ACLU In The News

[Soldier4Christ]

Sex offender measures easily pass House

BATON ROUGE (AP) - Sex criminals convicted of preying on children should be electronically monitored for life after they finish their prison terms, to help prevent them from striking again, a House panel voted on Thursday.

The bill was one of 10 sex offender bills that easily passed the House Criminal Justice Committee. Other measures would create a punishment for those who harbor sex offenders and tighten the rules regarding those who must register as sex offenders.

The electronic monitoring bill would also force convicts to pay for the devices themselves - up to $450 per month - if their victims were younger than 13. The maximum prison term would also be increased from 10 to 25 years.

The bill's sponsor, Rep. Charles McDonald, said constant, lifelong monitoring would help prevent molesters from striking again.

"I think many children will be saved," said McDonald, D-Bastrop.

McDonald said the law was modeled after Florida's Jessica Lunsford Act, enacted months after the 9-year-old girl was killed by a registered sex offender.

The monitors cost up to $15 per day, which would mean a released sex offender could be liable for up to $5,400 per year for the rest of his life, according to Sen. Nick Gautreaux, D-Meaux, who has a similar sex offender bill in the Senate.

McDonald's bill says the state would pay for the device if an offender is deemed to be too poor. The committee passed the measure without objection, sending it to the full House. The panel also passed a bill that would force registered sex offenders to identify themselves as sex offenders at emergency shelters in a hurricane evacuation. The sponsor, Rep. Danny Martiny, said the issue of tracking such offenders in the chaos of an evacuation arose following Hurricane Katrina.

The measure would also require that local and state police be notified of the offenders' whereabouts.

Martiny's measure also passed without objection.

None of the 10 sex offender bills faced serious opposition, only the suggestion by a civil liberties lobbyist that punishing a criminal after he has served his prison sentence borders on violating the rights regarding sentencing provided in the 8th Amendment of the Constitution.

American Civil Liberties Union lobbyist J. Michael Malec noted that murderers, burglars and other criminals are not monitored or forced to register after their release.

"It's only sex offenders that are treated this way," Malec said

[Soldier4Christ]

Court holds benefits hearing

A Michigan Court of Appeals three-judge panel heard oral arguments Tuesday on whether same-sex couples should receive health care benefits from state entities.

The panel heard arguments from Michigan attorney general office attorneys and the American Civil Liberties Union, or ACLU, of Michigan.

About 40 protesters gathered in front of the Michigan Hall of Justice in Lansing in support of domestic-partner benefits.

Proposal 2, which passed in November 2004, amended the state Constitution to define the union between one man and one woman as the only partnership recognized as marriage or a similar union.

Domestic partnerships, or two people living together in a dedicated relationship without being legally married, are not recognized by the state.

Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox has interpreted the amendment to say that any state institution, such as Wayne State University, the University of Michigan and MSU, that offers domestic partner benefits violates the amendment, Cox spokesman Nate Bailey said.

The ACLU of Michigan asked the court Tuesday to affirm the previous Ingham County circuit judge decision, which ruled in favor of same-sex couples. The ACLU of Michigan argued that benefits are an advantage of being employed, not from being married.

A ruling from the panel is expected within the next six months, but the case likely will be appealed to the Michigan Supreme Court.

Ingham County Circuit Judge Joyce Draganchuk disagreed with the attorney general's interpretation of the amendment last September, deciding domestic-partner benefits are an employment benefit.

MSU currently offers domestic-partner benefits to about 50 same-sex couples, said Val Meyers, president of the MSU Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Faculty, Staff and Graduate Student Association, or MSU GLFSA.

The MSU GLFSA represents lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender faculty, staff and graduate students of MSU.

The case could affect negotiated employment contracts between MSU and the unions, Meyers said.

"These contracts were entered into good faith," Meyers said. "(The court) doesn't like to go in between the employer and employee."

When the proposal was on the ballot, Meyers said she doesn't believe voters wanted to take away health-care benefits from same-sex families and their children.

"There's a lot of concern about what this could mean for people who are counting on these benefits," Meyers said. "If they are taken away, it could be devastating for people."

[Soldier4Christ]

One success behind it, ACLU pursues more prisoner photos

NEW YORK -- A civil liberties group on Tuesday demanded the release of more pictures of U.S. soldiers and detainees after the government acknowledged it had only one new Abu Ghraib prison picture because the rest were already public.

