Tag Archives: American Civil Liberties Union

ACLU to Newspaper — Shut Up Already

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The American Civil Liberties Union is once again demonstrating its committment to free speech by asking a judge to gag the Omaha World Herald. The Herald wants to publish the name of a man who sued Plattsmouth, Neb., over a Ten Commandments monument there. The ACLU, in turn, has suddenly got that old time prior restraint religion.

The ACLU claims that the man has received anonymous threats and publishing his name could subject him to further threats. But as Omaha World Herald executive editor Larry King notes,

King said The World-Herald is not at the point of publishing any article identifying the man. But if newspapers made publication decisions based on anonymous threats, King said, they would have to quit writing about “everyone from football coaches to politicians.”

“This is not a case in which an individual, through no fault or action of his own, found himself in the middle of a dispute,” King said. “This man is trying to force a city to make a controversial change it doesn’t want to make. If you want to change public policy, it should not be a surprise that you could be publicly identified.”

I guess the ACLU must still be stinging from its loss in its suit to protect the rights of teens to attend nudist camps without parental supervision.

Source:

ACLU requests restraint on press. Todd Cooper, Omaha World Herald, September 21, 2004.

Parental rule upheld for teen nudist camp. Associated Press, August 10, 2004.

Kerry vs. Ashcroft on Civil Liberties

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Politics creates such odd matchups sometimes. Today it’s John Kerry promising not to let John Ashcroft destroy our civil liberties. But a decade ago, as Reason reminds us, it was Kerry who was trying desperately to restrict civil liberties while Ashcroft defended them,

This isn’t the first time Kerry and Ashcroft have been at odds over civil liberties. In the 1990s, government proposals to restrict encryption inspired a national debate. Then as now, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and electronic privacy groups locked horns with the DOJ and law enforcement agencies. Then as now, Kerry and Ashcroft were on opposite sides.

But there was noteworthy difference in those days. Then it was Sen. John Ashcroft (R-Mo.) who argued alongside the ACLU in favor of the individual’s right to encrypt messages and export encryption software. Ashcroft “was kind of the go-to guy for all of us on the Republican side of the Senate,” recalls David Sobel, general counsel of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

And in what now seems like a bizarre parallel universe, it was John Kerry who was on the side of the FBI, the National Security Agency, and the DOJ. Ashcroft’s predecessor at the Justice Department, Janet Reno, wanted to force companies to create a “clipper chip” for the government—a chip that could “unlock” the encryption codes individuals use to keep their messages private. When that wouldn’t fly in Congress, the DOJ pushed for a “key escrow” system in which a third-party agency would have a “backdoor” key to read encrypted messages.

As late as 1997, Reason notes, Kerry was the first co-sponsor to John McCain’s Secure Public Networks Act which would have created a national key escrow registry and solidified the Clinton ban on encryption exports (they should have called this the Encourage Encryption Offshoring Act).

There’s also this Kerry response to a defense of strong encryption that appeared in Wired, in which Kerry alludes to those murder in the first World Trade Center attack and the Oklahoma City bombing,

[O]ne would be hard-pressed,” he wrote, “to find a single grieving relative of those killed in the bombings of the World Trade Center in New York or the federal building in Oklahoma City who would not have gladly sacrificed a measure of personal privacy if it could have saved a loved one.

I guess he actually voted in favor of sacrificing freedom for security before he voted against it.

Source:

John Kerry’s Monstrous Record on Civil Liberties. John Berlau, Reason, July 26, 2004.

Bill O’Reilly vs. ACLU Over Crosses on Los Angeles County Seal

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Personally, the American Civil Liberties Union’s successful effort to force Los Angeles county to drop a small cross from its public seal is exactly the reason I would never even consider donating to that group.

In case you didn’t follow this controversy, the Los Angeles county seal is subdivided into an number of sections and one of those sections features a cross to signify the historic role that Catholic missionaries played in California’s history. According to the ACLU, however, the cross is offensive to non-Christians (though not offensive to this atheist or my Wiccan wife), and violates the separation of church and state. As my wife puts it, perhaps next the ACLU should go after numerous other examples of Christianity embedded in California municipalities,

After this they’ll want to change city names that harken back to the days of the Spanish missions to something less offensive to non-Catholics: Los Angeles … Santa Ana, Santa Barbara, San Bernardino, San Bruno, San Carlos, Santa Clara, San Clemente, Santa Cruz, Santa Clarita, San Diego, San Dimas, San Francisco, San Fernando, San Gabriel, San Joaquin, San Juan Bautista, San Jacinto, San Juan Capistrano, San Jose, San Anselmo, San Leandro, San Luis Obispo, San Mateo, Santa Monica, San Marcos, Santa Maria, San Marino, Santa Paula, San Pablo, San Rafael, San Ramon, Santa Rosa….Ah, I luve the smell of litigation in the morning!

It’s stupid crap like this cross case that will keep me from ever donating money to the ACLU.

