the ACLU needs to get A CLU

a common sense response to the so-called "American Civil Liberties Union"

Oh so anxious to use an arbitrary number to make those who are protecting us from terrorists look bad, the ACLU recently geared up to celebrate the one millionth name added to the terrorist watch list.

Unfortunately, they mistook the Justice Department's 2007 report of 700,000 records to mean "individuals" on the watch list, and figured the millionth one must be coming in July 2008. This despite the inspector general's document itself clearly distinguishing between "records" and "terrorists."

Get a clu, ACLU. You were off by about 60% on this one.

The American Civil Liberties Union is representing the North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) pro bono in a Massachusetts case. Apparently, to them, an organization devoted to encouraging pedophilia and legalizing sex between children and adults is entitled to free legal defense.

And just in case you need to read on...

The ACLU issued a press release announcing a lawsuit to challenge the posting of a list of 'Voter Responsibilities' in Florida. Some of the requirements are that a voter "study and know candidates and issues," "bring proper identification to the polling station," and "know how to operate voting equipment properly." "The plaintiffs claim that these provisions, and their prominent display as required by the new Florida law, are a throwback to the days of literacy tests, and may disproportionately impact race and language minorities in exercising the right to vote."

Get a clu, ACLU. Educating oneself about the candidates and issues is the bare minimum we should expect from the voting public.

“This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory and not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered.” Sounds perfectly sound, doesn't it? The scientific method by its very nature requires observation. Macro-evolution has not been observed anywhere at anytime. Evolution is still a theory. But oh my, this might open young minds up to the possiblity that we didn't just arrive on the earth by random chance. This got the ACLU very huffy, and so they tacked "religion" onto it, and filed a lawsuit over Atlanta schools putting a sticker with the above on their biology textbooks. Never mind that the sticker did not mention creationism, or even discuss any religion. Get a clu, ACLU. With what part of "this... should be approached with an open mind" do you take such issue?

The ACLU signed a statement in January agreeing to not hire people whose names appear on "watch lists" of those suspected of having ties to terrorists. The concept of these lists is the exact kind of thing the ACLU is (usually) vehemently opposed to. In fact according to testimony in the Senate, the ACLU is likely to sure any airline that deviates from "random screening" and questions more than 2 passengers from any ethnic or geographic group. (Never mind that each of the planes on 9/11 had more than 2 terrorists, all from the same ethnic group). The ACLU has also gotten huffy about CAPPS II (see below). Signing such an agreement was a condition of receiving donations through the government's employee payroll deduction program...

A Virginia state law makes it illegal for teens to attend a nudist camp without a parent, grandparent, or legal guardian. Featured activities at this camp are volleyball and swimming, and the camp manager Bob Roche said that the camp would teach teens social interaction skills. (I bet it would). The ACLU said litigation is likely and Roche said, "if we have to, we will sue for money." Virginia delegate Richard Black said, "There are laws against child pornography - and if you can't put it in a picture, I don't understand why you could put it at an outdoors camp." Rebecca Glenberg, legal director of the ACLU of Virginia called this common sense law a "knee jerk" reaction. "There was no good reason to enact this law, and there is no reason to believe that these camps are harmful to children in any way," says she. Fortunately a federal judge dismissed the lawsuit brought on by the camp. Looks like the teenagers will have to wait at least another year to spike a volleyball in the nude and go skinny dipping. (Whatever happened to basket weaving and navigating with a compass?) Get a clu, ACLU. Is there any "good reason" for half the things that come out of your camp?

As the FCC is cracking down on media outlets for indecent programming (which is more than justifiable especially following the recent antics of Janet Jackson/Justin Timberlake, Bono, and Howard Stern), the ACLU joined a group that filed a petition whining about it. "The FCC is now setting itself up as a national censorship board, seeking to impose its version of morality on the American public," said Chris Hansen, an ACLU staff attorney. (Washington Times, April 20, 2004) Get a clu, ACLU. You do not own the airwaves, the public does. The airwaves are limited and therefore broadcasters have a (gasp) responsibility to the public that for instance the press does not have. Howard Stern, average Joe, anyone, can start a newsletter, magazine, or Web site and say whatever they want to. Broadcasters do not have this luxury.

