Dominionists Want To Strip Court's Funds

From the LA Times, who have a tape which "features two of the nation's most influential evangelical leaders, at a private conference with supporters, laying out strategies to rein in judges, such as stripping funding from their courts in an effort to hinder their work."

The tape includes noted Dominionist leaders Tony Perkins, president of the conservative Family Research Council, and James Dobson from Focus on The Family. It was made at a March 17th session of the conference both attended along with House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and was given to The Times by the advocacy group Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

In it, Perkins and Dobson speak about the Dominionist plan to do away with troublesome courts by simply disenfranchising them.

Some soundbites:

Perkins: There's more than one way to skin a cat, and there's more than one way to take a black robe off the bench.

Perkins: What they're [Congressional Republican leaders like Delay and Frist] thinking of is not only the fact of just making these courts go away and re-creating them the next day but also defunding them...just take away the bench, all of his staff, and he's just sitting out there with nothing to do.

Dobson: Very few people know this, that the Congress can simply disenfranchise a court...They don't have to fire anybody or impeach them or go through that battle. All they have to do is say the 9th Circuit doesn't exist anymore, and it's gone.

Dobson: Folks, I am telling you all that it is going to be the mother of all battles...And it's right around the corner

Dobson and Perkins also spoke about the hold Dominionists feel they have over Republican politicians:

Dobson: We've got a right to hold them accountable for what happens here and Sometimes it's just amazing to me that they seem to forget how they got here.

Robert Stevenson, a spokesman for Frist, said Thursday that the Senate leader does not agree with the idea of defunding courts or shutting them down, pointing to Frist's comments earlier this month embracing a "fair and independent judiciary." A spokesman for DeLay declined to comment.

However Delay, in an April 13th session with reporters said "We set up the courts. We can unset the courts. We have the power of the purse,"

Looks like the next assault on free speech, with the eventual aim of replacing the secular state with a system of religious law, is already underway.