ASK ROSCOE: Who's al-Chemerinsky?

Dear Roscoe:

Is there really a heavily financed organization in America whose avowed purpose is to take down the “religious right”? Or is that just a paranoid fear on the part of conservatives?

Snow White

Dear Ms. White:

Yes, indeed. It’s called DefCon--backed by tens of millions of dollars from liberal sources, including the Tides Foundation. In coming days, we’ll look at some of the specifics of their agenda. Meanwhile, here’s a nifty list of their board of advisors:

Matt Foreman Executive Director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. Contact: (646) 358-1460; mforeman@thetaskforce.org.

Ira Glasser former Executive Director of the ACLU from 1978 to 2001. No available contact information.

Kate Michelman former President of the radical abortion group, NARAL. No available contact information.

Bruce Alberts Alberts was president of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C. from 1993 to 2005. Contact: (415) 476-0806; balberts@ucsf.edu.

Francisco J. Ayala Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of California, Irvine. Contact: (949) 824-8293; fjayala@uci.edu.

Chip Berlet Senior analyst at Political Research Associates. Berlet is co–author, with Matthew N. Lyons, of Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort. Contact: (617) 666-5300, pra@publiceye.org.

Erwin Chemerinsky Professor of Law and Political Science, Duke University. Contact: (919) 613-7173; chemerinsky@law.duke.edu.

Steven G. Gey Professor of Law, Florida State University. Contact: (850) 644-5467; sgey@law.fsu.edu.

Michelle Goldberg Senior writer for Salon.com. Contact: (212) 905-6138; mgoldberg@salon.com.

Steven K. Green Professor of Constitutional Law and History at Willamette University in Salem, Ore. Contact: (503) 370-6732; sgreen@willamette.edu.

The Rev. Fletcher Harper Executive Director of GreenFaith, an interfaith environmental coalition based in New Jersey. Contact: revfharper@greenfaith.org.

Esther Kaplan radio and print journalist and the author of With God on Their Side (New Press, 2005), which documents the relationship between George W. Bush and the "Christian right." Contact: The Nation; (212) 209-5400.

Isaac Kramnick Professor of Government at Cornell University. Contact: (607) 255-9175; ik15@cornell.edu.

Lawrence M. Krauss Professor of Physics, Professor of Astronomy at Case Western Reserve University. Contact: (216) 368-4070; lawrence.krauss@case.edu.

Rev. James M. Lawson Jr. President of the Southern Christian Leadership Project. No available contact information.

Patrick Mrotek founder of the Christian Alliance for Progress, a grassroots movement that seeks to reclaim the vocabulary of Christianity from "extremists." Contact: (888) 381-0108.

Harold Varmus President of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and member of the Cancer Biology Research Program at Sloan Kettering Institute. Contact: (212) 639-7317; varmus@mskcc.org.

And, oh yes, Erwin Chemerinsky is a regular guest on the Hugh Hewitt radio show. You might want to e-mail Hugh at hugh@hughhewitt.com and ask him why that is—even after he’s been apprised of the gory details. He needs to come clean--or stop it.