Hours after the acknowledgement by the Department of Defense, the American Civil Liberties Union said the government must now turn over 29 more photographs and two videotapes related to the treatment of detainees in U.S. custody.

ACLU lawyer Amrit Singh said the organization learned of the images, apparently not taken at Abu Ghraib, when the Army turned over documents late last year in response to an ACLU lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.

"It became apparent to us there were no grounds for holding additional abuse pictures," she said, noting that the judge presiding over the case had issued a strongly worded opinion saying the public had a right to detainee abuse images.

The new legal fight was disclosed as the ACLU celebrated its success in forcing the government to acknowledge it knew about the Abu Ghraib pictures already published on various Web sites months before the scandal erupted in spring 2004.

The digital photos of physical abuse and sexual humiliation of inmates at the Iraqi prison generated international outrage and called into question the Bush administration's moral standing in its campaign to spread democracy to Iraq. One photo showed a naked hooded prisoner on a box with wires fastened to his hands and genitals.

The government told the ACLU on Monday night that the photographs published online and offered in prosecutions of some soldiers were authentic and turned over one other picture, of two detainees standing side by side in orange jumpsuits with their faces blacked out.

U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein had ordered the release of the pictures, and the government dropped its appeal after it became apparent that nearly all the pictures were already public.

ACLU lawyers have said the continuous challenges to the release of the pictures likely led to their being leaked publicly.

Singh said the public will have a chance to decide for itself about the conduct of its government.

"It's a victory for the principle that the public has a right to know about the kind of misconduct its government has been engaged in," she said.

Megan Gaffney, a spokeswoman for government lawyers in New York, declined to comment Tuesday.

The judge earlier this year had ordered the pictures released, saying that terrorists "do not need pretexts for their barbarism" and that suppressing the pictures would amount to submitting to blackmail.

"Our nation does not surrender to blackmail, and fear of blackmail is not a legally sufficient argument to prevent us from performing a statutory command," the judge said. "Indeed, the freedoms that we champion are as important to our success in Iraq and Afghanistan as the guns and missiles with which our troops are armed."

Dozens of the photographs were taken by a soldier. A military policeman who saw the photos turned them over to the Army.

Abu Ghraib prison, built by Saddam Hussein's regime in the 1970s outside Baghdad, was used as a major detention center by U.S. authorities after the dictator was toppled in 2003. It gained international notoriety after U.S. military personnel were charged with humiliating and assaulting detainees.

[Soldier4Christ]

Albuquerque Mayor Wants To Adopt 'Kendra's Law'


ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- A big battle is brewing between civil rights advocates and Albuquerque city leaders who want to "force treatment" on the violently mentally ill.

Mayor Chavez wants the city to adopt "Kendra's Law."

The idea is to make sure there are fewer emotional land mines on Albuquerque's streets that can go off with deadly results.

Mayor Chavez said it's time for the city to take the lead from state lawmakers who failed to pass a law forcing treatment for the violently mentally ill. Albuquerque police officer Carol Oleksik is a classic example of a victim of a mentally ill person who didn't get help and turned violent.

"The man that shot me, he doesn't understand that there was a problem ... so there is no help because he wasn't looking for additional help," said Oleksik.

That man was eventually shot to death.

Peter Simonson with the American Civil Liberties Union said he sees all sorts of problems with the ordinance, not the least of which is the lack of treatment facilities. He's also concerned about who's going to pay for what amounts, an involuntary commitment and a possible significant deprivation of civil liberties.

He said the ACLU might sue.

Kendra's Law is named after Kendra Webdale, a woman who died in 1999 after being pushed in front of a New York City subway train by a person who failed to take the medication prescribed for his mental illness.

[Soldier4Christ]

Attorney appeals to stop gay partner benefits

Health insurance should not be given to partners of gay workers, according to the state attorney in Michigan.

Republican Attorney General Mike Cox was in court yesterday arguing that university and local government policies offering health insurance to gay partners violated a 2004 amendment to the Michigan constitution concerning marriage, by putting domestic partnerships on an equal par.

He said the amendment limits these benefits to those who are married as a man and a woman.

