Chambliss (R-GA),

Roberts (R-KA),

Bunning (R-KY),

McConnell (R-KY),

Cochran (R-Miss),

Bond (R-MO),

Dole (R-NC),

Inhofe (R-OK),

Cornyn (R-TX),

Lott (R-Miss)

It is not easy to vote against the environment every single time. But the above ten Senators did. These votes include twenty bills that cover such diverse issues as global warming, mercury emissions, car fuel efficiency, and drilling in the Arctic Refuge.

Every one of those ten Senators also voted against a raise in the minimum wage from $5.15/hr. That wage has not been raised in real dollars since 1955. So there is a direct correlation in voting patterns on issues that might seem diverse - such as protection of the environment or a livable wage. Environmental protections and a minimum wage increase impose regulations on corporations for the public good.

But those very same Senators also support the religious supremacists "values" agenda.  For example, they all favored an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would ban gay marriage. And nine of the ten voted against embryonic stem cell research (Cochran voted for.)

The voting records of members of the U.S. House of Representatives are even more pronounced.  Again from the scorecards of the League of Conservation Voters. The votes cover such areas as endangered species, drilling in the Alaskan arctic, fuel economy, water projects, selling public lands, and environmental funding cuts.

The graph below represents the environmental voting records of the 108th Congress, U.S. House of Representatives:

Explanation of Graph: The numbers along the bottom show how many times our representatives voted for the environment. Republicans are red, democrats blue. So 0-19% means they almost never voted for the environment; 80-100% means they almost always voted for the environment. The up-down axis on the left side stands for the number of Representatives. So 189 Republicans,  represented by the red bar on the left, had scorecards of 0-19%. The blue bar on the right represents 140 Democrats. They had scores or 80-100%. No Republicans are on the right side of the graph, no Democrats are on the left. In other words, no Republicans received a score above 80%, no Democrat received a score below 20%, and a relatively small number from both parties fell somewhere in the middle.

Now let's look at a darling of religious supremacists, a vote that cuts to the heart of our democracy - The Pledge Protection Act. From Americans United:

The Pledge bill endangers the constitutional separation of powers. It would seriously undercut the ability of federal courts to ensure that the rights of religious minorities are not trampled by the whims of the majority.

This bill is also a backdoor way of bringing God into our laws. After all, the framers of the U.S. Constitution intentionally omitted God - the word is not mentioned anywhere in our founding document. It was President Eisenhower who added "One nation under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954. Yet the House actually voted to deny the courts the right to hear any case challenging the constitutionality of the phrase "one nation under God."

Now look at this vote by party. The Pledge Protection Act - U.S. House of Representatives, voted on July 18, 2006:

YEAs -221 Republicans and 39 Democrats
NAYs - 8 Republicans and 158 Democrats

The pattern is clear. The Republican Party stands for less governmental interference in corporate affairs and more governmental interference in our personal lives. The two seem to go hand in hand.