Progressive Action Score: 0A score of 0 means that Rep. Wamp has acted to support 0% of a slate of progressive policies in the 109th Congress.
By our reckoning, Representative Wamp has done nothing to merit classification as a progressive. An accounting of Rep. Wamp's failings as a leader of reason include the following:- Rep. Wamp failed to vote "no" on the Tyranny Act, H.R. 6166. Rep. Wamp swore a solemn oath of office to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States of America. That oath was violated when Rep Wamp failed to oppose H.R. 6166, which is a direct attack upon the Constitution, and through its attack upon the Constitution an attack upon the freedom of every American and every person living under American jurisdiction.
Passed into law, the Tyranny Act installs undemocratic executive committees without review to designate citizens and noncitizens alike as enemy combatants without standards for proof. It grants George W. Bush amnesty for his current violations of law. It allows the thoroughly untrustworthy George W. Bush supreme authority to decide whether an interrogation technique qualifies as torture. It allows hearsay evidence to be used to convict an accused person. It permits indefinite detention without review.
All of these provisions in the bill are unconstitutional. That makes this bill unAmerican. And Representative Wamp betrayed the dream of America by allowing this bill to pass into law without a vote of opposition. It bears saying again: Rep. Wamp has betrayed the dream of America.
- By voting "no" on the Farr Amendment, Rep. Wamp voted to keep Section 102 in H.R. 418, giving a Bush administration bureaucrat the ability to nullify any law without judicial review of that decision. Where we come from, they call that dictatorship.
- The Patriot Act is a betrayal of the great American tradition of liberty because it encourages the government to spy on the legal, personal activities of Americans who have not broken the law and for whom there is no demonstrated probable cause to suspect criminal activity. Specifically, the Patriot Act violates the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, which promises that Americans shall not be subject to search and seizure of their persons or their papers without probable cause. The Bush Administration is using that power to grab information out of commercial and public databases and assemble them into a single giant computer database through which the private affairs of every American citizen can be tracked by government officials. Rep. Wamp failed to vote against the reauthorization of the Patriot Act, empowering the Bush administration to continue to dismantle American liberties and erect a Big Brother edifice in their place.
- By voting for the Hostettler Amendment to H.R. 2862, Rep. Wamp voted to keep a ruling of a federal court from being enforced. Why? Because a judge decided that a religious monument on the grounds of the Gibson county courthouse was an unconstitutional endorsement of one religion over others. Rep. Wamp has apparently decided that any personally distasteful court ruling can be overturned, just because. That's not the rule of law. That's an arbitrary violation of the separation of powers. And, in this case, it allows pushy and vocal religious groups to shove their beliefs down everybody else's throats. That's not just wrong, it is downright unAmerican.
- By voting "no" on the Scott Amendment, Rep. Wamp voted to keep language in H.R. 27 that allows organizations to engage in government-funded religious discrimination in hiring. We had thought that bigotry was old hat, and that the separation of church and state was secure. With this vote, Rep. Wamp has helped to weaken the constitution and bring bigotry back in style.
- To members of Congress, talk of patriotism comes easy. But what about action to preserve what is great about America? What about protecting the symbol of America, the bald eagle itself? On September 29, 2005, a slim majority of member of the United States House of Representatives voted for H.R. 3824, an attack upon the landmark law that brought the American bald eagle back from the brink of extinction. Without the Endangered Species Act, the American bald eagle would probably not exist any more, except on the backs of our quarters and as a graphic on Republican web sites promoting corporate pollution.
We've seen the American bald eagle fly, and we think that it is worth protecting. 229 members of the House of Representatives disagreed. They voted to seriously weaken the protection of endangered species like the American bald eagle. They did it for the sake of profits for big business. A NO vote would have represented a courageous stand for the Endangered Species Act. In a telling betrayal, Representative Wamp failed to vote NO. For shame.
- Rep. Wamp has not yet cosponsored H.R. 2412, which would provide more information to the public about contacts between lobbyists and politicians, and which would slow down the revolving door of politics in which politicians move into cushy corporate jobs after they retire in exchange for favors. What is Representative Wamp's problem with ethics?
- Rep. Wamp has not yet cosponsored H.R. 40, which would acknowledge the injustices of slavery and racial discrimination and establish a commission to study them.
- Rep Wamp has not yet cosponsored H.R. 63, which would make Election Day a federal holiday to make it easier to get out and vote.