But a lawyer for gay employees, Deborah LaBelle of civil rights group, the American Civil Liberties Union said: "Health benefits are simply not a benefit of marriage.

"It doesn't have anything to do with marriage."

Last year an Ingham County judge sided with gay couples when they sued Mr Cox for trying to use the amendment to bar domestic partner benefits in future contracts.

Mr Cox’s lawyer, Eric Restuccia, said nothing would stop employers offering benefits to partners, but they should also be given to relatives.

Twenty-one gay couples sued last year after Cox issued an opinion interpreting the amendment as barring domestic partner benefits in future contracts.

[Soldier4Christ]

Council Moves To Boost Clubs' Security As Police Prepare To Bolster Surveillance

As the Police Department prepares to mount more than 500 surveillance cameras across the five boroughs, a group of City Council members has proposed legislation to bolster security at city bars and clubs.

The bills are being introduced following two incidents in recent months in which young women were murdered after being last seen outside Manhattan bars. One proposal would require legal certification of bar employees who handle security. The second would require bars and clubs of a certain size to hire a police detail to patrol the street outside, a move the NYPD has opposed.

"We need to make sure that the nightlife of the city of New York is a safe nightlife at the same time as it is a vibrant and exciting nightlife," the sponsor of one of the bills, Council Member Alan Gerson of Manhattan, said as he stood outside the Falls, the SoHo bar where a 24-year-old graduate student, Imette St. Guillen, was abducted and later murdered in February. The bar's bouncer, Darryl Littlejohn, has been charged in her death. In January, Nicole duFresne, 28, was shot and killed during a botched robbery as she stood outside a Lower East Side bar.

A state law already requires that security companies register and fingerprint their security guards, but Mr. Gerson said his proposal would be broader and apply to any employee that performs security functions, including those that take tickets at clubs or check IDs at bar.

Mr. Gerson and a council member of Brooklyn, David Yassky, also renewed a call for bars and clubs to be able to hire police officers to patrol outside, a proposal that bar owners have long favored but which the police department has resisted. A police spokesman, Paul Browne, would not comment on the specific proposal, but said the department had opposed the idea in the past "because of traditional restrictions in police officers having even a perceived vested interest in a licensed establishment."

The proposals came as the council's Public Safety Committee convened a hearing to examine the police department's plans to significantly expand its use of video surveillance by installing more than 500 cameras primarily in high-crime areas throughout the city. While the city's public housing developments and subway stations have surveillance cameras, the police currently operate only about two dozen, officials said.

The cameras will be installed in two phases, beginning in Brooklyn at 253 locations. They will be clearly marked as police cameras, the head of the department's technical assistance response unit, Deputy Inspector Delayne Hurley, told the committee.

The police also are in the early stages of planning a much larger anti-terrorism initiative for Lower Manhattan, modeled on London's "ring of steel" program, which is likely to include hundreds or even thousands of cameras.

Plans for expanded use of video surveillance have raised concerns over privacy among civil liberties advocates, who say the cameras could be prone to abuse.

The executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, Donna Lieberman, sought assurances that guidelines would be in place for the use of the recordings generated by the cameras, as well as for how long the recordings would be kept before being destroyed. She also questioned the effectiveness of surveillance cameras in combating crime. When Mr. Vallone said police used cameras to identify suspects in the recent death of a New York University student in Harlem, Ms. Lieberman countered: "Let's not forget that video surveillance did not stop that terrible crime." Cameras, she said, "can't come to the aid of someone in trouble. They can't step in and stop crime."

Mr. Hurley said department supervisors would be assigned to units monitoring the cameras. Mr. Vallone said he would press the department for more specifics on their guidelines for the program, but he was not persuaded by Ms. Lieberman's testimony. "I believe the benefits of cameras outweigh the potential for harm," he told her.

[Soldier4Christ]

Breaking law is a choice with consequences
Felons' voting rights are revoked for a reason

The following editorial appeared Thursday in the Everett Herald.

If you do the crime, you should do the time – and pay the fine.

But according to a ruling last week by a King County Superior Court judge, just doing the time is enough for felons to get their voting rights restored in Washington. Judge Michael Spearman said a state law requiring felons to pay all fines and court-ordered restitution before they can vote violates the U.S. and state constitutions.

