What do righties have against the ACLU?

Great Debates
281

I posted this above, but to do it again:

Plaintiff: The civilian who tried to enter the recruiting station.
Defendants:

  • The Pink Panthers, who stopped him from entering
  • The City of Berkeley, who aided and abetted by giving the Pink Panthers the preferred parking spot.
  • The Berkely Police, who did not enforce the laws.

The Consitutional Issue: Right of Assembly, Right of Access, maybe others.

Like I posted earlier - I am NOT an attorney. However, the ACLU has shown that they are very good at finding Rights not obvious to the general public. They have also shown that they are willing to FIND plaintiffs, not just wait for them to call.

Now, PERHAPS the young man trying to enter the recruiting station has no desire to talk to the ACLU or to use their services. However, it is also entirely possible that the ACLU has no interest in this case and has not made ANY effort to find the young man and offer to represent him.

282

That’s what the LAW says, dude. A lawyer can’t sue without a client.

Their rights weren’t being violated.

283

It’s illegal to solicit clients. The clients have to come to you.

284

The ACLU could have made a public announcement about how this situation showed an abuse of civil rights. I am SURE that they could find a way to make it clear that they would take on this case that would be within the law. This IS the ACLU, after all. They are good at this stuff.

285

How do we know? Did the ACLU take their case to the USSC to test? Isn’t that what they do?

286

But it WASN’T a violation of civil rights…at least not by the city of Berkely.

287

Not for every whiny bitch with some imagined grievance.

288

Diogenes:

Do you believe that the ACLU responds equally to:

  • the person attempting to enter a recruiting station who is intimidated by protesters, and
  • the person attempting to enter an abortion clinic who is intimidated by protesters
289

You’ve never heard of an "amicus curiae brief?The ACLU files them all the time, including in the abortion protest case. And the ACLU has been known to solicit residents of a town so they can sue to have manger scenes removed and the like.

The ACLU is not a law firm, it is a public advocacy group.

I think you have hit on much of the problem people have with the ACLU and liberal ideas about the Constitution. You simply assert that the abortion protesters are suffering no violation of their rights. Another person would read the Bill of Rights, and see guarantees about the free exercise of religion and the rights of people peaceably to assemble, and conclude that so bald a statement can’t be reasonably supported.

IOW, the idea that the ACLU cares much about the Constitution seems bizarre in light of the fact that they don’t worry themselves overmuch about what it actually says, if that interferes with any of their pet projects - abortion, or gun rights, for instance.

So there must be another agenda. And when one finds that this flexible approach seems more common in connection with traditionally liberal causes like abortion, and much more rarely in cases about gun rights or the Tenth Amendment, then it is fair to conclude that perhaps an even-handed concern for all the Constitution may not be the end of it.

There are some exceptions, of course. Sometimes I think they just want to piss people off.

Basically, they take a radical view of the First Amendment, and pay much less attention to everything else. And to some Amendments, not at all.

Regards,
Shodan

290

Their agenda is getting their bread buttered.

An ACLU membership of 500,000 and ACLU budget of $87,000,000, received from dues and donations is a motivating factor as to what cases to pursue. We could safely assume that the preponderance of those members are: the anti-religion crowd and the abortion crowd but also a large anti-bush crowd.

In the 1988 presidential election, then-Vice president George H. W. Bush called then-Governor Michael Dukakis a “card-carrying member of the ACLU,”

The ACLU has received court awarded fees in numerous church-state cases. The Georgia chapter was awarded $150,000 in fees after suing a county demanding the removal of a Ten Commandments display from its courthouse;[32] a second Ten Commandments case in the State, in a different county, led to a $74,462 judgment.[33] Meanwhile, the State of Tennessee was required to pay $50,000, the State of Alabama $175,000, and the State of Kentucky $121,500, in similar Ten Commandments cases.

I suspect the majority of these fund the local chapters.

291

The ACLU is non-profit.

