Thanks to Heather Jessel for the link.

Reposted from:
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/05112007/watch.html

TRANSCRIPT:

BILL MOYERS: Welcome. Later in the JOURNAL we'll return to the war and its cost, but first, take a look at these pictures.

The other day many Americans observed the National Day of Prayer. Leading up to it, volunteers turned out on the West Lawn of the Capitol to hold a Bible reading marathon. Foreign participants were offered Bibles in languages other than English. In the shadow of the Capitol and blocks from the White House, it was a reminder that the wall between church and state in America more closely resembles Swiss cheese.

Across the Potomac River in Virginia, the cradle of the First Amendment, a familiar figure surely smiled as he beheld this mingling of politics and piety. If he had his way, that wall would come down altogether

Graduation day at Regent University in Virginia.

The commencement speaker charges the 1,000 graduates to go forth and change the world.

MITT ROMNEY: America needs great Americans today, perhaps more than ever. From the beginning there has been evil in the world. Today so many of our children swim in what Peggy Noonan called an "ocean of filth." Pornography and violence poison our music and movies and TV and video games. The Virginia tech shooter like the Columbine shooters before him had drunk from this cesspool.

BILL MOYERS: He's Mitt Romney — Once upon a time, the moderate governor of Massachusetts, supporter of stem cell research, gun control, and choice for women.

But over time people change.

Now he's running for the Republican nomination for president and he's made this pilgrimage to one of the country's most conservative evangelical schools to assure everyone here he is with them. Especially Pat Robertson.

MITT ROMNEY: This university, its students, its alumni an faculty are a testament to Dr. Robertson's dedication to strengthen the pillars of liberty and faith, pillars that sustain our communities and our country.

BILL MOYERS: Talk about an odd couple. Over the years Robertson's mixture of Pentecostal faith-healing,

PAT ROBERTSON: Satan I bind your power.

BILL MOYERS: And far-right ideology have made him one of the country's quotable notables:

PAT ROBERTSON: I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if Chavez thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war.

You read the Bible it says this is my land and for any prime minister of Israel who decides he's going to carve it up and give it away, God says "NO."

BILL MOYERS: Pat Robertson founded Regent University "To produce Christian leaders who will make a difference, who will change the world."

PAT ROBERTSON: The idea was to challenge the culture in the areas that are most important to people. The first, of course, was television, and then the theater and journalism, and then, of course beyond that was law, which has such a dramatic effect on everybody's lives.

BILL MOYERS: He's never been coy about his goal of bringing American democracy and its government under God's sway.

PAT ROBERTSON: There was never any intention that our government would be separated from God almighty. Never, never, never in the history of this land did the founders or those that came after them think that was the case.

BILL MOYERS: So what do you do when the Constitution makes no mention of God, and the Bill of Rights ensures freedom for all religions? You set out to change the laws. To have them reflect your interpretation of the Bible on church and state, women's rights, stem-cell research, gay marriage, even when to end life support.

For such a revolution you need lawyers and judges. So as the crown jewel of his university, Pat Robertson created a law school.

PAT ROBERTSON: By the authority vested in me by the Board of Trustees and recommendation of the faculty, I confer upon you the juris doctor degree with all rights, privileges and responsibilities there to pertaining.

PETER MCCLANATHAN: The students that come here come here know that it is a Christian school and that the faculty will be teaching us, they're mostly Christians too. And it's I think one of the more unique aspects is the beginning of class, we have classes that last ten minutes longer than most of the typical classes because there is a period for devotion.

CLASS: Heavenly Father, thou has placed me in a church which thy Son purchased with his own blood. Help me to be true, faithful, chaste. Father thank you for those who have gone before us thank you for the heritage of faith that we see stretching back over the centuries. Now we commit our class to you asking you to use it for your glory in Christ's name, Amen.

BILL MOYERS: Regent Law School is only 20 years old and for the first decade struggled to gain recognition and accreditation. Just 37 percent of its graduates in 1999 passed the bar on the first try. Even today, the school's academic reputation is the butt of some jokes:

BILL MAHER: It's not a hard school to get into. You have to renounce Satan and draw a pirate on a matchbook.

BILL MOYERS: But Regent is determined to have the last laugh. Robertson's team overhauled the curriculum, tightened admission standards, and spent more money on scholarships. The law school is now fully accredited by the American Bar Association.

Seventy-four percent of last year's law class passed the bar the first time around.

