Bryan Fischer

On his radio broadcast yesterday, noted constitutional scholar Bryan Fischer made the absurd argument that Ferguson, Missouri, police office Darren Wilson cannot face federal charges in the shooting death of Michael Brown after a grand jury failed to indict him, on the grounds that such charges would violate the Constitution's protections against "double jeopardy."

Citing the Fifth Amendment's language that no person shall "be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb," Fischer laughably claimed that meant that Wilson can never be prosecuted for possible crimes related to Michael Brown's killing.

"He was just put in jeopardy of life or limb," Fischer argued. "No indictment was returned. He cannot be subject to the process a second time."

Unfortunately for Fischer, this clause only applies to individuals who have faced trial, as it is designed to protect people from being tried multiple times for the same crime. Wilson, of course, was never "put in jeopardy of life or limb" since he never faced a trial for his actions precisely because the grand jury failed to return an indictment.

On "Meet The Press" yesterday, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani and Georgetown University professor Michael Eric Dyson had a heated exchange on the issue of police violence in black communities. On his radio show today, Bryan Fischer predictably sided with Giuliani on the issue, declaring that banning the use of "stop and frisk" policing was committing a hate crime against black people.

Fischer, whose love of black men is well established, asserted that since most of those arrested under "stop and frisk" were black, the people who were most protected by "stop and frisk" were other black people.

"These areas were riven with black-on-black crime," Fischer said. "Stop and frisk started to bring those numbers down. When you go away from stop and frisk ... you are endangering black citizens. It's like a hate crime against black citizens. You are exposing them to risk by removing a law enforcement tool":

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On his radio broadcast today, the American Family Association's Bryan Fischer called for Religious Right leaders to gather together for what would amount to a political papal conclave designed to pick the next Republican presidential nominee.

Worrying that the Religious Right may have too many excellent choices among the crop of 2016 GOP presidential hopefuls and may end up diluting its power by splitting its support among various candidates as a result, Fischer suggested that Religious Right leaders ought to organize a summit where they would all gather and relentlessly "grill [the candidates] one after another."

"Probe them and challenge them and test them and ask them really hard questions about what they would do as president of the United States with this issue or that issue," Fischer said. "And get some promises from these guys."

After said grilling, Religious Right leaders would then collectively decide "on one candidate that you as a group of leaders would recommend that the entire evangelical community gather behind."

"It's kind of like picking a Pope," he said:

While appearing on Jerry Newcombe's "Vocal Point" radio program last week, the American Family Association's Bryan Fischer doubled down on his assertion that the prayers of anti-gay activists at the recent "I Stand Sunday" event caused God to help Republican candidates win their races for elected office in the last election.

"A good part of that evening, the pastors and the people in that congregation and all those across the country got down on their faces before God to repent of our sins, to seek God's favor over this land because of the threat to religious liberty," Fischer said. "And on Tuesday, we saw these resounding election results and I have to think there was a connection. When God's people got on their faces in repentance in faith over the issue of religious liberty, how threatened it is in our land, how important it is, I think God heard those prayers and I believe he quickened the campaigns of those who are willing to stand for religious liberty and Tuesday, I think, was part of the fruit of those prayers and that repentance":

On Monday, President Obama publicly urged the Federal Communications Commission to adopt strong rules preserving net neutrality, the principle that internet service providers must treat all data equally.

Obama’s comments placed a previously fairly niche technical issue right into the middle of the national political debate, forcing commentators to take a side on something many of them did not seem to understand. But luckily, many conservative politicians and pundits have an easy way of deciding where to stand on an issue: if Obama is for it, it will destroy America and they are against it!

1. Ted Cruz

Sen. Ted Cruz got the right-wing net neutrality pile-on started with a tweet calling the proposal “Obamacare for the Internet."

"Net Neutrality" is Obamacare for the Internet; the Internet should not operate at the speed of government.

— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) November 10, 2014

It didn’t really make sense, but as Matt Yglesias notes, that wasn’t the point: “What, if anything, that phrase means is difficult to say. But its political significance is easy to grasp. All true conservatives hate Obamacare, so if net neutrality is Obamacare for the internet, all true conservatives should rally against it.”

2. Bryan Fischer

As soon as Cruz spoke out, his far-right acolytes seem to have felt obligated to follow. On his radio program on Monday, the American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer struggled to grasp the proposal that he was definitely against, claiming that it would ban internet providers from charging customers more for faster service — something that already happens and that has nothing to do with net neutrality.

3. Glenn Beck

Glenn Beck is outraged that President Obama wants to end “the freedom of the internet” and ruin something that’s “working pretty well” because “the government is not involved in it at all.” Apparently unaware that current FCC regulations allow his online network, The Blaze, to stream on an open internet, Beck claimed that regulations preserving net neutrality would end this supposedly government-free system in which he operates his business.

