ACLU In The News

[Soldier4Christ]

ACLU Formally Opposes Alito
January 10, 2006 05:35 PM EST


By Sher Zieve – For the first time since Supreme Court candidate Robert Bork, the ACLU has come out formally against the nomination of Associate Justice Samuel Alito. The left-leaning ACLU’s President Anthony D. Romero issued the statement: “Unfortunately, Judge Alito’s record shows a willingness to support government actions that abridge individual freedoms.”

Some Democrat Senators on the Senate Judiciary Committee have made statements, during the Alito confirmation process, that are similar to Romero’s charge. However, they have been proved false by other members of the committee. Romero also said: “A state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation’s citizens.”

During his confirmation hearings, Judge Alito said that no one is above the law. The ABA (American Bar Association) has given Judge Alito its highest rating.


My Note:  All the more reason for me to support Alito.

[Soldier4Christ]

ACLU: State inflating DUI statistics to push tougher laws
The Rhode Island chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union has issued a report arguing that state officials have “inflated” drunk driving statistics in order to promote passage of legislation to crack down on suspected intoxicated drivers.

Both Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch and Gov. Donald L. Carcieri have cited reports saying Rhode Island has the highest percentage of alcohol-related traffic fatalities in the nation as evidence of the need for tougher laws.

But the ACLU report cites National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data showing that between 2000 and 2002, Rhode Island’s alcohol-related traffic fatality rate was actually lower than the nation’s – from 0.49 to 0.56 per 100,000 miles driven, compared with a range of 0.59 to 0.63 for the nation. Only in 2003 was the state’s rate above average, 0.71 versus 0.59.

The reason such a high percentage of Rhode Island traffic deaths are alcohol-related, the ACLU notes, is because the state’s overall fatality rate in those years was, on average, the sixth-lowest in the nation – second-lowest when measured by fatalities per 100,000 residents.

“In fact, for over twenty years, the state’s alcohol fatality rate has been routinely lower than the national average,” the report says. It also questions the efficacy of proposed anti-drunk driving measures and suggests a greater effort to enforce current laws would work best.

“Our goal in issuing this report is not to suggest that state officials should become complacent about the problem of drunk driving,” said Rhode Island ACLU executive director Steven Brown in a news release. “But our research does call into question many of the arguments being used to demand prompt and harsh legislative responses to the issue, as there are serious doubts about both their efficacy and need.”


My Note:  Tougher DUI laws are a problem? Where is the logic in this?

[Soldier4Christ]

ACLU filing challenges Hamas-case evidence

By Michael Higgins
Tribune staff reporter
Published January 11, 2006

Two civil liberties groups filed legal briefs this week in support of a Virginia man accused of helping to fund Mideast terrorists, arguing that federal agents had no right to search his home without a warrant in 1993.

The prosecution of Abdelhaleem Ashqar in federal court in Chicago is the first case to test whether national security concerns can justify searching a person's home without a warrant, the two groups said.

"We've always been opposed to warrantless physical searches," said Harvey Grossman, legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois. "You physically break into the home when people aren't there. It's like burglary."

The Center for National Security Studies, based in Washington, D.C., joined with the ACLU in the friend-of-the-court brief, which supports Ashqar's attempt to prevent evidence from the search from being used against him.

Federal prosecutors allege that Ashqar and two other men, Muhammed Salah of Bridgeview and Mousa Abu Marzook, participated in a 15-year conspiracy to finance the group Hamas, laundering millions of dollars, some of which went to buy weapons. Marzook is a fugitive believed to be living in Syria.

The ACLU files only two or three amicus briefs a year in the federal trial courts in Chicago and rarely gets involved in a motion to suppress evidence, Grossman said Tuesday. "But this is a very important case," he said. "There are no decisions in this area whatsoever."

A spokesman for U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald declined to comment Tuesday. But in a court filing in August, prosecutors argued that the search of Ashqar's home in Oxford, Miss., was unlike a normal search of a suspect's residence.

"The 4th Amendment does not require the government to obtain court approval for a foreign intelligence search of an agent of a foreign power," prosecutors wrote.

Ashqar was a graduate student at the University of Mississippi when federal agents conducted the search, photographing his papers and other personal property, Ashqar's attorney, Thomas A. Durkin, said in court filings.