- Rep Wamp has not yet cosponsored H.R. 759, which would reduce greenhouse-gas emissions through market-based systems.
- Rep. Wamp has not yet cosponsored H.R. 550, which would sensibly require the establishment of a backup paper record of votes for those times when electronic voting machines fail. Why is Rep. Wamp unwilling to protect the bedrock of democracy, Americans' faith that every vote counts?
- Rep. Wamp has not yet cosponsored H.R. 952, which would put an end to the practice of "extraordinary rendition," in which Bush Administration officials send people into the custody of certain nations, knowing full well (some would say intending) that they will be tortured there. Extraordinary rendition is another stain on the moral clarity of the United States. It is a horrible irony that in a "War on Terror," the United States government would enable the use of terror as a tool. Why is Rep. Wamp unwilling to stand against American complicity in the use of torture?
- Zach Wamp has not yet cosponsored H.R. 1157, which would keep government agents from riffling through your bookstore receipts and library records without your permission or knowledge. Why is Rep. Wamp standing against privacy, against individual liberty, and with Big Brother? That's not a rhetorical question.
- Zach Wamp has not yet cosponsored H.R. 1440, which would keep members of the Federal Communication Commission from using their appointed positions to censor cable, satellite or internet programs they consider to be indecent. These "narrowcast" programs are accessed only by those who specifically request them, so why should the government make it their business to keep people from seeing what they want to see? Why has Rep Wamp not yet lent support to this sensible, freedom-defending bill?
- We may think we live in modern times, but the U.S. Constitution still does not guarantee that individual rights shall apply equally to men and women. Without such a constitutional guarantee, all it could take is a rogue judge or an emboldened conservative Congress to take women's rights away by a simple majority vote. On the other hand, this nation is still encumbered with unfair legal notions that, all other things being equal, give mothers custody advantages over fathers. The current state of unequal protection is unfair to both women and men, and devalues our common underlying humanity.
Zach Wamp has not yet cosponsored H.J. Res 37, which would amend the United States Constitution to simply state the following: "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification." It's simple, it's obvious, and it's about time something was done to enshrine this principle in the Constitution for men and women alike. When will Rep. Wamp take this important stand for equality?
- Rep. Wamp has not yet cosponsored H.R. 567, which would preserve and protect the pristine coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from short-sighted, unnecessary development.
Contact Rep Wamp by E-mail, Phone (at 202-225-3271), or Fax (at 202-225-3494), and ask when these progressive policy priorities will merit support.
| | Regressive Conservative Score: 85A score of 85 means that Rep. Wamp has acted to support 85% of a slate of conservative, wrongheaded policies in the 109th Congress.
Regressive, destructive, and downright unAmerican actions Rep. Wamp has taken that contribute to a RCS of 85:
Rep. Wamp voted YES on the Tyranny Act, H.R. 6166. Rep. Wamp swore a solemn oath of office to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States of America. That oath was violated when Rep Wamp voted for H.R. 6166, a bill that makes a direct attack upon the Constitution, and through its attack upon the Constitution makes an attack upon the freedom of every American and every person living under American jurisdiction.
Passed into law, the Tyranny Act installs undemocratic executive committees without review to designate citizens and noncitizens alike as enemy combatants without standards for proof. It grants George W. Bush amnesty for his current violations of law. It allows the thoroughly untrustworthy George W. Bush supreme authority to decide whether an interrogation technique qualifies as torture. It allows hearsay evidence to be used to convict an accused person. It permits indefinite detention without review.
All of these provisions in the bill are unconstitutional. That makes this bill unAmerican. And Representative Wamp betrayed the dream of America by helping to push this bill into law. It bears saying again: Rep. Wamp has betrayed the dream of America.
The Patriot Act is a betrayal of the great American tradition of liberty because it encourages the government to spy on the legal, personal activities of Americans who have not broken the law. The Bush Administration is using that power to grab information out of commercial and public databases and assemble them into a single giant computer database through which the private affairs of every American citizen can be tracked by government officials. Unfortunately for the Amercan tradition of liberty, the Patriot Act reauthorization passed, with Rep. Wamp casting a craven YES vote.
