Err, sorry on the triple post, but I wanted to clarify:
I meant:
I didn’t mean to imply that you couldn’t know any of those; just that there’s no evidence of it.
The ACLU was originally founded as a far left orgainzation and has morphed over time. It does not often support the rights of righties, with the notable exception of of the neo-Nazis marching in Skokie, which cost them zillions of members (but not my Dad, who was raised Jewish). They don’t take on every case (they can’t) and sometimes the local boards take on cases that other chapters would disagree with.
Now in this case, I question why they would take it, but undoubtedly some lawyers volunteered their time and it is what they wanted to work on.
Our fire and forget poster seems to have forgotten that the court agreed with the prisoner and the ACLU in this case.
A lot of the “I hate prisoners” attitude seems to be the result of the need of the person with the opinion to feel completely morally superior to some other group, in this case prisoners (who most people feel morally superior to). Oh, by the way, support of eugenics was a key feature of those quaint folks sporting the swastikas. On the other hand, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. was noted to have written that three generations of idiots was enough.
Let’s move this to the pit so we can flame and forget.
I’m not even sure why the ACLU should be involved in any of these cases. What civil liberties violations are/were these women claiming?
And the ACLU did make that argument. They opposed the re-trial.
And if you think the ACLU stands up for whatever feminist groups want, you might want to consider their position on pornography.
First of all, you need to know that I am offended by this remark. I responded to you immediately, and I asked a sincere question. I didn’t understand the connection you were making, and judging from other responses you are getting, neither did anyone else.
I don’t take up the debate until I know what the debate * is*.
You did no such thing. You wrote a post with a few examples of what you claim (and frankly I don’t doubt) were false accusations of child abuse that the ACLU declined to become involved in. What in the world is partisan about this? How is child abuse, false or real, a partisan issue? I think we all agree that child abuse is bad, and people being accused of child abuse when they are innocent is bad. I’m sure our conservative brethren here on the dope would agree with both these statements, and the left would cheer them on.
When you make your case I will worry about how to make mine.
Maybe, maybe not. So far nothing you have described sounds like a constitutional issue to me. But this still strikes me as a matter that is not in any way describable as partisan, and also not the sort of thing that the ACLU ever takes on. There are people lying in courtrooms across the land… the ACLU has never promised and cannot be there to make sure everybody gets a perfect trial filled with truth-telling witnesses, and it is strange of you to expect it and dismiss them for failing to do so.
And I still don’t see how, even if all this did somehow make sense for the ACLU to involve themselves with, this is proof of any kind of partisanship
Your opinion. Obviously lots of others disagreed.
Stoid
I’m really tired of hearing the Skokie Nazis used rhetorically. Here’s why.
First of all, I pointed out that ACLU seldom opposes certain groups, such as Democrats, the poor, minorities, and gays. I might have added they they seldom support sexual abstinence.
The Nazi’s have nothing to do with the groups or causes that I mentioned. American Nazis are a fringe group of aberrant human beings. I know it’s popular among some liberals to imagine that Nazis are more akin to conservatism than to liberlism. I totally reject that POV. After all, N. A. Z. I. is an acronym for National Socialists. And the German Nazis did have certain positions in common with socialists – a powerful central government with great control over the populace as well as greater concern for the country and the government than for the individual.
However, I don’t really mean to say that liberism has anything to do with Naziism. I do maintain that Nazis are totally different from American conservatives or American liberals. Supporting American Nazis isn’t the same as opposing liberals or liberal causes. The American Nazis are politically irrelevant.
Also, this Skokie march took place in 1977. How much diversity credit does the ACLU get today for a single case they took 24 years ago? None.
Stoid, I regret your feeling offended. However, I will point out that I did answer your question, but you have not yet answered mine.
Regarding the ACLU defences offered by Stoid:
These child abuse cases were indeed tremendously partisan. The college bookstores had shelves full of feminist authors writing about sexual harassment. I saw these books with my own eyes. This was quite a powerful group committed to emphasizing and exaggerating sexual harassment. They actively supported the day care prosecutions. This group is generally speaking in the same liberal camp as the ACLU.