The search was conducted under the administration of Bill Clinton and approved by his attorney general, Janet Reno, according to court records.

[Soldier4Christ]

ACLU Questions Donation To Church Rebuild Effort

(CBS) CHICAGO The American Civil Liberties Union is now questioning the spending of a million dollars in state funds to help rebuild part of Pilgrim Baptist Church's campus.

WBBM Newsradio 780's Debra Dale reports that the ACLU has sent a letter to Governor Rod Blagojevich asking how he expects the money to be used and how the donation will stay within constititutional boundaries.

The letter says the state grant raises religious liberty issues. Blagojevich has said the money will only be used to rebuild school and administrative buildings, not the church itself.

[Soldier4Christ]

ACLU Pushes for Access to Emergency Contraception
Matt Tettelbach
Action News 36
Jan 13, 07:27 AM EST
   

The American Civil Liberties Union and a group of Kentucky lawmakers are pushing for improved access to emergency contraception.

The ACLU says studies show nearly half of the state's pharmacists refuse to fill prescriptions for emergency contraception.

Now several lawmakers and doctors are joining the ACLU to back a bill requiring increased access to the pill.

"I hope lawmakers have enough ovaries to go out and pass this legislation," says Dr. Connie White, a Frankfort OB-GYN.

Those at yesterday’s rally claim the issue is about health care - not abortion.

[Soldier4Christ]

ACLU Again Bans Jesus
January 12, 2006 09:17 AM EST


By Sher Zieve – In July 2004, the ACLU threatened to sue the City of Fredericksburg, VA if the city council did not drop the name of Jesus in all of its prayers. In another 2005 case the ACLU supported a Wiccan priestess. Fearing an ACLU lawsuit, in November the Fredericksburg city council voted 5-1 to drop any reference to Jesus.

Fredericksburg Mayor Tom Tomza said: “I did not want to unleash a 1,000-pound gorilla, the ACLU, on the City Council.” Tomza also added that he believes Turner’s rights are being violated.

Fredericksburg City Councilman Hashmel Turner, Pastor of the Fredericksburg First Baptist church, has now decided to file suit against the other council members and fight the ACLU. Turner is being represented by the non-profit Rutherford Institute. President of Rutherford Institute John Whitehead said of the Turner suit: “All he wants is to say Jesus Christ at the end of the prayer. He’s not asking for any money. It’s a very simple suit.”

[Soldier4Christ]

Utah ACLU wants ID law repealed
Driver licenses: Officials say a federal law aimed at decreasing fakes lays out unrealistic demands

 An anti-terrorism law creating a national standard for all driver licenses by 2008 isn't upsetting just civil libertarians and immigration rights activists.
   State motor vehicle officials nationwide who will have to carry out the Real ID Act say its authors grossly underestimated its logistical, technological and financial demands.
   In a comprehensive survey obtained by The Associated Press and in follow-up interviews, officials cast doubt on the states' ability to comply with the law on time and fretted that it will be a budget buster.
   ''It is just flat-out impossible and unrealistic to meet the prescriptive provisions of this law by 2008,'' said Betty Serian, a deputy secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation.
   Nebraska's motor vehicles director, responding to the survey by the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators, said that to comply with Real ID her state ''may have to consider extreme measures and possibly a complete reorganization.''
   And a new record-sharing provision of Real ID was described by an Illinois official as ''a nightmare for all states.''
   ''Can we go home now??'' the official wrote.
   States use a hodgepodge of systems and standards in granting driver licenses and identification cards. In some places, a high school yearbook may be enough to prove identity.
   A major goal of Real ID - which was motivated by the Sept. 11 attacks, whose perpetrators had legitimate driver licenses - is to unify the disparate licensing rules and make it harder to fraudulently obtain a card.
   The law also demands that states link their record-keeping systems to national databases so duplicate applications can be detected, illegal immigrants caught and driving histories shared.
   State licenses that fail to meet Real ID's standards will not be able to be used to board an airplane or enter a federal building.
   The law, which was attached to a funding measure for the Iraq war in May, has been criticized by civil libertarians who contend it will create a de facto national ID card and new centralized databases, inhibiting privacy.
   State organizations such as the National Governors Association have blasted the law as well. Many states will have to amend laws to comply.