Fortunately, Secretary of State Sam Reed, the state's top elections officer, and Attorney General Rob McKenna are appealing, arguing that the state has a legitimate interest in suspending felons' voting rights until they have completely paid their debt to society.

The American Civil Liberties Union sued the state in 2004 on behalf of three indigent felons who were only able to make small payments toward court-order fees. They argued that the continued denial of their voting rights amounted to discrimination, because wealthier felons could have their rights restored sooner. Spearman agreed, writing that "discrimination on the basis of wealth and property has long been disfavored."

Spearman's ruling seemed to raise the specter of the poll tax, a particularly revolting part of U.S. history in which some states taxed voters in an effort to keep African Americans and Native Americans from voting. But this isn't the same thing. It isn't even close.

These are felons we're talking about. They chose to break the law. Sorry, but there's a price to pay for that. And this ruling doesn't just apply to fines paid to the state – it includes court-ordered restitution to a criminal's innocent victims. Who is looking out for their interests?

And why shouldn't states have the right to decide what constitutes full payment of a felon's debt to society, including the restoration of voting rights? In Washington and other states, prisons are already packed. Using fines and restitution in felony sentencing is good public policy because it offers a rational alternative to long, costly prison sentences.

That's why Reed and McKenna were right to appeal. A ruling this broad – affecting voting rights, crime victims' rights and states' rights – should be decided at a higher level.

The right to vote is sacred in a democracy. It's the ultimate exercise in citizenship. But when you step outside the law, you risk forfeiting it. Felons who object to that should have considered the consequences before they did their crime.

[Soldier4Christ]

Hawking his new book, Newsweek's Meacham joined O'Reilly's ACLU-bashing

    Summary: Appearing on Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, Newsweek managing editor Jon Meacham agreed that the founding fathers would have disapproved of -- as host Bill O'Reilly termed it -- the ACLU's opposition to the "Pledge of Allegiance ... God, Christmas icons." Further, Meacham did not dispute O'Reilly's characterization of the ACLU as engaged in a "jihad ... against Judeo-Christian tradition in this country."

On the April 11 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, host Bill O'Reilly asked Newsweek managing editor Jon Meacham what the founding fathers would have thought of the American Civil Liberties Union's (ACLU) opposition to the "Pledge of Allegiance ... God, Christmas icons." Meacham, the author of a new book, American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation (Random House, April 2006), responded, "They would have been against it." O'Reilly later asked him, "So you're firmly convinced, based upon your research, that the founders would not approve of the ACLU jihad ... against Judeo-Christian tradition in this country?" Meacham agreed with O'Reilly's characterization of the ACLU as engaged in a "jihad," saying, "I think that what they wanted was religion in the country."

Media Matters for America has documented O'Reilly's numerous previous attacks on the ACLU, including his descriptions of the organization as a "terrorist group" made up of "terrorist allies" and his claims that it is "going out of its way to help Al Qaeda" and that "Hitler would be a card-carrying ACLU member."

From the April 11 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor:

    O'REILLY: What do you think Benjamin Franklin and George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and James Madison would have thought about the ACLU, all right -- Pledge of Allegiance, no God, Christmas icons out of the public arena -- what do you think those guys would have thought about that?

    MEACHAM: They would have been against it. They would have been against the ACLU taking on the elimination or pushing for the elimination of religious references in the public square. There's no question.

    O'REILLY: When you say there's no question, how do you know that? Give me a concrete example.

    MEACHAM: Because the Declaration of Independence, our founding document, grounds the fundamental human rights and the cause for which we went to war against the world's mightiest empire in rights that were the gift of nature's God and endowed by their creator.

    O'REILLY: But that wasn't in the Constitution. Once the ACLU spits at you -- if they wanted that, they would have put it in the Constitution.

    MEACHAM: But you have to read the documents together. You can't be secular and read the Constitution and eliminate the Declaration, nor can you be on the right and read the Declaration and ignore the Constitution.

    O'REILLY: So you have to take the two together to form the picture of what the founders wanted? That's your point of view. You know that will be disputed by the far left. You know that?

    MEACHAM: Sure, they call it the godless Constitution. But it also says it was written in the year of our lord 1787.