boys striving to be trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind...
and the aclu trying to put a stop to it

The ACLU sued to put a stop to the Boy Scouts of San Diego to use a city facility called Balboa Park for a summer camp. The park has been leased to the Scouts since 1957, and the Scouts had invested $5 million into it, and it is open to the public. The ACLU claimed that the Boy Scouts must be considered a "religious organization" because they do not view active homosexuals to be fit to serve as Scoutmasters for these young men (oh yeah, and that bit about "doing their duty to God and their country"). The suit began when two couples (one of whom was a lesbian couple) said that the Scouts policies made homosexuals feel excluded. (Never mind that neither couple had ever been to the park).

In return for their efforts, the ACLU has collected $790,000 in legal fees and $160,000 in court costs.

Scouts are not asked about their sexual orientation. It's those on the left such as the ACLU who are making a big deal out of it. Scouting has not changed its policies regarding homosexuals, it is those on the left such as the ACLU who delight in the change that has taken place in society.

Buy On My Honor: Why the American Values of the Boy Scouts are Worth Fighting For at amazon.com.

friendly neighborhood porn, courtesy of the aclu

It used to be relatively easy to keep kids from pornography. Granted some porn could be found in the occasional serendipitous dumpster dive, but it used to be largely confined to the seedy store on the other side of town, or hidden under the store counter. The idea that a young child could happen upon porn, by accident or otherwise, was rarely a concern. And the idea that porn could be found at the library, never.

Then came the 1990's. Enter the Internet.

In response to this new technological onslaught of filth, Congress passed the Children’s Internet Protection Act. Senator John McCain introduced the bill that would become CIPA to the Senate in 1999, and President Clinton signed it in December 2000. Pro-porn lawyers tried to tie it up and court, until the Supreme Court ruled to uphold it that June.

The premise of the law is simple. If libraries take federal funds to provide Internet access, they must install Web filters to screen out porn on the computers children can use. It even allows for adults to have filters disabled. Justice Rehnquist stated "Assuming that such erroneous blocking presents constitutional difficulties, any such concerns are dispelled by the ease with which patrons may have the filtering software disabled. When a patron encounters a blocked site, he need only ask a librarian to unblock it or (at least in the case of adults) disable the filter." This makes perfect sense to decent people.

But not the ACLU. Not surprisingly, the ACLU sued because the law supposedly violates the right to free speech. After all, they seemed to be saying, lower income people without the Internet at home need to be able to filterlessly download porn with public library computers.

Get a clu, ACLU. Pornographers and their customers should seek their thrills in their own homes on their own dime, and must leave the public libraries and our children alone. As if the "right to free speech" should include the right of a curious 13-year-old to walk down the street to the library and surf for porn sites on public computers without parental knowledge or consent.

find the cross

seal The ACLU threatened to sue Los Angeles County unless it removed a small cross from its seal, which had been emblazoned on thousands of buildings as well as stationery, flags, etc, for almost 50 years. The seal contained 6 panels with the Roman goddess Pomona, representing the regions agriculture, at the center. The cross represented the area's settlement by Spanish missionaries. Other images included a triangle and caliper (industry), oil derricks, San Salvador, and a tuna and cow (fishing and dairy). The county unfortunately bowed to the pressure. Get a clu, ACLU. The cross was not, as you said, "an impermissible endorsement of Christianity" any more than featuring Pomona was an endorsement of pagan worship.
People, this cross took up less than one-fourth of one percent of the surface area on this seal. Said Joseph Farah on worldnetdaily.com, "The cross would hardly have been noticed if it had not been brought to the world's attention by the ACLU... The ACLU is not concerned about the establishment of religion at all. It is concerned about the elimination of Christianity from public life in America."

While they fight to expunge any form of Christianity from America's public landscape, they seem to have an amazing tolerance for expressions of other faiths.

California public schools, for example, recently had students, without their parents' knowledge, to take a course on Islam, complete with recitation of prayers. The ACLU was silent on this issue.

