25T16:50:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/lynnvsekulow\/2008\/08\/there-was-a-time-when-the-cour.html"},"modified":"2008-08-25T16:50:01","modified_gmt":"2008-08-25T16:50:01","slug":"there-was-a-time-when-the-cour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/2008\/08\/there-was-a-time-when-the-cour.html","title":{"rendered":"THERE WAS A TIME WHEN THE COURT WAS THE LAST GREAT PROTECTOR OF INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS&#8230;NOW NOT SO MUCH"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Jay, I am looking for change in the Supreme Court. \u00a0At least, I am looking for change away from the ideological beliefs of members like Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito. \u00a0These men seem to think their function is to be cheerleaders for Presidential policies which have been challenged and are now before the Court. Just watch them during oral arguments, trying to salvage the arguments of the Bush administration&#8217;s advocates. Moreover, they seem to believe that protecting the rights of the individual to challenge unconstitutional efforts, to speak out on vital issues, to be free from government support for the religious groups others do not agree with&#8211;all are secondary, nearly peripheral, duties of the nine justices who sit on the high court.<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>We don&#8217;t know how many justices will be appointed by the next President, but it could be as many as three. We also don&#8217;t know what role a President Obama would have his Vice President play in judicial appointments. However, Senator Biden has a long and thoughtful record on issues like the separation of church and state and reproductive choice. \u00a0He has opposed school vouchers, prayer amendments to the Constitution, discriminatory hiring in the faith based initiative, removing jurisdiction of the federal judiciary over religion cases, and many other affronts to real religious liberty. \u00a0He opposed Roberts and Alito based on a cogent understanding that they rejected not just the idea of a &#8220;living Constitution&#8221; but any document which seemed to have even a breath of life in it.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Frankly, if I have any criticism of Senator Biden it was that he didn&#8217;t bring more witnesses to the table during the confirmation process for Justice Clarence Thomas. \u00a0I&#8217;m sure you read the excellent book about the process, <span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"text-decoration: underline\">Strange Justice<\/span>, by Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson from the <span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"text-decoration: underline\">Wall Street <\/span><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"text-decoration: underline\">Journa<\/span>l. \u00a0The authors recorded not just the truth of Anita Hill&#8217;s testimony but the presence of unused testimony of other women who would have buttressed her case with their own sad stories.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jay, I am looking for change in the Supreme Court. \u00a0At least, I am looking for change away from the ideological beliefs of members like Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito. \u00a0These men seem to think their function is to be cheerleaders for Presidential policies which have been challenged and are now before the Court.&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":164,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-courts","category-election-08"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>THERE WAS A TIME WHEN THE COURT WAS THE LAST GREAT PROTECTOR OF INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS...NOW NOT SO MUCH - Lynn v. Sekulow<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/2008\/08\/there-was-a-time-when-the-cour.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"THERE WAS A TIME WHEN THE COURT WAS THE LAST GREAT PROTECTOR OF INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS...NOW NOT SO MUCH - Lynn v. Sekulow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Jay, I am looking for change in the Supreme Court. \u00a0At least, I am looking for change away from the ideological beliefs of members like Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito. \u00a0These men seem to think their function is to be cheerleaders for Presidential policies which have been challenged and are now before the Court.&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/2008\/08\/there-was-a-time-when-the-cour.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Lynn v. Sekulow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-08-25T16:50:01+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Rev. Barry W. Lynn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"THERE WAS A TIME WHEN THE COURT WAS THE LAST GREAT PROTECTOR OF INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS...NOW NOT SO MUCH - Lynn v. 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Sekulow","article_published_time":"2008-08-25T16:50:01+00:00","author":"Rev. Barry W. Lynn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/2008\/08\/there-was-a-time-when-the-cour.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/2008\/08\/there-was-a-time-when-the-cour.html","name":"THERE WAS A TIME WHEN THE COURT WAS THE LAST GREAT PROTECTOR OF INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS...NOW NOT SO MUCH - Lynn v. 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Sekulow","description":"A debate blog about church, state, faith and politics with Jay Sekulow and Barry W. Lynn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/#\/schema\/person\/98ebaf547801cce8ce6fff4c27f51fc8","name":"Rev. Barry W. Lynn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/32b\/32b0f12cad840c65bff61ad01e2664aax96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/32b\/32b0f12cad840c65bff61ad01e2664aax96.jpg","caption":"Rev. Barry W. Lynn"},"description":"Since 1992, the Rev. Barry W. Lynn has served as executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a Washington, D.C.-based organization dedicated to the preservation of the Constitution's religious liberty provisions (www.au.org). In addition to his work as a long-time activist and lawyer in the civil liberties field, Lynn is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ, offering him a unique perspective on church-state issues. An accomplished speaker and lecturer, Lynn has appeared frequently on television and radio broadcasts to offer analysis of First Amendment issues. News programs on which Lynn has appeared include PBS's \"NewsHour,\" NBC's \"Today Show,\" Fox News Channel's \"O'Reilly Factor,\" ABC's \"Nightline,\" CNN's \"Crossfire,\" CBS's \"60 Minutes,\" MSNBC's \"Countdown with Keith Olbermann,\" Fox News Channel's \"Hannity & Colmes,\" ABC's \"Good Morning America,\" CNN's \"Larry King Live\" and the national nightly news on NBC, ABC and CBS. On the radio, Lynn serves as host of \"Culture Shocks,\" a daily look at various issues affecting society and the culture. In the 1990s he served for two years as regular co-host of \"Pat Buchanan and Company\" and after that did a weekly syndicated radio program, \"Review of the News,\" with Col. Oliver North. Lynn is a regular guest on nationally broadcast radio programs, including National Public Radio's \"All Things Considered,\" \"Morning Edition\" and \"Talk of the Nation,\" as well as having appeared on national networks such as CBS Radio, CNN Radio, ABC Radio and AP Radio. Lynn began his professional career working at the national office of the United Church of Christ, including a two-year stint as legislative counsel for the Church's Office of Church in Society in Washington, D.C. From 1984 to 1991 he was legislative counsel for the Washington office of the American Civil Liberties Union. In 2006, Lynn authored Piety & Politics: The Right-Wing Assault On Religious Freedom (Harmony Books). In 2008 he coauthored (with C. Welton Gaddy) First Freedom First: A Citizen's Guide to Protecting Religious Liberty and the Separation of Church and State (Beacon Press). Lynn writes frequently on religious liberty issues, and has had essays published in outlets such as USA Today, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Nation. Lynn also has op-eds published frequently by the McClatchy and Scripps-Howard newspaper chains. A member of the Washington, D.C. and U.S. Supreme Court bar, Lynn earned his law degree from Georgetown University Law Center in 1978. In addition, he received his theology degree from Boston University School of Theology in 1973. Lynn, who was born in Harrisburg, Pa., and raised in Bethlehem, Pa., lives in Chevy Chase, Md., with his family.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/author\/blynn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/164"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}