292

Required to pay whom? Do you really think all the money went to the ACLU? The ACLU isn’t the plaintiff in any of those cases, they represent the plaintiffs. Do you not get that? They recoup expenses and pay salaries. Any money they get goes back into the organization.

293

Looking at their 2004 financial statements (on their website here: http://www.aclu.org/about/26538pub20051101.html )

The spent $10,548,112 on litigation, and **netted ** $1,677,112. Nice little margin on that work.

However, we can see that their real money comes from membership and contributions. Given their reputation, I am willing to wager that the majority of their donors lean Left. To KEEP that money coming in, they will continue to focus on Leftward leaning causes. There will be token activity in favor of some religious nutjobs like Phelps or racists like the Klan, but the majority of their work is that which is more oriented towards the Left side of the spectrum.

Their non-profit status is irrelevant - the organization will shut down without donors and members, and they need to keep those donors and members happy. This will keep them tilting left, and will keep the right angry with them (I am still trying to keep this tied into the OP).

Income (for the Foundation):
Grants & Contributions: 37,154,525
Bequests: 4,957,033
Legal Awards (Net): 1,677,112
Interest & Dividends: 4,548,676
Other Income: 60,895
Total Income: $48,398,241

Income for the ACLU
Membership: 19,669,533
Bequests: 1,401,850
Grants & Contributions: 651,217
Total Income: $21,722,600

294

True. But the ACLU is not a lawyer or a law firm. They are absolutely allowed to solicit a client, and then hire a lawyer – or choose a lawyer from their stable of pro-bono types willing and eager to work on ACLU causes – and sue. If the ACLU has standing, they can be a praty to the suit; if not, they pay a lawyer to represent the actual client.

295

And if they keep that shit up – fighting for civil rights, religious freedom and such baloney – they’re likely to give the left a bad image.

296

This is a facile response.

As has been mentioned above, they are selective in the civil rights they fight for – protesters blocking lawful access to a facility are supported if the facility is a military recruiting station but not if it’s an abortion clinic. It’s that selectivity that engenders ire, and for you to characterize it as simply “fighting for civil rights” without any acknowledgement of the selectivity in play is disingenuous.

297

An example of the way the courts make use of the Preamble is in Ellis v. City of Grand Rapids, 257 F. Supp. 564 (W.D. Mich. 1966). Substantively, the case was about eminent domain. The City of Grand Rapids wanted to use eminent domain to force landowners to sell property in the city identified as “blighted,” and convey the property to owners that would develop it in ostensibly beneficial ways: in this case, to St. Mary’s Hospital, a Catholic organization. This area of substantive constitutional law is governed by the Fifth Amendment, which is understood to require that property acquired via eminent domain must be put to a “public use.” In interpreting whether the proposed project constituted a “public use,” the court pointed to the Preamble’s reference to “promot[ing] the general Welfare” as evidence that “[t]he health of the people was in the minds of our forefathers.”[5] “[T]he concerted effort for renewal and expansion of hospital and medical care centers as a part of our nation’s system of hospitals, is as a public service and use within the highest meaning of such terms. Surely this is in accord with an objective of the United States Constitution: ‘* * * promote the general Welfare.’”[6]

If a man is called upon to perform his civic duty and he is of religious bent you can’t expect him to leave his God at the city council chamber door. He carries that belief wherever he goes. And it cannot be separated from him. There is no legal document. It is his religion.

298

I don’t have time now to search for other sources to confirm reliability

But the actions or lack of action by the ACLU seems to be markedly pro-islam and since Christians have been denied the same freedoms then it follows that the ACLU is anti-Christian as well.

