December 28, 2004
Hooray for the ACLU - a postscript
A wonderful article by Deborah Jacobs, the executive directory of the NJ ACLU, is well worth a read - especially by those that are concerned about how the ACLU and the godless liberals behind it are suppressing legitimate freedom of religious speech. It focuses on the particular issue of religious displays. Some highlights:
Jacobs goes on to say:The ACLU's stance on the separation of church and state is as much about preserving and protecting religious practice as anything else. By fighting to see that the government acts with neutrality toward religion...our system ensures religious liberty for all in our diverse society...Religious ideals are best represented by those within the religion itself, not by the government. The ACLU defends the rights of private citizens, churches and organizations to put up any religious displays they choose.
The ACLU regularly defends the right to exercise one's religious beliefs. The free exercise cases that the ACLU takes protect religious practice. Just last week, the New Jersey Supreme Court agreed with the ACLU-NJ in a case concerning the dismissal of jurors on the basis of religion. In Nebraska, the ACLU recently defended a church facing eviction; the Pennsylvania ACLU represented a Baptist Church denied a zoning permit; the ACLU of Michigan represented a high school valedictorian whose Christian message in his yearbook was censored; the Massachusetts ACLU represented a student who received punishment for distributing candy canes with religious messages; the Iowa ACLU represented a student prohibited from distributing Christian literature at school; the Massachusetts ACLU defended the rights of a church to run "anti-Santa" ads in the Boston subways. The list goes on.
James Madison wrote in 1803 that "The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe with blood for centuries." This, as columnist Molly Ivins has said, is a principle worth being a pain in the butt for.
Jacobs also noted that she has recently seen "an unprecedented number of inquiries about holiday displays on public property" even though the NJ-ACLU "as not engaged in any religious display issues this year". Why? "...we learned that the calls were primarily generated by the efforts of the Alliance Defense Fund and other conservative groups".
Posted by William Cohen at December 28, 2004 01:44 PMI’m so glad you wrote about this William!
The important fact that the ACLU often defends people rights over religious issues is something I briefly mentioned only a few days ago in the ‘Christmas’ thread soon to disappear in the red column. I think this is something many people don’t realize.
I have always found it truly laughable how many conservatives will disparage and dismiss the ACLU and label it as a liberal organization, when clearly it is nothing of the sort.
Hooray for the ACLU, Protector and Defender of Everyone, Honorable Guardian of the Wall of Separation between Church and State!
Posted by: Adrienne at December 28, 2004 02:48 PMIt is my understanding that the ACLU was founded to protect the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
How could anyone be against that?
How could anyone be against that?
And why?
I’ve never figured out why “conservatives” are apparently uninterested in conserving our basic civil liberties, and often openly hostile to those that are. Maybe someone from Team Red can explain it.
Posted by: William Cohen at December 28, 2004 03:51 PMQuite simply, the intent of the Founders of this experiment in governance was to preclude any one Religion from achieving a position of Government Support. Full Stop. Whereas it is true that the Founders were nearly to a man professed Christians of one sort or another, and that Congress opens with a prayer, etc. - these are red herrings, and not in any way germane to the issue. I wish the Neocons would simply state that it is their agenda to act contrary to the Founders’ intent and let the world see how Anti-American the present group of Conservative thugs really are! After all, they advocate amending the constitution in order to make what is presently un-constitutional legal for enforcement! Why not reveal their true nature as modern-day Beer-Hall Putsch Nazis seeking to inflict *their* dogma and *their* view of Liberty upon the drooling monkeymass (who, no doubt, will sit quietly by for it so long as they don’t miss an episode of their favourite sitcom and so long as Wonderbread? is available in the stores).
As for an Emissary from the Red Blog coming to enlighten us, I have just issued a Challenge there to see how many Right Wing “Christians” will dig into their money-market funds to help the victims of the current Disaster - as Christ would have wanted them to do. In my view, the only Life they care about is that which has not yet been born; after it is, they are always keen to sentence it to Death or send it off to War.
The ACLU needs to address the DMCA, the Patriot Act and all the other civil liberties that have been taken away in the past couple of years. Sure everyone wants to catch terrorist, but we don’t want to turn into a country similar to what Orwell described, if we haven’t already.
Lets spend less time busting college kids for piracy and more time defending our country. Less nation building more time thinking about our Energy Policy.