The Washington Times reported that in Utah, the ACLU even set up a scavenger hunt, with a prize for anyone who found another Ten Commandments monument the ACLU could persuade an activist judge to removed.... and that as a reward for winning the removal of Judge Moore's Ten Commandments display in Alabama, the ACLU, Americans United for Church and State and the Southern Poverty Law Center collected $540,000 in attorney's fees and expenses from taxpayers. (June 17, 2004)

The ACLU got all huffy when they heard that the Hagerstown Suns AA baseball team were offering (gasp) $2 discounts to fans who brought (heaven forbid!) church bulletins to Sunday games. This was not restricted to selected denominations or religions, the bulletin could have come from any church, synagogue, Unitarian gathering, wiccan mass, whatever, held any day of the week. Moreover, the Suns even freely offerered to give the original offended fan a bulletin that he could use anyway to get the discount, and he refused. The ACLU sued, then claimed that the Suns were working this fracas for publicity. Get a clu, ACLU. Your whining is what caused most of the attention this received.

Since the Our Lady of Lourdes Healthcare Service in New Jersey has a policy against abortion, the ACLU wants them to provide a separate building on its campus for that purpose. They argue that the hospital is obligated to abort fetuses because its original mission statement called for "comprehensive" health care services. Get a clu, ACLU. The mission statement was written in 1961, when abortion was a felony. Is abortion "comprehensively healthy" for pre-born babies? I guess this is a wrong question to ask an organization who has on its web site a section called "Fighting Fetal Rights."

The ACLU is one of many liberal groups who organized a pro-abortion march in Washington DC in April 2004. Teamed with them was the National Education Association, whose headquarters acted as a hospitality center for the marchers. (Washington Times, April 19, 2004) Thousands of pro-life teachers and school staff are required to belong to - and pay dues to - the NEA, while the organization uses their resources for pro-abortion political purposes. Get a clu, ACLU -- are you telling us is that it's not ok to talk about Christianity or abstinence, yet it is perfectly ok to espouse the killing of innocent children, including partial-birth abortion?

Yes, the ACLU is one of the groups that filed law suits claiming that the ban on partial birth abortion of November 2003 takes away a "fundamental constitutional right." Abortion providers themselves have gone on record to say that during this procedure, there is "usually a heartbeat," and that the baby is "still living," and that there "will be pain caused," perhaps "severe and excruciating." Get a clu, ACLU -- a constitutional right? And you can't blame this rhetoric on the pro-lifers either, this is coming straight from the chief proponents themselves.

Drivers in Tennessee almost had the option to choose specialty license plates that read, "Choose Life," when the ACLU sued, claiming that the slogan "discriminates against residents with an opposing viewpoint." An "opposing viewpoint" to "Choose Life?" Wonder what that could mean. Discrimination against residents with such? Get a clu, ACLU, if you want to lobby for a license plate that reads, "Choose Death," go right ahead.

Oh so now you are rushing to the defense of religious freedom?

Oh I should have guessed... the Muslim woman who wanted to be photographed for her drivers license photo peering through a small slit through in her veil. Get a clu, ACLU, the policy is in place to protect her just like everybody else. So it's "unlikely" that this woman poses a "threat to national security." I take it that the 9/11 terrorists fit that bill as well. After all, they were devout Muslims, no?

what's next, voodoo?

Uh oh, a Wiccan wasn't added to a list of clergy invited to give the invocation by the Chesterfield County Board of Supervisors. Yep, here they are again at the defense of religious freedom. Get a clu, ACLU. The Supreme Court ruled decades ago that the government has wide latitude in offering legislative invocations that reflect the traditional values of a majority of its citizens. Wiccans consider themselves witches, pagans or neo-pagans. When this reflects the traditional values of the majority, feel free to speak up.

If in this country we enjoy freedom of speech and freedom of religion, why are you trying to stop people from talking about the Christian religion? It is freedom of religion not freedom from religion.

What is wrong when the one for whom a holiday is celebrated is mentioned? You don't want Christ mentioned in public regarding Christmas, but you don't mind talk about Martin Luther King or George Washington on their birthdays?

What have you against Christmas, you don't seem to mind Ramadan and Kwanzaa?

