Inside Politics

Foxman’s war

The leader of the Anti-Defamation League has called for a national Jewish summit to respond to what he says is a growing danger from religious conservatives, especially the groups Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council.

Abraham Foxman, national director of the league, speaking to the group’s national leadership last week, signaled a sharp shift in ADL policy by directly attacking several prominent religious-right groups and challenging their motives, which he said include nothing less than “Christianizing America,” reporter James D. Besser writes at www.thejewishweek.com.

Mr. Foxman said these Christian groups seek to use government to further missionary goals, and that Democrats and Republicans alike are “pandering” to the religious conservatives.

“What we’re seeing is a pervasive, intensive assault on the traditional balance between religion and state in this country,” he said. “They’re not … talking just about God and religious values, but about Jesus and about Christian values.”

Marshall Wittmann, a fellow with the Democratic Leadership Council and a former Christian Coalition lobbyist, said the ADL shift could be an “overreaction” based on a misunderstanding of most religious-right leaders.

“What motivates the religious right more than anything else is a feeling of grievance, a feeling that they are the one group that’s fair game for ridicule and criticism,” he said. “The Jewish community overreacts, and that just makes the religious right feel it even more.”

Patriot Act OK’d

House and Senate negotiators have struck a tentative deal on the expiring Patriot Act that would curb the FBI’s investigative power and require the Justice Department to more fully report its secret requests for information about ordinary people.

Democrats and civil libertarians said that although the tentative deal makes some improvements, it doesn’t address their chief concern: the curbing of FBI power to gather certain information by requiring the investigators to prove the subject’s records are connected to a foreign agent or government.

“It gives a nod toward checks and balances without fixing the most fundamental flaws in the Patriot Act,” said Lisa Graves of the Americans Civil Liberties Union.

The agreement, which would make most provisions of the existing law permanent, was reached just before dawn yesterday. Republican leaders made plans for a House vote today and a Senate vote by week’s end, the Associated Press reports.

Skipping a raise

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