This year a Regent team won the American Bar Association's Negotiation competition - previously won by Harvard. Last year a Regent team won another national ABA Competition - previously won by Yale.

ANNOUNCER: Will the candidates for the degree of juris doctor please stand.

BILL MOYERS: The school is proud of its progress and makes no apologies about the blending of Biblical principles and American law in practice. Law School dean, Jeffrey Brauch:

DEAN BRAUCH: It's one thing to have an institutional separation between church and state, which is very important, but it's another thing to say there should be a separation between faith and law or faith and policy. I'm pleased that some of our graduates are going to go and impact public policy through their careers.

BILL MOYERS: The dean has reason to be pleased. Just consider the missionaries Regent has already sent to what the religious right once considered the heart of darkness - the government in Washington. Their website boasted that 150 of the university's students have worked in the Bush administration since 2001.

Many have this woman to thank: Kay Coles James. For four years she ran the Office of Personnel management for President Bush.

Her reach stretched across the entire Executive Branch.

Before her White House assignment, she had been vice president of the Christian lobbying group known as the Family Research Council and dean of the Robertson School of Government at Regent University.

Throughout the Bush administration, the Regent network has spread — offering jobs, mentoring and promotions to bright young religious conservatives in the Department of Labor, Health and Human Services, USAID, Homeland Security, The Drug Enforcement Agency, The Office of the Special Counsel, Senate and House staffs, Commerce, Education, Defense Veterans Affairs, The Air Force, The Army, The CIA, NASA and the Department of Justice.

For the Christian Right these doors open on the promised land, where Biblical law can influence the law of the land.

SPIRO BALLAS: It's not so much that Christianity is in the class, it's really the history and where the law comes form and when you start studying the law it's hard to separate I think that Christian base from the law.

CARLY GAMMILL: The importance to me of having the Biblical foundation in the law is because of my belief that God's law is the highest law. And not that earthly law and you know the law of this world is necessarily supposed to be exactly the same, but just to understand what God's law and what the word of God does have to say about the different issues that affect our culture.

JOSHUA BLAKE: Instead of promoting the individual's liberties necessarily, we are looking at what's good for people as far as these values that are found in the Bible.

BILL MOYERS: Those were the values that motivated Monica Goodling when she graduated from Regent Law, Class of 1999. This is her Web site from her days as a student.

TIMOTHY GRIFFIN: Monica, how we doing...

BILL MOYERS: After graduation, Goodling worked in the war room of the Republican National Committee in the campaign of 2000, doing opposition and attack research with this man - Timothy Griffin - shown in this BBC documentary, "Digging the Dirt."

After the election Goodling and Griffin both wound up in the Justice Department under the new attorney general John Ashcroft.

Their stars rose quickly. Griffin served as a top aide to Karl Rove. Goodling moved up to be senior counsel to Ashcroft's successor, Alberto Gonzales. She also held the portfolio as liaison between the department and the White House. At 33 years old you can't get much more powerful than that.

But her power has landed her smack in the middle of the controversy surrounding the firing of 8 Federal prosecutors. She had been the link to the White House in the hiring and firing of Justice Department lawyers, what's now a fast-evolving scandal.

SEN. LEAHY: What was Monica Goodling's role in the process of evaluating U.S. attorneys and choosing U.S. attorneys for termination?

ATTY GEN. GONZALES: Senator, I don't know of everything that she did in connection with this issue. Her job at the department was senior counselor. She worked - she was also the White House liaison. She worked on budget issues and special projects. She, in essence, supported Mr. Sampson.

BILL MOYERS: Gonzales forgot to mention the order he signed last year giving his former chief of staff and Monica Goodling - both of whom were in close contact with the White House - the extraordinary power to hire and fire more than 135 political appointees.

REP. JOHNSON: Is it correct that she-

ATTY. GEN. GONZALES: was involved in -

REP. JOHNSON: She was involved in making hiring and firing decisions pertaining to DOJ career and non-career personnel. Is that correct?

ATTY. GEN. GONZALES: Well, let me just say that she was involved with respect to political appointees. Now, with respect to career appointees, there has been some fairly serious allegations made with respect to her role in that. And as has already been made public, because of the seriousness of those allegations, that matter has been referred for an investigation.

BILL MOYERS: Follow the emails and you pick up Monica Goodling's trail in both the dismissal of the prosecutors and in the choice of their highly partisan replacements.