When the witch-trial-like nature of the child abuse cases began to be exposed, the only politicians to support the victims were a few conservative Republicans. Stoid, you argue reasonably that this issue ought not to have been partisan, but that’s the way it turned out. Even today, these cases get a lot more coverage in conservative pulications, like the WSJ editorial page, than in liberal ones, like the NY Times. In fact, the WSJ TV critic Dorothy Rabinowitz won a Pulitzer Prize this year for her reporting on this issue.
ruadh asks what civil liberties violations were alleged by Bill Clinton’s victims? Using the full power of the federal government to smear the reputation of a woman because she made an accusation against the President is a CL violation. In particular, info from Linda Tripp’s personnel file was given to the media – a violation of federal law. Privacy is a civil liberty.
Myrr, your speculation that the victims didn’t ask for help seem like a desparate argument. Grant Snowden was given a very long prison sentence (at least 20 years) for a crime he never committed. I’m sure he’d have accepted help from anyone, especially an organization with the clout of the ACLU. Same thing for other victims, who were given horrendous punishmnets. Some got life sentences.
Regardless of the perfection or imperfection of my examples, if the ACLU weren’t partisan, then there would be lots and lots of cases the other way, where the ACLU opposed the groups I claim they support. Since none of us can think any such cases, I consider my point to be proved.
december You said, earlier
This was a joke, right?
And in your last post, you conclude
While I have never taken a course in logic, nor have any academic abilities in the area, somehow what you say sounds illogical.
My 8 year old daughter says that she personally keeps flying elephants away from our house. Since I have never seen any around here in the last 20 years, she must certainly be correct. ::rolleyes::
I can honestly think of no situation in which it would be appropriate for the ACLU to take a stand for or against sexual abstinence. Certainly they would support anybody’s right to choose or advocate sexual abstinence, or have you evidence to suggest otherwise?
In other words, “they don’t fit into my view of the ACLU so they don’t count”? That’s an awful lot what it sounds like, december. Democrats/ liberals opposed the march, and the ACLU opposed them. That in itself proves the ACLU are not a partisan group, regardless of where Republicans/ conservatives stood on the issue.
Agreed, but I doubt very seriously that the ACLU would have supported this action.
Oh please, several cases have been mentioned. You’ve just found convenient excuses to dismiss them all.
Here’s a couple more, anyway. Let’s see how you explain these away:
[ul]
- The ACLU defended Oliver North’s right to freedom from self-incrimination.
- The ACLU filed an amicus curiae brief in support of Paula Jones’s case against Clinton …
- … and another one against the Clinton administration’s attempt to force the Rutherford Institute to release confidential information about donors.
- You didn’t address the point I already made that the ACLU opposes many women’s groups on the pornography issue, so I’ll make it again
- And you’re just plain wrong that the ACLU is quiet about their opposition to campaign finance reform. Just go to their website and put “campaign finance” into the search engine, and you’ll see how active they’ve been on the issue.
[/ul]
Thanks for the list ruadh. I’ll give you (1) - (4). On #5, I looked up http://www.aclu.org and didn’t see “campaign finance reform” on their list of key issues.
Regarding your comment:
I refer you to the OP.
No, it’s not on their list of key issues. Did you use the search engine as I suggested?
I think it’s a bit of a stretch to refer to the OP as a sexual abstinence issue. Particularly if, as stated, the child will be conceived by the prisoner “send[ing] his semen to his wife”.
Rants, and golldurnit if this isn’t one, belong in the Pit.
Sorry for missing this so long. Off we go!
The OP is about procreation rights (if they exist), not abseinence. I’ll grant that both have some relation to sex, but it’s not at all the same thing.
And, since the others did such a nice job in demonstrating that your stance on the ACLU was in error, can we hear a retraction?
Oh yeah? To whom? You? Isn’t that a given? You might also consider the moon to be made of green cheese, that doesn’t make it so.
Your examples are your idea of what the ACLU ought to be doing, but so far I don’t see it, and neither does anyone else participating in this thread.
As for proving the opposite of your position, my thanks go to ** ruadh ** for doing a beautiful job of that already.
Now, about your “logic”, which seems to go like this:
[ul]
Item to be Proved:
ACLU is a liberal organization
Steps to proof:
[li]Some feminist thinkers have written about sexual harassment issues.[/li][li]Some people are being unfairly accused of child abuse[/li][li]Some feminists support the prosecutions of these persons[/li][li]Feminism is generally considered a liberal cause.[/li][li]Anyone who is a liberal must agree with unfair accusations and prosecutions of child abuse.[/li][li]** The ACLU is a liberal organization **, [sub] note that this series of “facts” is supposed to be proving this very thing[/sub]and therefore it must agree with the unfair prosecutions.[/li][li]Which is why the ACLU is not stepping in to defend the unfairly accused.[/li][li]Which proves they are a liberal organization.[/li][/ul]
Well, december, I’m sure you can see that your “logic” is nothing of the sort.