 The AAMVA report detailed demands in Utah for new computer software and server space, for employees to meet the requirements of the Real ID Act and for additional security personnel for driver license facilities.
   The Utah Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union responded by sending letters to Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., and leaders of the Utah House and Senate, urging them to press for the repeal of the act due to the burden of implementing the legislation.
   Last month, the New York City Council passed a resolution urging the state to opt out of the Real ID Act mandates.
   “We ask that you take a similar step at the state level and encourage the Utah State Legislature to pass a resolution describing the problems with Real ID and asking Congress to amend the act,” wrote Dani Eyer, executive director of the Utah ACLU chapter in a letter to Huntsman and leaders of the Utah House and Senate.
   The AAMVA surveyed states on what would be required to comply with the Real ID Act.
   According to Utah's response to the survey, the state will have to:
   l overhaul its system so more letters can be entered into the driver license system. North Dakota said making the change in that state would cost $4 million;
   l develop a system to check the validity of birth certificates or other documents submitted for identification to obtain a license. The records have to be checked manually, requiring additional personnel;
   l equip each office with the ability to scan the source documents;
   l hire additional staff and to scan and retain copies of the source documents for a license application for 10 years.

[Soldier4Christ]

ACLU Obtain Army Documents Revealing Terrorist Sympathy

    In one Army file, an investigator states that he is unable to continue an investigation into claims that a detainee captured by Task Force 6-26 in Tikrit, Iraq, was stripped, humiliated and physically abused until he passed out, because the unit accused of the abuse is part of the Special Access Program (SAP). A memorandum included in the report states that “fake names were used by the 6-26 members” and that the unit claimed to have a computer malfunction which resulted in the loss of 70 percent of their files. The memorandum concludes, “Hell, even if we reopened [the investigation] we wouldn’t get any more information than we already have.”

    Also included in the documents released today is a heavily redacted memo referring to a December 10, 2002 “SERE INTERROGATION SOP” (Standard Operating Procedure) for Guantánamo. SERE, which stands for “Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape,” is a secret military program under which detainees held in U.S. custody abroad are subjected to harsh interrogation techniques. According to the ACLU, this document shows that such techniques may have been formally authorized in a memo to military personnel at Guantánamo. The ACLU said it is unclear how this document relates to abusive interrogation techniques authorized for use in Guantánamo by Secretary Rumsfeld in a separate memo on December 2, 2002.

I don’t know where they got confused, but Anti Idiotarian Rottweiller calls them on it.

    Granted, we’ll be the first to admit that S.E.R.E. and similar programs with which we’re more intimately familiar aren’t exactly a lot of fun (unless you happen to be an instructor), but the facts remain that A) it’s hardly a “secret program” and B) the only ones being “subjected to harsh interrogation techniques” are the trainees, none of whom are enemy combatants. In fact, they tend to wear the same uniform as the instructors. Funny how education works, isn’t it?

Want to know what S.E.R.E really is? Start Here. Not very secret at all.

But lets go on with the ACLU’s discoveries.

    A February 16, 2004 memorandum recording an interview of an American interrogator stationed in “Orgun-E Military Intelligence Detention Facility” in Afghanistan reveals that its “Standard Operating Procedure” included keeping detainees awake, standing and blindfolded without food for the first 24 hours. The interrogator also refers to standard practices of “OGA” (a common military reference to the CIA) that include the use of drugs and prolonged sensory deprivation. A February 12, 2004 memorandum records the use of a “Fear Up approach” involving “disrespect for the Koran,” insulting the detainee, having a room upstairs with spotlights and turning the music on very loud.

Further reading reveals even more evil means of torture…such as cleaning out open wounds to prevent infection:

    The documents further reveal gruesome accounts of torture and abuse by U.S. military personnel in Iraq. In one 2004 document, a civil contractor recounts in a sworn statement that he witnessed Marines pouring peroxide and water over the open wounds of an Iraqi prisoner.

Holy Allah on a pogo stick! Peroxide and water on a wound! My mother put the same thing on my wounds growing up! Perhaps I can make a case for the ACLU?

    In another document, following the release of images of abuse at Abu Ghraib, one officer wrote on May 6, 2004, that abusive interrogation techniques, such as the application of cold or ice, loud music, sleep deprivation and confining detainees to a metal box, will “continue to cause us problems, as some interrogation techniques aren’t real defensible given the Abu Ghraib fallout.”