Equally as dumb, however, was Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly. O’Reilly is like the conservative clone of Al Franken. If he’s got a good point, it’s not enough to make that point and move on. No, he has to stretch the point past the breaking point and into sheer lunacy. Here’s O’Reilly on the ACLU’s threatened lawsuit (emphasis added),

“Talking Points” wants you to know that we are rapidly losing freedom in America. Judges are overruling the will of the people, and fascist organizations like the ACLU are imposing their secular will.

Fascist organizations like the ACLU? What an idiot.

Source:

The O’Reilly Factor Transcript. June 2, 2004.

Mr. Foot-In-Mouth on the Dixie Chicks

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Well, I guess he should know about putting his foot in his mouth in public — Jerry Falwell has weighed in on the Dixie Chicks controversy.

Of course, I don’t think the woman who said this,

Just so you know, we’re ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas.

. . . need a lesson in propriety from the man who said this,

The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way — all of them who have tried to secularize America — I point the finger in their face and say, ‘You helped this happen.’

Also of note is that Falwell apologized for those comments — except now he says that was “not so much as an apology” as simply a clarification. I.e. Fallwell really means what he says above, he just thinks it was probably not a good idea to say so just a few days after the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history.

Source:


Falwell criticizes Dixie Chick’s anti-Bush remarks. USA Today, April 30, 2003.

Stupid Slashdot Tricks

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Every time I see someone online talking about the accuracy of traditional media vs. weblogs — and usually extolling the virtue of the latter — I think of Slashdot. A few errors could be forgiven, but often it seems like they actively try to avoid reading the actual articles that they post about and link to.

For example, Slashdot has a story on its front page that is headlined,

Circuit Court Okays Vote Swapping Site

The text of the post and the headline lead many of Slashdot’s readers to think that the 9th Circuit Court has ruled that it was legal for a web site to facilitate the trading of votes for Al Gore and Ralph Nader (the idea was that a Nader voter in Alabama would vote for Gore, and in exchange a voter in California — where Gore was going to win by a large margin anyway — would vote for Nader).

But the court said absolutely nothing in its ruling about whether or not what the web site did was legal. All it did was reinstate a lawsuit that the web site owner and the ACLU had filed against California’s Secretary of State, Bill Jones.

Jones threatened the web site with prosecution if it didn’t bring a halt to the vote trading. The web site and the ACLU in turn sued saying their First Amendment rights were violated. A lower court dismissed part of the lawsuit and found against the web site on another part.

All the 9th District Court did was reverse those decisions and told another lower court to take a fresh look at the lawsuit.

Yes, the details are buried at the bottom of the CNET story that Slashdot links to, but would it really kill Slashdot editors to read the whole story before posting?

ACLU Defends Satan

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It’s the sort of story the nuttier Christian fundamentalists are going to have a field day with — the American Civil Liberties Union is threatening a federal lawsuit against a Florida town that has posted signs forbidding Satan to enter.

The signs read,

Be it known from this day forward that Satan, ruler of darkness, giver of evil, destroyer of what is good and just, is not now, nor ever again will be, a part of this town of Inglis. Satan is hereby declared powerless, no longer ruling over, nor influencing, our citizens.

I just want to know how the ACLU plans to establish standing. Are they going to go into court and complain that Satan is feeling unfairly discriminated against? If Satan is in the United States, is he even here legally? Will the INS try to pick up Satan before he can testify in his defense?

The other thing I’ve been curious about is whether or not this ban applies to Satan’s minions. Maybe she’s got a point about Satan, but if she’s stopping all Satanic forces isn’t that supernatural profiling? (BTW, how come webloggers never have minions? I need to get me some minions!)

I love the ACLU — heck I’d even donate to them if they were willing to defend my right to own fully automatic weapons without a license — but sometimes you have to just let some nutbags be nutbags.

(BTW, I hereby declare that all claims that the tooth fairy may have over my dentition are hereby null and void. If I hear any flapping of wings near my pillow, I’m a comin’ out blastin!)

The Home Grown Religious Fanatics

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Today I was laughing out loud at the media coverage of the 9/11 attack after CNN reported that Iranian hard liners were blaming the attack on Israel and chanting “Death to Israel.”

But comments by Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson on the terrorist attack are even more distressing to my mind than even the Palestinians and Lebanese celebrating the attacks.

Appearing on the 700 Club, Falwell said of the attack, “God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve.”

To which Robertson replied, “Jerry, that’s my feeling. I think we’ve just seen the antechamber to terror. We haven’t even begun to see what they can do to the major population.”

Then Falwell really goes off the deep end (which is saying a lot given his previous statements over the years),

The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way — all of them who have tried to secularize America — I point the finger in their face and say, ‘You helped this happen.’

Sickening. Fortunately, Falwell/Robertson no more represent most Christian Americans than Osama Bin Laden represents mosts Muslims.