To members of Congress, talk of patriotism comes easy. But what about action to preserve what is great about America? What about protecting the symbol of America, the bald eagle itself? On September 29, 2005, a slim majority of member of the United States House of Representatives voted for H.R. 3824, an attack upon the landmark law that brought the American bald eagle back from the brink of extinction. Without the Endangered Species Act, the American bald eagle would probably not exist any more, except on the backs of our quarters and as a graphic on Republican web sites promoting corporate pollution.
We've seen the American bald eagle fly, and we think that it is worth protecting. 229 members of the House of Representatives disagreed. They voted to seriously weaken the protection of endangered species like the American bald eagle. They did it for the sake of profits for big business. A NO vote would have represented a courageous stand for the Endangered Species Act. In a telling betrayal, Representative Wamp voted YES for the gutting of the Endangered Species Act. For shame.
H.R. 1070 marks a determined, deliberate attempt by fundamentalist politicians to lay the groundwork for knocking down barriers between the powers of church and state once and for all. The bill is sneaky in its obfuscation but dastardly in its effect. Read, then re-read, then re-re-read the central text of H.R. 1070:
Notwithstanding any other provision of this chapter, the Supreme Court shall not have jurisdiction to review, by appeal, writ of certiorari, or otherwise, any matter to the extent that relief is sought against an entity of Federal, State, or local government, or against an officer or agent of Federal, State, or local government (whether or not acting in official or personal capacity), concerning that entity's, officer's, or agent's acknowledgment of God as the sovereign source of law, liberty, or government.
...
Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the district courts shall not have jurisdiction of a matter if the Supreme Court does not have jurisdiction to review that matter by reason of section 1260 of this title.
What does all that highfalutin language mean?
1. Imagine that some Federal, State or Local government official uses the power of her or his office to shove her or his personal beliefs about God down citizens' throats. Alternatively, imagine that a federal body (say, the Congress) or a state body (say, a state legislature) or a local body (say, the school board) passes a policy that codifies one set of religious beliefs into law.
2. Imagine that you consider this act to be not only wrong but unconstitutional. What can you do about it?
3. Nothing. You can't bring the issue up in any district court. You can't bring it up before the Supreme Court. You have no place to go to challenge the policies of your government, except for the very same government body or official who engages in the odious behavior to begin with.
In short, H.R. 1070 sets the legal foundation by which the President, the Congress, the State Legislatures, Town Councils, School Boards and the Local Dogcatcher can do anything they want in the name of God without review. Does that frighten you? Well, what's even more frightening is that Zach Wamp seems to think this is a good idea.
H.J. Res 57 is a proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution that reads To secure the people's right to acknowledge God according to the dictates of conscience: The people retain the right to pray and to recognize their religious beliefs, heritage, and traditions on public property, including schools. The United States and the States shall not establish any official religion nor require any person to join in prayer or religious activity.
The point of this amendment starts by prefacing all following clauses by stating that they will exist only is so far as To secure the people's right to acknowledge God. As of now, the word God is not mentioned or even indirectly referred to in the Constitution. Not even once. This amendment would change that, fundamentally altering the freedom of religion clause in the Bill of Rights so that it would only apply to those religions that include a belief in God.
Who is this God character that Rep. Wamp is advocating for, anyway? The answer may seem so obvious as to be trite, but it is not. God is not a character in Hinduism, or Buddhism, or Taoism, or Shinto. God is also not a part of Wicca or Paganism. God never shows up in Native American traditions. God only shows up as a character in three religions, all part of the same tradition: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. H. J. Res 57 would therefore provide a privileged legal status to Judaism, Christianity and Islam. All other religious and spiritual traditions would have second-class status. Secular Americans would be in an even worse position under Wamp's amendment to the Constitution. They would be third-class.
Atheists, agnostics, humanists, and other secular Americans would not be forced to attend church under the Istook amendment. Instead, their children would be forced to attend public schools that would be converted into church-like environments, surrounded by government employees paid to promote worship of God through prayer and worship of the Ten Commandments. Oh, the children of secular parents would not be forced to engage in the religious rite of prayer, exactly. They would just be given the third-class status of their secular parents if they refused to pray.
Whose prayer would secular Americans be forced to fund through their tax money? Prayers to God, of course. Buddhist meditation and Hindu devotions to Shiva or Vishnu or Ganesh or Kali would not be given any government protection under this proposed amendment. Only the three religions of God would get special government funding under the amendment. Representative Wamp calls this the "Religious Freedom Amendment," but the amendment is about freedom in only a twisted sense: the freedom of religious majorities to use government funds to try to proselytize and convert the rest of us. That's not government's proper business. And Representative Wamp does not or cannot recognize that, showing a galling lack of the fitness and judgment necessary to carry out the duties of a member of Congress.