Heaven forbid! Loud music, and sleep deprivation??? We are savage brutes! Before you know it we may end up using excessive tickling, and making them take baths! There is a lot of other unsubstantiated things in their article, but its just that, unsubstantiated.

[Soldier4Christ]

ACLU Helping Hamas

How is this not treason?

    In October of 2004, the ACLU turned down $1.15 million in funding from two of it’s most generous and loyal contributors, the Ford and Rockefeller foundations, saying new anti-terrorism restrictions demanded by the institutions make it unable to accept their funds.

    “The Ford Foundation now bars recipients of its funds from engaging in any activity that “promotes violence, terrorism, bigotry, or the destruction of any state.”

    The Rockefeller Foundation’s provisions state that recipients of its funds may not “directly or indirectly engage in, promote, or support other organizations or individuals who engage in or promote terrorist activity.”

Why would they do something like that? Well, so they can support individuals who engage in and promote terrorist activity!

    Two civil liberties groups filed legal briefs this week in support of a Virginia man accused of helping to fund Mideast terrorists, arguing that federal agents had no right to search his home without a warrant in 1993.

    The prosecution of Abdelhaleem Ashqar in federal court in Chicago is the first case to test whether national security concerns can justify searching a person’s home without a warrant, the two groups said.

    “We’ve always been opposed to warrantless physical searches,” said Harvey Grossman, legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois. “You physically break into the home when people aren’t there. It’s like burglary.”

    The Center for National Security Studies, based in Washington, D.C., joined with the ACLU in the friend-of-the-court brief, which supports Ashqar’s attempt to prevent evidence from the search from being used against him.

    Federal prosecutors allege that Ashqar and two other men, Muhammed Salah of Bridgeview and Mousa Abu Marzook, participated in a 15-year conspiracy to finance the group Hamas, laundering millions of dollars, some of which went to buy weapons. Marzook is a fugitive believed to be living in Syria.

By the way, Ashqar is not a U.S. citizen. He is being represented by Stanley Cohen, a radical lawyer who is also the U.S. attorney for Hamas, and who has appeared on Fox Television from Gaza expressing his unabashed support for Hamas activities.

    A spokesman for U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald declined to comment Tuesday. But in a court filing in August, prosecutors argued that the search of Ashqar’s home in Oxford, Miss., was unlike a normal search of a suspect’s residence.

    “The 4th Amendment does not require the government to obtain court approval for a foreign intelligence search of an agent of a foreign power,” prosecutors wrote.

When it comes to protecting the rights of terrorist, and their supporters, you can always count on the ACLU.

[Soldier4Christ]

Evolution can’t explain origin of ‘eternal rules of order and right’
Friday, January 13, 2006

The American Civil Liberties Union’s contemporary agenda to secularize America falters from its inception because it disregards what George Washington called “the eternal rules of order and right which heaven itself has ordained.”

These rules are not vague, and their influence ebbs and flows in every community, country and culture. These laws, embraced at high tide, result in freedom’s flooding the land.

These eternal rules, whether obeyed or not, reside in the core of every human being with few, if any, exceptions.

These standards of conduct can best be called the laws of nature; even the worst of men are mysteriously nudged by them.

These rules of right and wrong were written in stone, 10 in number.

The ACLU and its atheist allies shall fail because they refuse to recognize, as history’s parade of tyrants has done, that a creator has stamped something indelible in the soul of man that cannot be expunged and cannot be explained except by creative design.

So now, in the midst of a secular onslaught and the pseudoscience that postulates the Darwinian monkey man, some so-called scientists desperately cleave to something called a “life force,” and that, too, becomes untenable without an eternal mind.

Empirical evidence, reason, the absence of transitional fossil forms and sheer mathematical probability deny them a solid stage, yet the secularists continue a relentless assault against our tradition, the laws of nature and the one who gave life breath and a mysterious sense of conscience.

If the ACLU and the secularists succeed, forget your inalienable rights. They would decide when and whether you live or die, but in their insanity, the same monster they would magnify will one day turn on them.

[Soldier4Christ]

This would be the best news.

[airIam2worship]

This would be the best news.

You got my vote on that PR. Hey can I vote more than once?

[Soldier4Christ]

You got my vote on that PR. Hey can I vote more than once?

In this case your vote counts multiple times.