    O'REILLY: All right. So you're firmly convinced, based upon your research, that the founders would not approve of the ACLU jihad, pardon the pun, against Judeo-Christian tradition in this country?

    MEACHAM: No, I don't think so at all. I think that what they wanted was religion in the country. They didn't want it coercive. They did not want it forced on people, because largely for religious reasons. The religious argument for religious freedom is that if God himself did not compel obedience, then no man should try.

    O'REILLY: OK, Why did they want religion in the country in the public square, not just the synagogues, and churches?

    MEACHAM: Because, as John Adams said, man is by nature a religious creature. Homer said -- they were following Homer -- that all men need the gods. George Washington clearly understood that the victory in the revolution -- he said, "I can only attribute it to the hand of providence." These were men of intense, private, often complicated faith. Not simple Christianity in many cases.

    O'REILLY: All right. So it was just a benevolence on their part. They thought religion was good for them; it would be good for everybody else.

    MEACHAM: Good for morality.

[Soldier4Christ]

ACLU Can’t Get Enough Abu Ghraib Photos


Hat tip: LGF who says:

    The ACLU isn’t finished wringing the propaganda juices out of the Abu Ghraib scandal:

Here is an excerpt from the News Source

    A civil liberties group on Tuesday demanded the release of more pictures of U.S. soldiers and detainees after the government acknowledged it had only one new Abu Ghraib prison picture because the rest were already public.

    Hours after the acknowledgement by the Department of Defense, the American Civil Liberties Union said the government must now turn over 29 more photographs and two videotapes related to the treatment of detainees in U.S. custody.

    ACLU lawyer Amrit Singh said the organization learned of the images, apparently not taken at Abu Ghraib, when the Army turned over documents late last year in response to an ACLU lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.

    “It became apparent to us there were no grounds for holding additional abuse pictures,” she said, noting that the judge presiding over the case had issued a strongly worded opinion saying the public had a right to detainee abuse images.

What good this will do, or what the public will gain from seeing additional torture photos is not quite clear to me. Some are starting to think the left have some strange fetish for Abu Ghraib photos.

[Soldier4Christ]

Prosecutors Drop Appeal in Librarian Case

STAMFORD, Conn. — Federal prosecutors said Wednesday they will no longer seek to enforce a gag order on Connecticut librarians who received an FBI demand for records about library patrons under the Patriot Act.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which filed suit on behalf of the librarians, said it will identify them once court proceedings are completed in the next few weeks.

U.S. District Judge Janet Hall ruled last year that the gag order should be lifted, saying it unfairly prevented the librarians from participating in a debate over how the Patriot Act should be rewritten.

Prosecutors appealed, but U.S. Attorney Kevin O'Connor said Wednesday that the appeal no longer made sense.

The librarian has already been identified in news reports and the Patriot Act has been changed to include a procedure for requesting an exemption from the nondisclosure requirement, he said.

Prosecutors have maintained that secrecy about demands for records is necessary to avoid alerting suspects and jeopardizing investigations. They contended the gag order prevented only the release of librarians' identities, not their ability to speak about the Patriot Act.

The change followed Congress' reauthorization of the Patriot Act, the ACLU noted.

"Here is yet another example of how the Bush administration uses the guise of national security to play partisan politics," said ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero. "The American public should keep this in mind the next time a government official invokes national security in defense of secrecy."

The Patriot Act, passed shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, allows expanded surveillance of terror suspects, increased use of material witness warrants to hold suspects incommunicado and secret proceedings in immigration cases.

It also removed a requirement that any records sought in a terrorism investigation be those of someone under suspicion. Now, anyone's records can be obtained if the FBI considers them relevant to a terrorism or spying investigation.

The FBI can issue national security letters without a judge's approval in terrorism and espionage cases. They require telephone companies, Internet service providers, banks, credit bureaus and others to produce highly personal records about customers or subscribers.

People who receive the letters are prohibited by law from disclosing to anyone that they did so.

The Washington Post and The New York Times have reported that the FBI issued a national security letter to George Christian, executive director of Library Connection, a Windsor, Conn.-based cooperative of 26 libraries that share an automated library system.

There was no immediate response Wednesday to a call seeking comment from Christian.

[Soldier4Christ]

Mo. St. players sue to keep women's tennis


SPRINGFIELD, Mo. - Four Missouri State women's tennis players are suing the university for cutting their program as part of a sports reduction, contending the move violates Title IX rules.

