Ah, december, but they do support the 2nd. See Policy #47, cited above by tracer. They just don’t support the interpretation favored by those who want more liberal (wink, wink) ownership rights.
It would be interesting to see if the ACLU would support, once enacted, a more specific gun ownership ammendment. The NRA, last I heard, wouldn’t.
Peace,
mangeorge (ccm)
And, december, as for your point #2, here’s the ACLU’s stance on that subject.
I remembered reading it somewhere, but I wanted to be sure I had it right.
mangeorge, I appreciate your pointing out that the ACLU formally supports the 2nd Amendment, at least their interpretation.
However, I cannot ever recall the ACLU actually participating in a court case on the side of reducing gun restrictions. It just doesn’t seem to be a priority issue for them.
That’s OK with me. Other civil liberties organizations, like the NRA, work on that particular issue.
Well, IIRC they supported Daniel Ellisburg, who illegally released the Pentagon Papers for partisan gain.
Also, Linda Tripp’s civil liberties were violated when senior government officials illegally released stuff from her personnel file, as a part of a smear campaign.
Furthermore, the tapes captured Monica Lewinsky threatening Tripp, trying to persuade her to commit perjury in her Paula Jones case testimony. When the girlfriend of the President of the United States uses threats to try to force a mid-level government employee to commit a crime, that’s a civil liberties problem.
P.S. people are seldom, if ever, prosecuted for taping their own phone messages. The decision by the State of Maryland to try Tripp was based on a desire to punish her. The ACLU normally opposes selective prosecution.
I am not going to participate in turning this into another freakin’ gun control debate, so I’ll pass on that issue. 
I’m with Stoid on this one. Some people are pretty good at throwing out snide little comments about the ACLU, and now they have a chance to explain their opposition. Good. Have at it.
I also recently joined the A.C.L.U. although I have agreed with their principles for a long time. I’m truly afraid of the crap coming out of the current administration and it’s apparent threat to our civil rights.
As to the comment regarding Eminem (?) I am gay, but I still support his right to say what he wants. Isn’t that what America is supposed to be all about?
I have also recently joined the Electronic Freedom Foundation. A reading of their web site might prove interesting to SDMB members.
On the issue of the Boy Scouts, the law holds that they are only free to discriminate where such discrimination is covered by the doctrine of “expressive association”. That is, where not discriminating would limit their freedom of speech. The BSA claimed that homosexuality is in opposition to its stated principles, primarily the part of the Scout Law that states that a Scout is clean, and the part of the Scout Oath where Scouts pledge to be “morally straight”.
However (without actually digging out my Boy Scout handbook for actual quotes), the explanations of these phrases that are published in Boy Scout literature do not support this interpretation. And, in 13 years of association with the BSA, I have never seen anything official from the organization that would be at all incompatible with allowing homosexuals to be members. In short, the BSA, IMHO, excludes gays merely because the organization is run by a bunch of stupid bigots, not because its principles are in opposition to homosexuality.
This would be illegal. However, the Supreme Court decided to simply believe the BSA that their principles were what they said they were in court, rather than what they tell actual Boy Scouts they are. As a matter of fact, if I felt that the BSA espoused the values it told the Supreme Court it does, I wouldn’t be involved.
In short, while the BSA was claiming that it was a free speech issue, the facts of the matter don’t bear out that interpretation, unless you are as willing as certain Supreme Court justices to accept any pretext for denying equal rights to homosexuals.
More information on the matter is available at Scouting For All
I have anayzed december’s post very carefully, searching for nuance, sarcasm, some tongue in cheek whimsy, perhaps. Nope. Its just what it appears to be, which an optimistic child might assume meant there was a pony close at hand.
“for partisan gain”. I’m stunned at the vapidity of that criticism. What the Pentagon Papers showed us was not only was Viet Nam unwinnable, the Pentagon knew it was unwinnable, as did the Johnson and Nixon administrations. Our leaders gulled us into years of bloody savagery on a futile mission. “Illegal”? Of course it was. Rosa Parks committed a crime when she refused to surrender her seat to a white man, and God bless her for it!
As to the much lamented Linda Tripp…what a steaming crock of horsepucky!! You will recall, I’m sure, that Ms. Tripp had been attempting to foist off a “tell-all” book about her days at the White House, how she had seen such shocking things as staffers without ties! Gasp! Not even Lucianne Goldberg could pump up that dead dog.
Ms. Tripp betrayed her friendship with Monica L. for pecuniary gain and nothing more. The taping of that conversation had sordid motives and sordid ends. The comparison between that and a “message tape” is too ridiculous to dignify with rebuttal.
And the ACLU is remiss in not rushing to the defense of this loathesome harridan? You gotta be kidding!
Salvage some scrap of dignity, december and tell us you were kidding.
—Now let’s hope that you can singlehandedly drive the effort to break down the barriers that prevent TV stations from showing hardcore porn on network channels.—
I hate to break it to you (unless you like porn, in which case I’m happy to break it to you), but porn is already on my TV in New York. MNN has shows where random people come in and play their favorite porn tapes. I was channel flipping one night, and passed accross two male Santa’s elves making out. “Well,” I thought, “good for them!” And then the camera panned downwards… santa’s elves weren’t wearing any pants. And they were hung like reindeer.
I don’t know if we can credit the ACLU, but there you are.
Don’t you get it, elucidator? If some action causes embarrassment of any kind to any Republican, it can only have been intended to do so, and nothing more. However, anything that embarrasses a Democrat reflects the highest principles of morality.
Because, as you must know, there is no such thing as a principle higher than partisan politican point-scoring. The very suggestion that there might be is met with blank stares, and sometimes a reply that you’re only kidding yourself.