You also offer an unbelievably thin justification for this assertion:
And what exactly was the ACLU supposed to have done here? And where are the other CL violations they were supposed to have fixed in the matter of the other women?
Sorry, december, you are going to have to do much better than this to prove anything to anyone besides yourself.
stoid
Just one item I found very easily at:
http://www.aclu.org/congress/lg100197a.html
Face it, december, you lost this one.
stoid
The ACLU was instrumental in keeping Oliver North out of prison. He acknowledges as much on his radio show. Hardly a liberal-agenda act (although, one could argue that North was hyprocritcally not a “law and order” type looking for one of those “legal loopholes” when he invoked his right against self-incrimination to prevent immunized Congressional testimony from being used against him in order to prevent himself from doing time).
Like it or not, procreation is considered a fundamental “penumbral” right under the Bill of Rights. ACLU is doing nothing more then supporting someone attempting to preserve those rights. If you don’t like unenumerated right to procreate, encourage your Congressperson and state legislator to pass a Constitutional amendment to that effect (or your next Presidential candidate & Senatorial candidate to “litmus test” all S. Ct. candidates to overturn Griswold and their progeny). Of course, then its going to be your problem when your state says you aren’t allowed to by birth control, or passes guidelines for when certain types of people can be sterilized…
Oops, my bad. Here is the “Free Speech” page on their Key Issues list. What’s that you see about halfway down the page on the left?
I always thought that the mission of the ACLU was the protection of American’s 1st Amendment Rights. Why they want to intervene, so that a felon can impregnate his wife, is beyond me. I don’t see that the 1st amendment has anything to do with this. Having said thia, lets look at the matter in realistic terms:
-the father (with a 110 year sentence)is never going to be around to support his child
-the odds of a 46 year old mother successfully delivering a normal healthy child are quite low
-asking the taxpayers to support a child produced as a result of this idiocy is ludicrous
Also, being in prison is the result of quite a conscious effort to be bad. Such a person is unlikely to provide a role model for a child.
Am i being clear enough?
No, you’re not being clear enough because you ignored my question:
Why do you naturally assume that just because the father is in prison that taxpayers are going to have to support the child (via welfare, etc.)? Women are fully capable of being single parents and supporting their children without the government’s help, you know.
I don’t think that the ACLU is either officially or in fact partisan, it just that Republicans are generally against civil liberties and are on the opposite side most of the time.
Oh, all right, I’ll offer support for my statement:
The GOP opposed the 1964 Voting Rights Act.
The GOP supports mandatory drug testing and lie detectors.
The GOP opposes allowing people to peacefully protest a presidential motorcade.
The GOP opposes public labor unions right to strike.
The GOP opposes the right of people to use birth control.
More examples other SDers?
The ACLU is not an arm of the Democratic Party, they don’t even come to our conventions or meetings to try to recruit. (They probably should). They have many similar items on their agendas, but not completely.
The elected President Bush (41) mocked Michael Dukakis for being a card carrying member of the ACLU (I don’t think they have cards), but that is because the GOP has long had great animosity towards civil rights.
Excellent points, DP!
Wasn’t it also the GOP that was pretty interested in banning flag burning? Wasnt’t the CDA a GOP-sponsored bill? Seems they aren’t too crazy about free speech.
And I think it’s a fair characterization to say that GOP has not proved itself any great fan of the separation of church and state, either. Particularly in its current incarnation. (“Fatih-based charity” anyone?)
It surely seems,december, that it is not so much that the ACLU is partisan on the side of the left, more like the right is not interested in the same issues that interest the ACLU and usually the left. IN fact, about the only constitutionally protected “right” that the GOP seems to care about is the supposed “right” to have guns.
You are certainly free to dislike the ACLU, december, but this thread is plenty of proof that your reasons for doing so are flawed at best.
stoid
Well, it is, in part. But not exclusively. Go to the website and take a look around.
So?
So?
Who asked them to? And even if the child does end up on welfare, what difference does it make how it came to be conceived?
And because said person will actually be in jail, and therefore unavailable to be modeling anything, it doesn’t really matter.
You are clear about why you think this is a bad idea, but you haven’t made a case for why the ACLU is wrong to protect this man’s right to reproduce.
stoid