The lawsuit asks a federal court to order the state's second-largest university to reinstate the women's tennis program and seeks a temporary injunction to keep the sport going after the planned shutdown at the end of this academic year.

Missouri State decided in December to drop five of its 21 sports at the end of the school year, looking to reduce athletics costs it said were growing faster than the university budget. It cut men's indoor and outdoor track, men's cross country and men's and women's tennis.

The lawsuit filed seeks class-action status for all current and future female tennis players. It was filed in U.S. District Court in Springfield by the American Civil Liberties Union in the name of four players who contacted the group.

The university said it is complying with Title IX, the 1972 law that prohibits sex discrimination in any educational program that receives federal funds.

[Soldier4Christ]

ACLU Still Fighting To Get Radical Muslim Scholar Into U.S.


    He has praised the brutal Islamist policies of the Sudanese politician Hassan Al-Turabi. Mr. Turabi in turn called Mr. Ramadan the “future of Islam.”
    Mr. Ramadan was banned from entering France in 1996 on suspicion of having links with an Algerian Islamist who had recently initiated a terrorist campaign in Paris.
    Ahmed Brahim, an Algerian indicted for Al-Qaeda activities, had “routine contacts” with Mr. Ramadan, according to a Spanish judge (Baltasar Garzón) in 1999.
    Djamel Beghal, leader of a group accused of planning to attack the American embassy in Paris, stated in his 2001 trial that he had studied with Mr. Ramadan.
    Along with nearly all Islamists, Mr. Ramadan has denied that there is “any certain proof” that Bin Laden was behind 9/11.
    He publicly refers to the Islamist atrocities of 9/11, Bali, and Madrid as “interventions,” minimizing them to the point of near-endorsement.
    And here are other reasons, dug up by Jean-Charles Brisard, a former French intelligence officer doing work for some of the 9/11 families, as reported in Le Parisien:

    Intelligence agencies suspect that Mr. Ramadan (along with his brother Hani) coordinated a meeting at the Hôtel Penta in Geneva for Ayman al-Zawahiri, deputy head of Al-Qaeda, and Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind sheikh, now in a Minnesota prison.
    Mr. Ramadan’s address appears in a register of Al Taqwa Bank, an organization the State Department accuses of supporting Islamist terrorism.info from Daniel Pipes

However, the ACLU are fighting hard to get this radical inside our borders, claiming the government only revoked his Visa because he has critical views of Bush.

    The American Civil Liberties Union and the New York Civil Liberties Union today urged a federal judge to lift the ban that prevents Professor Tariq Ramadan from entering the United States.

    The groups said the government is using a Patriot Act clause known as the “ideological exclusion” provision to deny a nonimmigrant visa to Ramadan, a Swiss citizen who now teaches at the University of Oxford in England.

    “The immigration laws should not be used as instruments of censorship,” said ACLU staff attorney Jameel Jaffer, who is lead counsel in this case. “The State Department should not be deciding which ideas Americans hear and which they do not.”

    The ACLU and NYCLU are seeking a preliminary ruling prohibiting the government from barring entry to Ramadan based on the ideological exclusion provision, which authorizes the exclusion of foreigners who, in the government’s view, have “endorsed or espoused terrorism.” Ramadan has repeatedly condemned terrorism in his public and written statements. The ACLU believes government officials are censoring Ramadan because he is a vocal critic of American policy in the Middle East.

The ACLU once again endanger us with their irresponsible actions.

[Soldier4Christ]

ACLU To Ask Court To Void Anti-Terror Oaths



    A civil liberties group is challenging part of a new state law after an attorney was told he wouldn’t be assigned court-appointed cases unless he signed a questionnaire stating he is not a terrorist and does not support terrorism.

    The law requires applicants under final consideration for a government job, contract or license to complete and sign questionnaires to determine if they have supported organizations on a federal list of terrorists.

    The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio planned to ask the Ohio Supreme Court on Friday, the day the law takes effect, to exempt court-appointed lawyers from that portion of the statute. The ACLU is arguing that only the Supreme Court - not the Legislature - has jurisdiction over Ohio’s courts.

Actually this isn’t suprising.