Dennis Miller on "The Tonight Show:" “The ACLU spent this entire holiday season protesting public displays of the nativity scene. Yeah, that's the problem with America right now: Public displays of Christ's birth, that's the problem. It's unbelievable to me. The ACLU will no longer fight for your right to put up a nativity scene, but they'll fight for the right of the local freak who wants to stumble onto the scene and have sex with one of the sheep.”

"The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security to block use of CAPPS II. The ACLU says the system discriminates against low-income persons with poor credit ratings." (Washington Times, June 17, 2003). Are you saying that middle and high-income persons are immune to poor credit ratings?

Or maybe you have better ideas about how to protect America's skies. Even the Air Travelers Association supports this.

The ACLU also sued to stop enactment of the Aviation and Transportation Security Act, which tightened employment requirements for airport screeners, the primary line of defense. They also supported the wall of separation that hindered communication between U.S. intelligence and law-enforcement agencies fighting terrorism.

Dennis Miller on "The Tonight Show:" “I say we create a new airline, called the ACLA, the American Civil Liberties Airline where you don’t check anybody, you don’t ask any questions, and let those morons fly on that one.”

In the 3 years since September 11, there has not been a single law or policy the ACLU has supported that would help prevent a bloody repeat of the mass murder of innocent Americans by fanatical Muslim terrorists.

"The American Civil Liberties Union has released “Getting Hitched in Canada,” a concise guide to same-sex "marriage" in Ontario and British Columbia. The guide gives straightforward answers to basic questions about getting "married" up North, including how to get a license and what same-sex Canadian marriages will mean back in the states. The ACLU is producing “Getting Hitched” as part of its “Get Busy, Get Equal” campaign." Nuff said.

A chaplain at the Naval Academy will continue to give thanks to the Creator for His blessings before the midshipmen's weekday lunches -- leading a nonsectarian voluntary prayer -- leaving the ACLU to stand outside jumping up and down in protest. "We tried things the nice way, and they've told us to pound sand," said David Rocah, a staff lawyer. "If someone is interested in challenging" the academy, Mr. Rocah said, "we'd be perfectly happy to talk to them about doing that." These same "tolerance advocates" fought to halt the long-held tradition of saying a nonsectarian mealtime grace at Virginia Military Institute. Get a clu, ACLU, you're starting to sound like the kid looking to pick fights at the sand box.

In the summer of 2003, Prison Fellowship - which partners with local churches across the country to minister to prisoners, ex-prisoners, and their families - planned a program in Nebraska, with the full support of the Department of Corrections. Yet on the day before the program was to begin, the Nebraska ACLU threatened a law suit against the state if it went forward.

A recent study of such a program in Iowa showed that inmates who graduated from the program are two and a half times less likely to return to jail as other inmates. Yet, the Iowa ACLU has actually sued PF and the state. Defending the suit will cost PF and Iowa taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars, money that could have been put to much better use.

The ACLU has never implemented or suggested a program that is more effective at reducing recidivism than such faith-based programs. Yet they continue to assault programs that have been proven to work.

The ACLU supported a lawsuit that led to action from the US Court of Appeals in striking down a Colorado law that required parents be notified when their underage daughters seek an abortion. Apparently "abortion providers" seeking financial gain, not parents, have a child's best interests at heart.

Claiming "separation of church and state" (see below) the ACLU threatened in 1999 to sue Arizona governor Jane Hull who proclaimed a "Bible week" for the state.

Said Eleanor Eisenberg, Executive Director of the Arizona Civil Liberties Union, when the governor dropped the proclamation,

"We are gratified that the Governor understands that it is not appropriate for the government to elevate one religion over another or to promote religion over non-religion." (archive.aclu.org/news/1999/n030199d.html)

However...

When Hull issued a proclamation commemorating Buddha's birthday, they were silent. As were they also when students in California were forced to practice Islam or face failing grades.

Getting A CLU - A Primer

There are references to God in every one of the 50 state constitutions.

Not only does the phrase "separation of church & state" not appear in any formal document, the next part of the letter in which it was first written by Thomas Jefferson (a personal letter, to a Baptist pastor in 1802) which you seem to like to overlook:

"The 1st Amendment has erected a wall of separation between church & state. That wall is a one dimensional wall. It keeps government from running the church, but it makes sure that Christian principles will always stay in government."

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