New York City is about to open a new taxpayer funded “Arabic themed” school in
Brooklyn. 4/9/2007 Public Schools Embrace Islam? | A Voice of Reason: Sane Views for a Crazy World

North Carolina ACLU went to court to support the University of North Carolina’s mandatory reading assignment of the pro-Islam book for incoming freshmen? ACLU attack

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit Thursday claiming that a Wyoming State Penitentiary policy restricting prisoners’ mealtimes violates the constitutional rights of two Muslim inmates.4/4/2008 http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/192100.php

BRENTWOOD, CA (ANS) – As children return to school this week, following the Christmas break, 7th graders in a growing number of public schools, who are not permitted to wear a cross or speak the name of Jesus, will be required to attend an intensive three week course on Islam; a course in which students are mandated to learn the tenets of Islam, study the important figures of the faith, wear a robe, adopt a Muslim name and stage their own Jihad. 1/11/02 http://www.mrcranky.com/movies/orangecounty/17.html
In 1995, Clinton’s Presidential Guidelines, Religious Expression in Public School, were originally drafted by the ACLU. These guidelines appeared to protect Christian rights, but for every single “religious expression,” there is a clause of escape, a backdoor for secular groups to attack Christianity at will, and the ACLU has been happy to oblige.
Nadine Strossen, President of the ACLU — refers to Clinton’s guidelines as the authority to support the ACLU’s lawsuits restricting Christmas celebrations and removing Nativity scenes from public schools. The ACLU describes the “religious leaders” of Clinton’s guidelines as committed to separation of church and state. This explains Strossen’s haughty smile as she smugly said on the Lou Dobbs show, “All these religious groups agreed to it!”
Clinton knowingly presented these guidelines to America as drafted by “thirty-five religious groups.” The truth is they were drafted by the American Muslim Council, ACLU, American Humanist Association, Americans United for Seperation (sic) of Church and State, many more recognizable secularist groups among a few Christian-sounding names. Clinton, Islam, ACLU Stole Christmas
WASHINGTON – Abdurahman Alamoudi, an alleged senior terrorist operative, is behind bars on an 18-count indictment. But he can take satisfaction in the fact that a court in California has just given the green light to schools following ACLU’s religion-in-the-classroom guidelines, which he helped to formulate.
A federal judge judge has now upheld the constitutionality of an intensive three-week course in California government schools that requires children to choose a Muslim name, wear Islamic garb, memorize verses from the Koraan, pray to Allah, play “jihad games, and simulate worship activities related to the Five Pillars of Islam.”
The next step: likely an appeal to the notoriously left-wing 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which deems the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional. 1/14/2004 http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/1/13/172143.shtml

299

sigh… This is your idea of finding common ground? Really? Did you even look at the link posted by Indistinguishable in the third post of this thread? Sort of makes your post look…well…really not all that observant. Since it’s been referenced a few times. And contains a detailed list of the ACLU upholding religious rights of Christians.

300

Cite that Christians have been denied the same freedoms?

Arabic is not a religion.

So?

And rightly so. This hurts Christians how?

There are no such kids.

Stage their own Jihad?"

That last link of yours is unsourced and reeks of horseshit (in fact, all of your links go to paranoid, raving blogs). I can assure you categorically that there is no such public school where kids are “not allowed to wear crosses or speak the name of Jesus,” and if that DID happen, the ACLU would fight for them.

My God, the BS is getting thick here. Please give an example of how these guidelines allow those dirty secularists to “attack Christianity.”

Teaching about Islam is not the same thing as endorsing it or preaching it. It’s just normal education. It also doesn’t hurt Christians since there is no law forbidding similar kinds of courses on Christianity or the Bible. Comparative religion is a perfectly legitimate and Constitutional part of a public school curriculum.

The 9th Circuit did not rule that the Pledge per se was unconstitutional. It ruled that the words “under God” were an endorsement of religion and that subjecting kids to recitation of those words in public schools was a violation of the establishment clause. The ruling was absolutely correct. You should be grateful to heroes like Michael Newdow for standing up for your rights.

The kind of barrel scraping you’ve done to create this post just proves my point about how vacuous rightie complaints about the ACLU really are. We still have not seen a single example of the ACLU trying to interfere with your rights.