General Giap would disagree. The war was only “unwinnable” at home. What happened was a withdrawl two years before the whole region collapsed into typical Communistic genocidal “savagery.” Amazingly, the ARVN managed to hold the ‘invincible’ Giap off for two years.
Do you realize that the US military was fighting a holding action only? There was never a plan to invade NV. A skinny ocean bordering country could have been split in two a-la Inchon any time the US sucked up the political will to do so. This would have cut off the entire NVA.
Do you know anything about the Vietnam War not taken from anti-war activists’ signs?
The problem with the BSA was internal, not external. They have every right to choose to discriminate. The problem is that for many many Boy Scouts, including myself, this stance violated many of the things we were told the BSA was about.
The first is probably our mistake: we assumed that Scouts was vaugely democratic. It’s not: at all. Many troops have found this out the hard way, and if you’re not in line with the current administration, you have no chance at all of ever gaining any sort of power in the organization.
But the second is their mistake: the claim that the organization is non-denomenational. Their position on homosexuals clearly violates this, because plenty of churches in my area have no theological problem with gay leaders or Scouts. The word from on high came from very particular sects, like the Mormons, (who dominate the national organization, fundraising, and basically were the breaking point in the debate: had gay scoutmasters been allowed, they would have split from the BSA, taking almost half a million Scouts with them), and it is indeed based on an unapologetically secretarian view of homosexuality.
“Winning” has a broader definition than gaining control of territory. There’s a whole bunch of stuff that happens afterward that has to be considered and planned for. In Vietnam, “winning” meant the Thieu regime stably controlling the whole country, including winning the hearts and minds of the defeated Northerners, while the US pulled out to a support role. It wasn’t ever gonna happen that way, for a lot of reasons, and it was certainly in the national interest, not partisan ones as our wintry friend claims, to start dealing with facts instead of self-delusion and outright lies.
Look at a globe, too, while you’re at it. Vietnam is about the size of California. That’s a hell of a lot of territory, largely hostile, to capture and control from halfway around the world, for any length of time.
Now, just what do you mean by “winning”?
Beagle, you can’t handle what I smoke, reality already has you bolluxed.
As to General Giap, I’ve read his autobiography. Have you?
I have no silly illusions about the VC being the “good guys”. But they were willing to “pay any price, bear any burden”. We were not, and for good reason: it isn’t ours to begin with.
The Pentagon Papers stated the obvious: there was little or no chance we could prevail. Which in itself isn’t so bad, except that they knew it. And didn’t tell us.
And may the ghosts of the pointlessly dead haunt them all thier days.
Apos:
Do they have the right to discriminate even if it is proved that they are discriminating not because it is part of their purpose to oppose homosexuality, but because some people with power just don’t like it? If so, why did they even have to argue that opposing homosexuality was part of what the BSA stood for? The weird thing is, when I was a Boy Scout I wasn’t even aware of this issue. I didn’t know we discriminated against anyone.
The SCOTUS ruling was basically that BSA is essentially a private, not public, organization (I don’t agree, either), and can make its own rules and define its own membership. That allows BSA to ban homosexuals if it wants to, and its top-level leaders want to.
When I was a Scout, and later in life a troop leader, the issue just didn’t come up. The boys were too interested in farts and booger jokes to understand sexuality or ponder higher issues of morality, despite the nondenominational prayer at the end of each meeting and on Sundays at camp. It’s a shame that they’ve stupidly, against their own reason for being, driven away so many kids who would benefit from the program, even straight ones whose parents don’t want to support bigotry.
elucidator Try and debate my arguments instead of immediately resorting to ad hominem for once. I’ll take my stack of Vietnam War books and compare it to your stack of Vietnam War books any day. I don’t know why I bother making rational arguments to you.
And may all the millions dead due to Communist aggression - as was the case in the Vietnam War, every casualty - haunt you all your days.
Elvisl1ves Winning a war means conquring the enemy’s territory. This was certainly possible. The U.S. had the tactical advantage: approx. 1,000,000 NVA and VC killed, approx. 54,000 U.S. killed. Without going into detail, this was due to the U.S. advantage in air power primarily. Strategically and politically is where the U.S. lost the war. There was no plan to invade the North. It was the NVA who was the aggressor after the Tet Offensive because the VC basically ceased to exist. Therefore, to win the war the U.S. only had to defeat the NVA.
INCHON. Basically the same strategy using an amphibious landing (Inchon) with some airborne assault units combined with some rudimentary military strategy would have quickly won the war. This is basic military strategy 101: split the enemy in two, separate the spear point from the supply lines and watch the army die.
Why it did not happen: 1) The Soviet Union and its nuclear weapons (unlikely risk). 2) China and its huge army (more likely). 3) The political fifth column at home exemplified by people like Tom Hayden, Jane Fonda, David Horowitz, etc. (an absolute certainty) At least David Horowitz knows he was wrong.
The peace afterwards apparently is the real debate. As usual, my basic point goes untouched. Since the peace after the war consisted primarily of Communist genocide and brutality, I think virtually anything the U.S. did would have been preferable.
Beagle, you view of history is succinct and direct. It has only two real flaws
- there isnt a grain of truth to it
- see 1).
Beagle, you have once again simply asserted that “winning” was possible, without any supporting facts or reasoning. You also avoided the question of what would have happened later, not to mention exposing your blissful unawareness of the indigenous origins of the war. The concept that the Vietnamese people would have thought Vietnamese forces were the invaders in their own country is particularly rich, given the preceding decades of fighting to expel the French, then the Japanese, briefly the British, then the French again before any American forces had ever set foot there.
If you’d really like to support your argument, it may be time for you to start a new thread on it.
[Michael Douglas]
“But the more important question is ‘Why aren’t you, Bob?’”
[/Michael Douglas]