ACLU Files a Useless Case, for Cash

The facts, but not the legal conclusions, for this article come from an Associated Press article on 2 March, 2007. It reported that the ACLU had sued the City of Lake Forest, in the US District Court in Santa Ana, California, to prevent the City from enforcing one of its ordinances. The ordinance in question banned “solicitation on the sidewalk.”

The true purpose of the ordinance was to stop the practice of workers, most of them illegal immigrants, from gathering on the sidewalks in certain places to receive assignments for day labor paid in cash. […]

Facts for this, but not the legal conclusions, come from an article published in the Baltimore Sun on 12 January, 2007. The ACLU has sued the Maryland Transit Authority over rules the MTA established to require anyone seeking to solicit citizens on MTA property to obtain a permit first. The ACLU claims this is unduly restrictive of Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, also known as ACORN.

That name should ring a bell. ACORN is a liberal Democrat organization whose representatives are under investigation for criminal activity in at least six states for violating election laws in how they gather registrations, and […]

The facts for this, but not the legal conclusions, come from a daily briefing on war security matters, published on 18 January, 2007, on GovExec.com. It begins by recounting the fact that this week, Attorney General Gonzales “took heat” from the Senate Judiciary Committee about “the federal government’s domestic electronic eavesdropping program and the Pentagon’s use of an anti-terrorism law to collect financial records of U.S. citizens.”

This is the ACLU spin on this particular situation. As factual descriptions have repeatedly made clear, there is not, and never has been, any “domestic eavesdropping.” Electronic messages were intercepted outside the US – which […]

The facts for this, but not the legal conclusions, come from an article posted on “Eyewitness News,” Channel 24, in Memphis. Tennessee, on 12 January, 2007.

One of the objectives of the ACLU is to transfer taxpayer funds into ACLU hands by force, using the courts as the mechanism. After losing a suit to the ACLU over its display of the Ten Commandments, the Rutherford County Commissioners voted to end the case by approving the payment of $50,000 to the ACLU. This happened despite the fact that the most recent US Supreme Court decisions on the display of the Ten Commandments were split on […]

The facts for this article, but not the legal analysis, come from the Tucson Citizen of 15 November, 2006.

The newspaper filed this article saying that the ACLU of Arizona and People for the American Way had just filed suit to stop a state program in which disabled children received grants to allow them to attend private or parochial schools which offered services for their particular disabilities. The ACLU claimed that this amounted to “state funding for private or religious schools.”

The article says that a “key legal issue in the case will be whether the court finds that the beneficiaries are the children […]

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer ran the story that is the basis of this item. It’s hard to say why, since the story is about a town in West Virginia, but here it is.

On December 1st, the Seattle newspaper ran the story about the nativity scene in St. Albans, West Virginia. The display has “a manger with shepherds, a guiding star, camels and a palm tree, but no baby Jesus, Mary or Joseph.” The parks superintendent said that Jesus was left out “because of concerns about the separation of church and state.” The mayor, however, said it was done for “technical reasons,” saying […]

This story is taken from an ACLU press release on its own website on 30 November, 2006. Despite the source, it is possible to read between the lines and determine what is actually happening.

The ACLU has filed a brief for itself, and for various “writers, filmmakers, performers and free speech groups” in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, urging the court to overturn a new standard established by the Federal Communications Commission. These new standards do not have to do with obscenity, but with “indecency.”

The ACLU and these other parties claimed that “the FCC’s efforts to regulate in this area have […]