[Soldier4Christ]

ACLU fights Commandments again
But legal defender sees 'tide turning' in battle over issue
Posted: January 14, 2006
1:00 a.m. Eastern


In the wake of major decisions on public display of the Ten Commandments, the American Civil Liberties Union is asking a federal court to order removal of a Tennessee courthouse exhibit.

"The posting of the Ten Commandments sends the message that only certain believers can receive justice at the courthouse," said Hedy Weinberg, executive director of ACLU of Tennessee.

The ACLU filed the motion yesterday in U.S. District Court.

Weinberg said "residents should not be made to feel like second class citizens because they do not hold the prevailing religious beliefs promoted by the county government."

The display in Rutherford County was approved by a 16-5 vote of the county commission in April 2002, but two months later, federal court Judge Robert Echols issued a preliminary injunction removing it.

The decision was stayed, however, pending a decision on similar cases in two Kentucky counties, McCreary and Mercer.

In each of the counties, the Ten Commandments is displayed among historical documents. The Rutherford County display includes copies of the preamble to the Tennessee Constitution, the National Motto, the National Anthem, the Declaration of Independence, the Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights, the United States Constitution and the Mayflower Compact.

Last June, the Supreme Court in a split 5-4 decision upheld a preliminary injunction against McCreary County because the court said the prior history of the county's evolving display suggested a religious purpose. However, the court permitted the case to return to the trial court for a final ruling.

In the meantime, Dec. 20, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, the same court to which the Rutherford County case will be appealed, upheld Mercer County's identical display.

That court scolded the ACLU, rejecting its "repeated reference to 'the separation of church and state.'"

"This extra-constitutional construct has grown tiresome," the court said. "The First Amendment does not demand a wall of separation between church and state."

Florida-based Liberty Counsel, which represents all three counties, notes it also defeated the ACLU in defense of a similar display in Elkhart County, Indiana, before the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Mathew D. Staver, president and general counsel of Liberty Counsel believes the "tide is turning against the ACLU's war on the Ten Commandments."

"Every federal court of appeals that has ruled on the Ten Commandments since the Supreme Court's ruling has upheld such displays," he said. "The courts, and history, are working against the ACLU."

Staver believes that with Judge Samuel Alito's expected confirmation to the Supreme Court, "the ACLU can no longer count on the High Court to further their agenda."

[Soldier4Christ]

It appears that the courts no longer are just handing out decisions based on what the ACLU wants. The ACLU's wins are on a downhill slide. There are many ACLU losses being reported in recent months. I say,  "IT'S ABOUT TIME!"




Appeals court rejects ACLU of Michigan's lawsuit against judge
1/13/2006, 2:26 p.m. ET
The Associated Press       

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (AP) — The Michigan Court of Appeals has tossed out a lawsuit that accused a judge of defying a U.S. Supreme Court decision regarding the appointment of attorneys for poor defendants who want to appeal their guilty pleas.

The suit was dismissed Thursday, one day after the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan filed it with the court.

"The appeals court didn't find the grand defiance that the ACLU did," Kent County Circuit Judge Dennis C. Kolenda told The Grand Rapids Press.

On June 23, the federal Supreme Court struck down a Michigan law that prohibited judges from appointing appellate attorneys for defendants who enter guilty or no-contest pleas in their cases.

The state's constitution was amended in 1994 to say a defendant who pleads guilty or no contest no longer has an automatic right to appeal, except under narrow circumstances.

The ACLU of Michigan said the Supreme Court ruling requires judges to appoint appellate counsel for indigent defendants, but Kolenda said they could waive that right in their plea deals. Regardless, the cases of the four poor defendants named in the class-action suit filed against him were decided before the Supreme Court's decision, he said.

In a Sept. 27 ruling, Kolenda refused to grant appellate attorneys to those four defendants as well as several others.

In dismissing the ACLU of Michigan's suit — a document called a complaint for superintending control — the appeals court said the four defendants could individually appeal the Sept. 27 ruling. One already has such an appeal pending.

The Detroit-based group said defendants lose rights under Kolenda's reasoning and have little chance of successful appeals on their own. It also said the Supreme Court rejected the argument that destitute defendants could waive their right to appointed appellate counsel.

"This is not over because this is a very serious issue," said Wendy Wagenheim, a spokeswoman for the ACLU of Michigan. "The Supreme Court ruled that poor people deserve legal counsel because there is no way they can navigate the complex judicial system on their own."