Jay Sekulow stoked support for the Christian right's campaign to remake the courts. "Those who are opposed to our values, our beliefs, our faiths, our practices know that their last best hope is the federal judiciary," he said.
 
    Within weeks of Mr. Bush's second inauguration, Mr. Sekulow sat down for lunch at a Morton's Restaurant to plot a strategy for getting around the filibuster with the other horsemen. Mr. Sekulow was charged with educating conservative activists on Senate procedure, Mr. Leo assembled conservative legal scholars to counter Ivy League liberals, and Mr. Meese gathered the historical and legal underpinnings to justify the (gov't) position.
 
    The Founding Fathers wanted to "keep at least one branch of government free from political influence. I think that makes a lot of sense. I'm not in favor of impeaching a judge because you disagree with the opinion they held -- even if you strongly disagree."
 
    In the 2004 campaign, Mr. Marx, 29, was the Bush-Cheney national conservative coalition director who helped organize church-sponsored voter drives in Ohio. In January, Mr. Sekulow invited Mr. Marx to set up the Judicial Confirmation Network in his offices so they could combine forces.

    Article II, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution requires a simple majority of only 51 votes for the Senate to confirm a judicial nominee, not the 60 votes the Senate Rules Committee has come up with to block confirmations. But we're not even getting to the votes on these nominations. What's going on is unprecedented in getting judicial nominations confirmed.

    In recent years, many judges have expanded the 1st Amendment phrase "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion" as a reason to eliminate all expressions of religion in the so-called public square.
 
    Forgotten is the second part of the sentence, which bars Congress from "prohibiting the free exercise thereof." It is indeed difficult to see how a prayer before a football game is an example of Congress establishing a religion, or why a principal would think that a student who brings his Bible to school is guilty of establishing religion.
 
    Nevertheless, through the courts, we see an ever-increasing desire to stamp out religion from public life and to impose a secular agenda on "the whole body politic."