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Frist shows no shame

There seems to be no limit to how low Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist will go in his campaign to push through every single one of the president's judicial nominees. It doesn't seem to matter that the Senate already has confirmed more than 200 of President Bush's picks while Senate Democrats have blocked only 10. Frist now wants to launch a holy war. He plans to join a telecast of Christian conservatives to condemn Senate Democrats as opposing people of faith.

The Tennessee Republican is scheduled to give a videotaped speech at a Kentucky megachurch on Sunday, where he will be joined by high-profile leaders of the religious right. The event has been dubbed "Justice Sunday" and will focus on the use of the filibuster by Senate Democrats to keep a handful of the president's most extremely conservative judicial nominees from attaining a lifetime appointment to the federal bench. It will be taped and distributed to churches across the country and aired on Christian television and radio.

Frist should have learned from the public's negative reaction to congressional interference in the Terri Schiavo controversy. Most Americans have a limited appetite for religious zealotry. The majority leader's participation in Justice Sunday will boost its credibility and diminish his own.

To participate in an event that portrays anyone who doesn't agree with the religious right's effort to control the judiciary as an enemy of faith insults millions of religious Americans. It is actually possible to hold strong religious beliefs and support an independent judiciary.

Frist is among those Republicans who may one day seek the presidency. To distort religion to score points with one narrow constituency does not tend to build the broad appeal needed to win the White House. Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, called Frist's association with the event shameful. That about sums it up.

[Last modified April 18, 2005, 00:52:13]