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About ACRU Staff

The American Constitutional Rights Union (ACRU) is dedicated to defending the constitutional rights of all Americans. ACRU stands against harmful, anti-constitutional ideologies that have taken hold in our nation’s courts, culture, and bureaucracies. We defend and promote free speech, religious liberty, the Second Amendment, and national sovereignty.

Vicious Murderer to Have Another Hearing

By |2023-05-20T09:39:23-04:00May 1st, 2007|

Vicious Murderer to Have Another Hearing

Smith v. Texas, No. 05-11304, was decided by the Supreme Court on 25 April, in a sharply divided 5-4 decision. The convicted murderer was arguing against his death penalty sentence, in accord with the theories of the ACLU’s Death Penalty Project.

As usually happens in such cases, the Justices supporting the ACLU position fail to describe the facts of the crime. Here, this appeared only in the Dissent by Justice Alito, joined by the Chief Justice and Justices Scalia and Thomas: Mr. Smith was a former employee of a fast-food restaurant. He took “some friends” […]

ACLU Gets It Dead Wrong in Indiana

By |2023-05-20T09:39:23-04:00May 1st, 2007|

ACLU Gets It Dead Wrong in Indiana

The ACLU in Indiana has just filed suit against the state’s Bureau of Motor Vehicles on behalf of a tree-hugger who doesn’t like religion. Does that sound unfair? Here are the facts, from an article in the Journal Times in Fort Wayne, Indiana. (There is some irony in the fact that the article came to the Indiana newspaper from the Los Angeles Times, and has a distinct liberal bias as a result.)

Mark Studler is the ACLU’s chosen plaintiff. He normally gets, for a special fee of $40, a pro-environment specialty plate. But […]

ACLU Against Wisconsin, Round II

By |2023-05-20T09:39:23-04:00May 1st, 2007|

ACLU Against Wisconsin, Round II

A common tactic of the ACLU when it loses a point in the political process, is to use the judicial process to trump democracy, when the people fail to see the wisdom of the ACLU position. The same tactic has reared its ugly head in Wisconsin, where allies of the ACLU have mounted a legal challenge to prevent Judge Annette Ziegler from taking her seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court for the ten-year term she has just won in last fall’s election.

The Wisconsin Democracy Project (WDP), which is a left-leaning ally of the ACLU, as one might gather […]

ACLU Against Wisconsin, Round I

By |2023-05-20T09:39:24-04:00May 1st, 2007|

ACLU Against Wisconsin, Round I

The facts for this piece come from an article, but not the legal conclusions, in The Wall Street Journal on 21 April. It noted that $40 million was spent on all races for the state Supreme Courts across the country, but of that, $6 million was spent on a single race for an open seat in Wisconsin.

The two candidates for this position were, in alphabetical order, Linda Clifford and Annette Ziegler. Clifford was a proponent of the concept of “a living constitution,” meaning the same thing in Wisconsin that that concept means on the US Supreme Court, […]

We're Not Asking That Much

By |2023-05-20T09:39:24-04:00May 1st, 2007|

A headline among today’s MSNBC news entries reads, “Immigrant rights groups rally across the U.S.” The story beneath the headline notes that some of the participants in the rallies will decline to wear T-shirts they donned last year, which bore the message, “We’re illegal. So what?” Cooler heads have apparently concluded that this particular slogan was, for a variety of reasons, imprudent.

The MSNBC story also notes that a number of rallies will highlight how “families are being torn apart” by law enforcement raids and the deportation of parents found to have entered the country illegally.

In this story, as in […]

Sanity at Utah: Students, Faculty May Defend Themselves

By |2023-05-20T09:39:24-04:00April 30th, 2007|

Bill Otis, my colleague here at the ACRU blog and the Director of Legal Affairs for the American Civil Rights Union, has written a number of good posts on the subject of gun control in the wake of the massacre at Virginia Tech, including:

  • “A Tale of Two Cities”
  • “Don’t Mess with Miss America”
  • “Though you drive nature out with a pitchfork, she will still find her way back”

I, too, wrote recently on Ronald Reagan’s views on the subject.

So, I won’t spend much more space making the case for the Second Amendment and our right to keep and bear arms […]

A Dictionary for the Politically Incorrect (cont'd)

By |2023-05-20T09:37:54-04:00April 29th, 2007|

There’s been a terrific response to the Dictionary for the Politically Incorrect. Many of the comments show that our readers have had considerable experience with the pseudo-language of liberalism. I say “pseudo-language” advisedly, because that’s exactly what it is: The vocabulary of liberalism increasingly consists of a bunch of words from which any fixed meaning has been drained. Thus, to take but one current example, “follow a new direction in Iraq” actually means “surrender and go home,” but liberals know the electorate is unlikely to buy this outcome if stated for what it is, so it has to be called something else. […]

Property Taxes: The Road to American Serfdom

By |2023-05-20T09:37:55-04:00April 26th, 2007|

It is often said, and correctly so, that the hallmark of the American dream is homeownership. This was intentional at our country’s Founding. James Otis famously said, “A man’s house is his castle,” pointing to the essential link between homeownership and liberty (See “Against Writs of Assistance”, 1761). And James Madison ensured that this link would be preserved, by including protections of property rights in the Bill of Rights, under the Fifth Amendment.

One of the greatest barometers of the success of the American Experiment through our history has been the ever expanding portion of Americans that own their home, proving true that this indeed […]

VT Massacre Will Spawn Liability Cases

By |2023-05-20T09:37:55-04:00April 26th, 2007|

Students injured at Virginia Tech, and families of students killed, will file liability suits. They will be filed against the murderer and various other defendants. The most important defendant will be the University itself. And other universities across the country should be watching, to govern themselves accordingly.

There were warning signs about the Virginia Tech murderer. There were concerns expressed by teachers. There was a judicial finding that he was a danger to society. And there was the Virginia Tech representative who announced a year ago that “now our community can feel safe,” on the defeat of a bill to allow […]

McCain-Feingold In Trouble?

By |2023-05-20T09:37:56-04:00April 25th, 2007|

Paul Mirengoff reports on Power Line about signs of hope that a key section of the McCain-Feingold law — the blackout provision — could be in trouble at the Supreme Court:

“Today,…the Supreme Court heard oral argument in the Wisconsin Right to Life case, which arises from the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (the McCain-Feingold bill). At issue was the part of McCain-Feingold that “blacks out” advertisements made by anyone other than the campaigns in the final six weeks of the election season. Scott linked to [an] account of the argument by Allison Hayward.

“Allison is a leading critic of […]

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