Remember her old colleague from the war room, Timothy Griffin? She helped him become the new U.S. attorney in Arkansas.

Congress is now investigating to what extent the prosecutors were subjected to political pressure.

REP. JOHNSON: If in fact there was partisan political tests that were applied in the hiring of those US attorneys what impact do you believe that would have on career professionals in the department?

JAMES COMEY: That is the most, in my view, the most serious thing that I've heard come up in this entire controversy.

BILL MOYERS: Former Deputy Attorney General James Comey left the Department of Justice in 2005.

JAMES COMEY: You just cannot do that. You can't hire assistant US attorneys based on political affiliation again because it deprives the department of its lifeblood which is the ability to stand up and have juries of all stripes believe what you say. And have sheriffs and judges and jailers and the people we deal with trust the Department of Justice.

BILL MOYERS: Monica Goodling has yet to answer for herself. She invoked her 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination and resigned from the Justice Department on Good Friday.

House investigators will give her immunity and expect her to testify in the weeks ahead. The pundits and paparazzi are in waiting.

PRESS MONTAGE: And now that you've got an underling or associate ot whatever you want to call Monica Goodling...

It's just what Washington needs another Monica...

Â…Her mother was commenting to the press and she said that Monica's told her to say no comment to everyone she gets...

BILL MOYERS: Monica Goodling's meteoric rise and fall put Regent in the spotlight for merging the religious faithful with the party faithful.

But it hasn't dimmed the passion here for its mission or the power of its network. One of its star professors now is former Attorney General John Ashcroft. This son of a Pentecostal preacher brought prayer meetings and Bible study to the halls of justice when he was Attorney General.

PRAYER: "And Lord we also thank you for your servant, John David Ashcroft."

BILL MOYERS: It was Ashcroft who quietly began changing the Justice Department's hiring practices. Political appointees - instead of career attorneys - were put in charge of hiring in the Civil Rights division. Soon race-based discrimination cases began to be supplanted by cases of religious discrimination.

Now, in addition to lobbying in Washington, Ashcroft is helping to recruit and train a new crop of conservative and religious young people to serve the Lord in places of influence.

REGENT UNIVERSITY WEB PROMO, ASHCROFT: I'm excited about Regent University because it's a place where you can pursue learning and the truth with real intensity and God has not been placed off limits.

BILL MOYERS: Carly Gammill is one of the many promising students to graduate last week.

CARLY GAMMILL: Part of the goal of many of us who are going out from this institution from here on to make it clear and accurate what it really means to be a Christian leader to change the world, which is not to indoctrinate anyone but to share the truth and to offer the truth and to rely on the truth in the way that we handle our lives as an example to others.

ANNOUNCER: "Carly D. Gammill.

BILL MOYERS: Gammill is going to work for one of Regent's best-known alumni.

Jay Sekulow earned his PhD from Regent arguing that it's okay for judges to decide cases on the basis of their religious beliefs.

Sekulow now heads up Pat Robertson's American Center for Law and Justice, and was hand-picked by the White House to be an advisor on judicial nominations.

Last month, when the ascendant majority on the Supreme Court upheld a federal ban on "partial birth" abortion. Sekulow declared victory for the religious right and for Regent.

JAY SEKULOW: Well the end result is that a lot of the findings of fact that the Court made in NY, the finding of fact in our favor about the horrific nature of this procedure were incorporated in the Supreme Court decision that came out today.

BILL MOYERS: Sekulow's legal group wants to roll back other Supreme Court rulings that uphold gay rights and the separation of church and state. They'll have the help of Regent's finest.

CARLY GAMMILL: I intend to help further the administration of justice and to do justice. And I believe in absolute truth, and I believe in absolutes. Not grey, you know, not relative truth but absolute truth. And that's what God's word is.

BILL MOYERS: So Mitt Romney and Pat Robertson may have seemed an odd couple here this past weekend. But they are a happy couple. They have seen the future...right there in front of them

REV. PAT ROBERTSON: I am sure you will achieve greatness. We have on the platform the Attorney General of Virginia, one of our graduates, we have at least two of our graduates who are now judges, we have others who are elected officials at various levels, all over this area. We have many who are superintendents of school and principals of school.

BILL MOYERS: The Reverend Robertson couldn't be happier. His charges are going out to make the world over...in his image.

REV. PAT ROBERTSON: We have people in all walks of life who are creating a world that is better. So once again, I charge you seek greatness through service. God bless you.