{"id":178595,"date":"2018-10-18T00:29:00","date_gmt":"2018-10-18T05:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/10\/18\/heritage-foundation-cult-indoctrination-camp\/"},"modified":"2018-10-18T00:29:00","modified_gmt":"2018-10-18T05:29:00","slug":"heritage-foundation-cult-indoctrination-camp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/10\/18\/heritage-foundation-cult-indoctrination-camp\/","title":{"rendered":"Heritage Foundation Cult Indoctrination Camp"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>The Heritage Foundation has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/10\/18\/us\/politics\/heritage-foundation-clerks-judges-training.html\">set up training sessions for law clerks that sounds a lot like cult indoctrination<\/a>:<\/div>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">The closed-door \u201ctraining academy\u201d was aimed at a select group: recent law school graduates who had secured prestigious clerkships with federal judges. It was organized by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative group that has played a leading role in moving the courts to the right, and it had some unusual requirements.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGenerous donors,\u201d the application materials said, were making \u201ca significant financial investment in each and every attendee.\u201d In exchange, the future law clerks would be required to promise to keep the program\u2019s teaching materials secret and pledge not to use what they learned \u201cfor any purpose contrary to the mission or interest of the Heritage Foundation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLaw clerks are not supposed to be part  of a cohort of secretly financed and trained partisans of an  organization that describes itself on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heritage.org\/about-heritage\/mission\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"\">its own web page<\/a> as \u2018the bastion of the American conservative movement,\u2019\u201d said <a href=\"https:\/\/law.stanford.edu\/directory\/pamela-s-karlan\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"\">Pamela S. Karlan<\/a>,  a law professor at Stanford. \u201cThe idea that clerks will be trained to  elevate the Heritage Foundation\u2019s views, or the views of judges  handpicked by the foundation, perverts the very idea of a clerkship.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>On  Thursday afternoon, a few hours after The New York Times published an  online article about the training, Heritage announced that it was  suspending the program.<\/p>\n<p>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n<p>According to the application materials, Heritage\u2019s unnamed donors were to pay for travel expenses to Washington, hotel rooms and meals during the three-day program. The curriculum would cover, the materials said, \u201coriginalism, textualism, habeas corpus, the Bill of Rights and other substantive legal and practical subject matter.\u201d Originalism and textualism are modes of interpreting the Constitution and statutes that are generally but not exclusively associated with conservatives.<\/p>\n<p>The application called for several short essays. One prompt said, \u201cPlease describe your understanding of originalism.\u201d Another said, \u201cPlease identify the United States Supreme Court justice (past or present) whose jurisprudential philosophy and approach to judging you agree with most, and explain why.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This is as disturbing as it is completely expected.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Heritage Foundation has set up training sessions for law clerks that sounds a lot like cult indoctrination: The closed-door \u201ctraining academy\u201d was aimed at a select group: recent law school graduates who had secured prestigious clerkships with federal judges. It was organized by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative group that has played a leading &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[817],"class_list":["post-178595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178595"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178595\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}