The system needs fixing and I seriously doubt that we will be doing anything but digging ourselves a deeper hole for the next four years.
Posted by: LLBBL at December 28, 2004 07:04 PMAs one who believes in Christ’s philosophy (if not his holiness) of peace, brotherhood, responsibility for the welfare of all mankind and conservatorship of the universe, separation of church and state is an absolute must. The ACLU protects us not only from any religion being forced upon us through governmental regulation, but also protects an individual’s right to express his or her own spiritual views. It’s a hell of a job balancing those things fairly but thank whoever or whatever is responsible for the existence of the ACLU.
Posted by: Bruce Peak at December 29, 2004 01:11 AM“I’ve never figured out why “conservatives” are apparently uninterested in conserving our basic civil liberties, and often openly hostile to those that are. Maybe someone from Team Red can explain it.”
- Being someone who hates the ACLU, I too was hoping for some input on this from the red side.
Maybe there are just fewer “conservatives” and more “republicans” on here. I don’t know.
Could have been a very interesting debate to read.
Dick Cheney, the VP is an Israeli NEOZIONIST’S MOLE in DC, 20505.
NEW INFOS.
http://www.abcnorio.org/pcgi-bin/boards/housing/robboard.cgi?action=display&num=76
http://www.abcnorio.org/pcgi-bin/boards/housing/robboard.cgi?action=display&num=75
DEC., 2004- On September 15, 2001, just four days after the 9-11 attacks,
CIA Director George Tenet provided President [sic] Bush with a Top Secret
“Worldwide Attack Matrix”-a virtual license to kill targets deemed to be a
threat to the United States in some 80 countries around the world. The Tenet
plan, which was subsequently approved by Bush, essentially reversed the
executive orders of four previous U.S. administrations that expressly
prohibited political assassinations.
According to high level European intelligence officials, Bush’s counselor,
Karl Rove, used the new presidential authority to silence a popular Lebanese
Christian politician who was planning to offer irrefutable evidence that
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon authorized the massacre of hundreds of
Palestinian men, women, and children in the Beirut refugee camps of Sabra
and Shatilla in 1982. In addition, Sharon provided the Lebanese forces who
carried out the grisly task. At the time of the massacres, Elie Hobeika was
intelligence chief of Lebanese Christian forces in Lebanon who were battling
Palestinians and other Muslim groups in a bloody civil war. He was also the
chief liaison to Israeli Defense Force (IDF) personnel in Lebanon. An
official Israeli inquiry into the massacre at the camps, the Kahan
Commission, merely found Sharon “indirectly” responsible for the slaughter
and fingered Hobeika as the chief instigator.
The Kahan Commission never called on Hobeika to offer testimony in his
defense. However, in response to charges brought against Sharon before a
special war crimes court in Belgium, Hobeika was urged to testify against
Sharon, according to well-informed Lebanese sources. Hobeika was prepared to
offer a different version of events than what was contained in the Kahan
report. A 1993 Belgian law permitting human rights prosecutions was unusual
in that non-Belgians could be tried for violations against other
non-Belgians in a Belgian court. Under pressure from the Bush
administration, the law was severely amended and the extra territoriality
provisions were curtailed.
Hobeika headed the Lebanese forces intelligence agency since the mid- 1970s
and he soon developed close ties to the CIA. He was a frequent visitor to
the CIA’s headquarters at Langley, Virginia. After the Syrian invasion of
Lebanon in 1990, Hobeika held a number of cabinet positions in the Lebanese
government, a proxy for the Syrian occupation authorities. He also served in
the parliament. In July 2001, Hobeika called a press conference and
announced he was prepared to testify against Sharon in Belgium and revealed
that he had evidence of what actually occurred in Sabra and Shatilla.
Hobeika also indicated that Israel had flown members of the South Lebanon
Army (SLA) into Beirut International Airport in an Israeli Air Force C130
transport plane, in full view of dozens of witnesses, including members of
the Lebanese army and others. SLA troops under the command of Major Saad
Haddad were slipped into the camps to commit the massacres. The SLA troops
were under the direct command of Ariel Sharon and an Israeli Mossad agent
provocateur named Rafi Eitan. Hobeika offered evidence that a former U.S.
ambassador to Lebanon was aware of the Israeli plot. In addition, the IDF
had placed a camera in a strategic position to film the Sabra and Shatilla
massacres. Hobeika was going to ask that the footage be released as part of
the investigation of Sharon.