    In October of 2004, the ACLU turned down $1.15 million in funding from the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations because they objected to promising that none of the funds would be used to engage in any activity that promotes violence, terrorism, bigotry, or the destruction of any state. They got the provision scrapped after a long and vigorous fight, then accepted the funds.

It isn’t difficult to understand why the ACLU would object to such terms, after all they are defending numerous terrorists, including an individual that participated in a 15-year conspiracy to finance the group Hamas, laundering millions of dollars, some of which went to buy weapons. With the help of CAIR, they are also defending an admitted agent of Al Qaeda that has confessed to attending jihad camps in Afghanistan, and is being charged with lying to the FBI about his terror ties and activities.

    Gov. Bob Taft signed the bill Jan. 11 after the Legislature overwhelmingly approved it.

    The ACLU is acting on behalf of a lawyer in Bellefontaine who sought appointed cases from the city’s municipal court, said Jeff Gamso, the ACLU’s Ohio legal director. The lawyer refuses to do so, Gamso said.

    “What the municipal court has said is that in order to practice law as a court-appointed counsel, you have to do this thing that the Legislature cooked up,” Gamso said.

    State Sen. Jeff Jacobson, a suburban Dayton Republican who sponsored the bill, said the ACLU would fail to persuade the Supreme Court.

    “It’s an argument that’s absurd on its face,” Jacobson said. “They’re saying that this interferes with the Supreme Court. All we’re doing is regulating who can be paid by the state.”

I don’t see what the problem is. The State doesn’t want its money going to individuals that might support terror. What problem does the ACLU have with not supporting terror? Why don’t they just come out and say that they do support it? What is absurd is that no one is investigating the ACLU for terror ties. Start out with one or two of its employees, and go from there.

[Soldier4Christ]

Did Clinton Give Nuke Plans To Iran?


Wow! Lots of stuff on Iran today. AJ Strata alerts me to the news Bill Clinton authorized the leaking of flawed nuke plans to Iran via the CIA during his administration. Some may be suprised that this is according to James Risen, the same Risen that leaked the NSA details.

    Last night, radio talk show host and former US Justice Department official Mark Levin shocked many listeners when he reported that President Bill Clinton gave nuclear technology to the Iranians in a harebrained scheme.

    He said that the transfer of classified data to Iran was personally approved by then-President Clinton and that the CIA deliberately gave Iranian physicists blueprints for part of a nuclear bomb that likely helped Tehran advance its nuclear weapons development program.

    The CIA, using a double-agent Russian scientist, handed a blueprint for a nuclear bomb to Iran, according to a new book “State of War” by James Risen, the New York Times reporter, who exposed the Bush administration’s controversial NSA spying operation, claims the plans contained fatal flaws designed to derail Tehran’s nuclear drive.

Quite a dangerous game to be playing with this kind of information, and trusting a Russian double-agent scientist who could easily fix the flaws for the right price. As a matter of fact, according to WND that just might have happened.

    But the Russian inserted a note in the package indicating he could help fix the flaws if he were paid the right price.

    But the deliberate errors were so rudimentary they would have been easily fixed by sophisticated Russian nuclear scientists, the book said.

    The operation, which took place during the Clinton administration in early 2000, was code named Operation Merlin and “may have been one of the most reckless operations in the modern history of the CIA,” according to Risen.

Absolutely reckless, and a huge risk without any obvious good side to it that would justify the risk factor involved.

    It called for the unnamed scientist, a defector from the Soviet Union, to offer Iran the blueprint for a “firing set” — the intricate mechanism which triggers the chain reaction needed for a nuclear explosion.

    …

    Risen said the Clinton-approved plan ended up handing Tehran “one of the greatest engineering secrets in the world, providing the solution to one of a handful of problems that separated nuclear powers such as the United States and Russia from rogue countries such as Iran that were desperate to join the nuclear club but had so far fallen short.”

AJ Sums it up for us:

    So much for having an obvious indicator of where the Iranians may be in their weapon design. Since this was done out of apparent stupidity it cannot be treason. But it is definitely one of the most dangerous ‘leaks’ I have ever seen. Making a pile of uranium go critical is the difference between a nuclear weapon and a pile of biohazardous material. We need to find what idiot decided to dangle the most closely held element of nuclear weapons, and what the ‘logic’ was in taking this risk.