Section 102 of H.R. 418 authorizes the Secretary of Homeland Security to nullify any law she or he deems necessary to build roads and fences in the vicinity of a national border. Furthermore, Section 102 of H.R. 418 makes it legally impossible for any court or agency of the government to review the Secretary of Homeland Security's decision to nullify any law. In short, Section 102 places the Bush administration untouchably above the law.The Farr Amendment would have stricken this language, and only this language, from H.R. 418, making a vote against the Farr Amendment a vote against the rule of law. Shame on you, Representative Wamp, for voting "no" on the Farr Amendment. You stand in disgraceful historical company among those who favor arbitrary dictatorship. That's downright unAmerican.
Representative Zach Wamp has decided to support H.R. 997, a bill that would declare English to be the official language of the United States, would mandate that official government business be conducted in English only, and presumptively declare that workplaces in the private sector follow these rules too. Look, just because Rep. Wamp seems to have some kind of personal problem with brown-skinned "ethnic" people who speak a different language than English doesn't mean that such prejudice should be pushed on the rest of the country. The United States of America has always been a nation of multiple origins, multiple cultures and multiple languages. Legislating diversity away will not make it disappear. On the contrary, this legislation will only divide the nation into a privileged English-speaking clique and an untouchable caste of non-English speakers who are denied access to government, to civic participation, and even to the private workplace. This is not what America stands for. Shame on you, Zach Wamp, for demeaning the standard of openness that has made this country great.
By voting for the Hostettler Amendment to H.R. 2862, Rep. Wamp voted to keep a ruling of a federal court from being enforced. Why? Because a judge decided that a religious monument on the grounds of the Gibson county courthouse was an unconstitutional endorsement of one religion over others. Rep. Wamp has apparently decided that any personally distasteful court ruling can be overturned, just because. That's not the rule of law. That's an arbitrary violation of the separation of powers. And, in this case, it allows pushy and vocal religious groups to shove their beliefs down everybody else's throats. That's not just wrong, it is downright unAmerican.
The way that U.S. citizenship works is pretty simple when you get down to it: if you are born in this country, you are a citizen. Leave it to Representative Zach Wamp to come up with a way to change that. Representative Wamp has thrown support behind H.R. 698, which would deny citizenship to American-born babies if their parents aren’t themselves citizens. Such a change would move us toward the German model of citizenship, in which families who have lived in Germany for generations were denied citizenship because they lacked the so-called "virtue" of a German bloodline.
Even more bizarrely under this bill, if a baby is born in America of a father who is a citizen and a mother who is not, the baby is denied American citizenship if the father and mother are not married. Yes, you are reading that right — the Republicans even want to deny babies citizenship when the father is himself a citizen. How extreme. How xenophobic. How simply unacceptable.
By voting "no" on the Scott Amendment, Rep. Wamp voted to keep language in H.R. 27 that allows organizations to engage in government-funded religious discrimination in hiring. We had thought that bigotry was old hat, and that the separation of church and state was secure. With this vote, Rep. Wamp has helped to weaken the constitution and bring bigotry back in style.
One of the more purely nationalist pieces of legislation to enter the U.S. Congress so far this year is House Joint Resolution 10, which would amend the United States Constitution so that "The Congress shall have power to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States."
The amendment would transform the American flag from a symbol of liberty into a nationalist idol to be worshipped in the cult of the Homeland. Just consider the language used in the amendment. The amendment proposes to prohibit the "physical desecration" of the American flag. Let's be clear: to desecrate something means to demean its sacred status.
Sacred status? Sacred? In traditional American democracy, the American flag is not sacred. There is no official cult of flag worship. Flag worshipping cults, like the Boy Scouts, have been private organizations. However, this amendment would elevate a physical object, the American flag, into a special religious realm of untouchability and spiritual transcendence. The amendment would insert the notion of sacred idols into the United States Constitution for the first time.
In supporting House Joint Resolution 10, Representative Wamp stands against good sense and with the nationalist mob. We need fewer, not more, demagogues like Wamp in the Congress.
|