After announcing he was willing to testify against Sharon, Hobeika became
fearful for his safety and began moves to leave Lebanon. Hobeika was not
aware that his threats to testify against Sharon had triggered a series of
fateful events that reached well into the White House and Sharon’s office.
On January 24, 2002, Hobeika’s car was blown up by a remote controlled bomb
placed in a parked Mercedes along a street in the Hazmieh section of Beirut.
The bomb exploded when Hobeika and his three associates, Fares Souweidan,
Mitri Ajram, and Waleed Zein, were driving their Range Rover past the
TNT-laden Mercedes at 9:40 am Beirut time. The Range Rover’s four passengers
were killed in the explosion. In case Hobeika’s car had taken another route
through the neighborhood, two additional parked cars, located at two other
choke points, were also rigged with TNT. The powerful bomb wounded a number
of other people on the street. Other parked cars were destroyed and
buildings and homes were damaged. The Lebanese president, prime minister,
and interior minister all claimed that Israeli agents were behind the
attack.
It is noteworthy that the State Department’s list of global terrorist
incidents for 2002 worldwide failed to list the car bombing attack on
Hobeika and his party. The White House wanted to ensure the attack was
censored from the report. The reason was simple: the attack ultimately had
Washington’s fingerprints on it.
High level European intelligence sources now report that Karl Rove
personally coordinated Hobeika’s assassination. The hit on Hobeika employed
Syrian intelligence agents. Syrian President Bashar Assad was trying to
curry favor with the Bush administration in the aftermath of 9-11 and was
more than willing to help the White House. In addition, Assad’s father,
Hafez Assad, had been an ally of Bush’s father during Desert Storm, a period
that saw Washington give a “wink and a nod” to Syria’s occupation of
Lebanon. Rove wanted to help Sharon avoid any political embarrassment from
an in absentia trial in Brussels where Hobeika would be a star witness. Rove
and Sharon agreed on the plan to use Syrian Military Intelligence agents to
assassinate Hobeika. Rove saw Sharon as an indispensable ally of Bush in
ensuring the loyalty of the Christian evangelical and Jewish voting blocs in
the United States. Sharon saw the plan to have the United States coordinate
the hit as a way to mask all connections to Jerusalem.
The Syrian hit team was ordered by Assef Shawkat, the number two man in
Syrian military intelligence and a good friend and brother in law of Syrian
President Bashar Assad. Assad’s intelligence services had already cooperated
with U.S. intelligence in resorting to unconventional methods to extract
information from al Qaeda detainees deported to Syria from the United States
and other countries in the wake of 9-11. The order to take out Hobeika was
transmitted by Shawkat to Roustom Ghazali, the head of Syrian military
intelligence in Beirut. Ghazali arranged for the three remote controlled
cars to be parked along Hobeika’s route in Hazmieh; only few hundred yards
from the Barracks of Syrian Special Forces which are stationed in the area
near the Presidential palace , the ministry of Defense and various
Government and officers quarters . This particular area is covered 24/7 by a
very sophisticated USA multi-agency surveillance system to monitor Syrian
and Lebanese security activities and is a ” Choice ” area to live in for its
perceived high security, [Courtesy of the Special Collections Service.]
SCS…; CIA & NSA & DIA….etc.
The plan to kill Hobeika had all the necessary caveats and built-in denial
mechanisms. If the Syrians were discovered beforehand or afterwards, Karl
Rove and his associates in the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans, OSP;
& the VP’s office would be ensured plausible deniability.
“The significance of this masterpiece is not only the divulsion of facts,
but the focus it’s made on the covert cooperation between the parties who
are playing enemies…. ” At the very Least in Lebanon since the 1970s…!!!
http://www.abcnorio.org/pcgi-bin/boards/housing/robboard.cgi?action=display&num=76
If the ACLU is so instreted in “Religous Liberties” Why haven’t they ever defended a student who simply wants to carry his/her Bible at school? Or just wants to pray with a few of his/her friends before school? Why do they always file suit aginst these activities? Aren’t these “Reglious Liberties?
Posted by: Ron Brown at January 1, 2005 06:34 PMI wonder what Rush says about the ACLU these days? I don’t listen to racist, drug addled bigots, so I don’t know.