Quite shocking news that definitely needs getting to the bottom of.

In other Iran news, Iran’s leader says Israel will be annihilated

    The president of Iran again lashed out at Israel on Friday and said it was “heading toward annihilation,” just days after Tehran raised fears about its nuclear activities by saying it successfully enriched uranium for the first time.

    President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called Israel a “permanent threat” to the Middle East that will “soon” be liberated. He also appeared to again question whether the Holocaust really happened.

    “Like it or not, the Zionist regime is heading toward annihilation,” Ahmadinejad said at the opening of a conference in support of the Palestinians. “The Zionist regime is a rotten, dried tree that will be eliminated by one storm.”

    Ahmadinejad provoked a world outcry in October when he said Israel should be “wiped off the map.”

    On Friday, he repeated his previous line on the Holocaust, saying: “If such a disaster is true, why should the people of this region pay the price? Why does the Palestinian nation have to be suppressed and have its land occupied?”

    The land of Palestine, he said, referring to the British mandated territory that includes all of Israel, Gaza and the West Bank, “will be freed soon.”

    He did not say how this would be achieved, but insisted to the audience of at least 900 people: “Believe that Palestine will be freed soon.”

    “The existence of this (Israeli) regime is a permanent threat” to the Middle East, he added. “Its existence has harmed the dignity of Islamic nations.”

[Soldier4Christ]

Oh, So Burning OUR Flag is OK? Where’s the ACLU When You Need Them?

Gee, wonder when the ACLU will step up to this man’s defense? Story from Tucson, Arizona….*sigh*…. what else can you say?

According to the Arizona Daily Star today in an article by Brady McCombs:

    A Tucson man was arrested Tuesday for his role in the burning of a Mexican flag as part of a counterprotest at a pro-immigration rally.

    At about 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, Tucson police cited Roy Warden, 58, on suspicion of assault, criminal damage and reckless burning, and then released him, according to Sgt. Decio Hopffer.

    Video footage shot Monday by police and the media showed Warden assaulting a TV cameraman and a photographer, Hopffer said. Because only one of the men pressed charges, there is only one assault charge.

    Warden faces the criminal-damage charge for harm done to the concrete shuffleboard court where Warden’s group was burning the Mexican flag, Hopffer said.

    Warden and his group, Border Guardians, arrived at Armory Park just after noon Monday to stage a counterprotest to the 15,000 marchers who were protesting what they see as unfair immigration laws. At about 2:15 p.m, they burned Mexican flags and tempers flared. (and your point is….?)

    Police arrested two girls for throwing water at Warden and his group, and a scuffle broke out as police escorted them away. On Monday, Tucson police arrested six people on charges of aggravated assault on a peace officer, interfering with governmental operation, hindering prosecution and disturbing the peace.

    Hopffer said police are still reviewing tape of the scuffle. Warden said the charges are a direct result of political pressure from the Mexican Consulate.

    “If they saw something unlawful, why didn’t they commit an arrest then?” Warden said.

    He said he plans to represent himself at his court hearing on April 24 and said he’s confident he will clear himself of charges. In addition, he said he plans to sue the cameraman for defamation of character and denying his right to free speech.

    Another member of Border Guardians, Laine Lawless, called the arrest a petty way to punish the group for its dissenting voice.

    March organizers also questioned why it took police so long to make the arrest. They have a requested a meeting with city officials for Thursday to discuss the issue, said Zoe Hammer, spokeswoman for Border Action Network, one of the local human-rights groups that organized the march.

We are no longer the America I once knew. We have let the international, multiculturalists dictate our behavior and acceptance of all things not American; all to the demise of this very country.

This has got to stop. Why don’t they charge American-flag burners with this same “destruction of property” type charge? Oh, yeah… it’s just fiiiine to burn OUR flag, but oh, no, you can’t offend those of other nations who are here ILLEGALLY!

Immigration through assimilation - ONLY! And do you think I’m waiting for the ACLU to show up and represent this man in court for his “free speech” rights? I can’t hold my breath that long. Besides, those idiots are all too busy at the Mexican consulate making deals with the illegal alien champions. Why don’t we call them what they are? They’re not illegal immigrants - they’re INVADERS!