Beck’s cohost Pat Gray accidentally debunked his own point by comparing Internet regulation to the interstate highway system, which he seems to also think remains open and accessible because it’s free from government interference.

4. FreedomWorks

The Tea Party group FreedomWorks got into the game yesterday with a video “clearing up” net neutrality for its supporters.

As Consumerist explains, FreedomWorks’ net neutrality explanation is basically a work of fiction:

“Supporters of the plan call it a [uses finger quotes] ‘free and open Internet’ but in reality it’s anything but,” says Somberg. “What net neutrality does is force providers to treat all Web content equally — the same speeds, the same prices, the same access.”

This is simply untrue.

Net neutrality merely says that ISPs can’t slow down, block, or prioritize any content. It doesn’t mean that everything gets treated with the same speed — just that an ISP does nothing to impede or boost any particular content company’s speed. So if it’s fast coming in from the company, it should be fast going out to the end-user. And if the host is slow, then it remains slow.

5. Alex Jones

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones added his own special twist to the net neutrality debate, claiming that it is a “high tech version of what the Soviets and the Nazis and the Chinese Communists and Fidel Castro and every other nut ball did.” 

Bonus: David Barton

While net neutrality might have just recently crossed the radar of many right-wing commentators, make-believe historian David Barton has been beating the anti-net-neutrality drum for years. In 2011, Barton called net neutrality “socialism on the internet” and “redistribution of wealth through the internet” and insisted that it is "wicked stuff" that goes against the dictates of the Bible and the Founding Fathers.

This launched Barton into a discourse on the concept of “fairness,” which he said “is a word no Christian should ever use in their vocabulary” because “what happened to Jesus wasn’t fair.”

• Matt Barber is furious that the AP ran a story about a gay World War II vet: "To make this about sexual identity politics, and to focus on this individual's abhorrent sexual proclivities and his lifestyle choices, and to somehow elevate those disordered behaviors as something to be proud of, is really offensive."
• William Gheen says that it may be time for a third party if the GOP passes any sort of immigration reform legislation.
• Once again, we feel compelled to point out that government officials who resign from their positions rather than uphold the law is not an example of Christians being forced out of their jobs.
• Alan Robertson says that America will collapse unless it repents for its sins.
• Linda Wall stopped being gay after she read the Bible: "God had said homosexuality was wrong and that settled it!"
• Finally, Bryan Fischer says the next president must be "an unapologetic man of Christian faith who reveres the Word of God, immerses himself in it and is guided by it."

Bryan Fischer kicked off his radio program today with a reading from the Book of Deuteronomy which, he claimed, proves that God supports a flat tax.

Echoing the sorts of claims that we routinely hear from David Barton, Fischer read from Deuteronomy 14, in which God instructed the Israelites to "be sure to set aside a tenth of all that your fields produce each year," citing it as evidence that "God believes in a flat tax."

"That's what a tithe is, it's a tax," Fischer said. "It's a tax on the labor of your hands, it's a tax on the fruit of your labor. It's a tax on the grapes that you produce, the grain that you harvest, the wine that you produce, the oil that your olive trees produce. It's a ten percent tax. It was a flat tax":

On “Focal Point” today, host Bryan Fischer once again linked the supposed moral failings of Native Americans to the seizure of their land by European colonists.

Fischer recounted the Biblical tale of the Amorites, a group that had “lapsed into superstition and paganism and idolatry and sexual immorality and savagery” until they were vanquished by the Israelites. He then paraphrased God as saying, “I’m going to be patient with the Amorite people for 400 years, and if they continue to sin at the rate they’re sinning, every time they sin they’re putting a little more slop in the slop bucket, and if they keep doing that the slop bucket’s going to get full, and I’m going to have to empty out that slop bucket.”

Fischer then used the story to justify the violent expulsion of Native American people from their territory at the hands of white settlers. “This may even be a part of American history, when we think about the moral right for the nation and the peoples that God brought into this land to exercise sovereign control over the land,” he said. “Part of that equation may have to do with the immorality of those nations that were exercising sovereign control over this land at the time.”

On his radio broadcast today, Bryan Fischer declared that it was imperative for conservative Christians to get out and vote today because America is "turning into Nazi Germany."

Fischer, who once declared that calling your opponent a Nazi was proof that you had lost the argument, stated that just as Adolf Hitler was legitimately elected, so too were "the Nazi-esque mayor of Houston [and] the Nazi-esque mayor of Coeur d'Alene."

Upon taking office, Fischer continued, Hitler's first order of business was to tell the church to stay out of politics and to accept that it was to have no influence on the operation of the government and now the same things are happening in America today.

"Is this the United States in 2014 or Nazi Germany of 1933?" Fischer asked. "I'll let you decide":