Posted by: Greg at January 1, 2005 11:43 PMRon wrote
If the ACLU is so instreted in “Religous Liberties” Why haven’t they ever defended a student who simply wants to carry his/her Bible at school? Or just wants to pray with a few of his/her friends before school? Why do they always file suit aginst these activities?
Why are you so sure, Ron, that the ACLU “always” files suit against religious activities? Maybe the sources that told you this have a systematic bias against the ACLU. In fact…
…In Nebraska, the ACLU recently defended a church facing eviction; the Pennsylvania ACLU represented a Baptist Church denied a zoning permit; the ACLU of Michigan represented a high school valedictorian whose Christian message in his yearbook was censored; the Massachusetts ACLU represented a student who received punishment for distributing candy canes with religious messages; the Iowa ACLU represented a student prohibited from distributing Christian literature at school
This is all repeated from the main message in this thread.
The ACLU’s agenda is not pro- religion or against religion. It is for civil liberties, including freedom of religion. In some cases they defend people exercising their rights to free speech on religious topics, or freedom of religious practice. In other cases they litigate against those that want to impose their religious practises on others.
Posted by: William Cohen at January 2, 2005 04:48 PMWilliam
While its true that the aclu has represented those above cases, they have also represented NAMBLA and other ridiculous anti-holiday cases as well. They are also very anti-2nd Amendment.
But, to be fair, alot of the dislike for the aclu has to be blamed on the press.
They don’t really show cases like the ones above, they usually show the opposite and that gives a view that the aclu is more into “freedom FROM religion” than protecting an individuals right of religion.
The ACLU has defended the Ku Klux Klan’s right to Demonstration and Expression on a number of occasions. In the most recent case, they sent a black civil-rights lawyer to defend the local Grand Dragon’s right to a Parade Permit. (This yob, by the way, was delighted at the job his “Darkie” was doing for him, during a particularly uncomfortable and altogether worth-watching televised interview…)
I am quite certain they would equally defend Constitutional Rights in any genuine Second Amendment grievance. Please show us, KCTIM, where they have been so “anti 2nd Amendment” as you state above.
Uh, its right on their website. A simple search would have found that.
http://www.aclu.org/PolicePractices/PolicePractices.cfm?ID=9621&c=25
And equating a racist who wants a parade permit to child molesters uh? Whatever floats your boat.
I still say the aclu’s reputation has suffered because of the press’s coverage.
Posted by: kctim at January 3, 2005 05:24 PMWell, the policy statement you pointed out is that they’re neutral on the issue, not actively opposed.
The ACLU’s rep suffers in part because of their philosophy that liberties are infringed at the margins first - that the first groups hit are unpopular ones. But, the way the law works, a case limiting freedom of speech against the KKK or NAMB can be used as a precedent for, say, Watchblog.
Posted by: William Cohen at January 3, 2005 05:32 PMI can’t believe how many of you are saying that the ACLU (American Civil Liberal Union) is not steering towards the left. The obviously hate the white male and other republican sorts and their objectives are senseless. It’s amazing what liberals have reserved their foundations on these days. Whatever happened to a little hard work and judging people on their abilities and not their skin color. Should we feel sorry for someone because of their race all of the time?
That’s the one thing liberals need to quit doing is feeling sorry for everybody, when there is no sympathy needed.
William
We’ll just have to disagree on that policy, no biggie there, but I liked what you had to say about margins.
That is a very valid point and also one I overlook alot when thinking or talking about the aclu.
Don’t get me wrong, I will never give a hooray out for the aclu, but some things stand on they’re on. Good point.
kctim - As Mr. Cohen has so ably pointed out, the ACLU makes their policy regarding the Second Amendment based on the actual wording of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and on Supreme Court Decisions standing since 1939 and reaffirmed in 1976. As for:
And equating a racist who wants a parade permit to child molesters uh? Whatever floats your boat.
That is both a very Old and a very Disingenuous debating technique: I assure you, neither Racism nor Child-Molestation “float my boat.” As I pointed out to you in the still-very-active thread which this is a Postscript to, Racism is and has always been rather more associated with floating Conservative boats, rather than Liberal ones. (Have you found me those Liberal KKK Members I asked you to produce yet? I thought not.)
