This piece by Shawn Macomber appeared at FrontPage on Thursday, detailing the ACLU's determination to avoid any appearance of concern for the security of Americans.
The ACLU has hit a new low.
The group's latest batch of press releases insists that the organization will never check their new hires against terrorism watch lists.
The problem for the ACLU is that they actually already signed an agreement to use the watch lists in order to obtain nearly $500,000 from the Combined Federal Campaign, as required by the USA PATRIOT Act. The CFC is an agency which dispenses charitable donations from federal and state employees to more than 2,000 non-profit groups, which totals some $250 million per year.
The ACLU, however, despite all its bluster about the Constitution, apparently has little use for contract law. They decided to simply disregard the list. And they probably would have gotten away with it if they could have kept their egos in check. That, of course, proved quite impossible and soon ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero was announcing to the world on NPR that while he'd printed out the watch lists, he'd "never consulted them." Furthermore, he had no intention of doing so.
When CFC Director Mara Patermaster pointed out in the New York Times that the ACLU was willfully violating government policy, the ACLU actually voted to heed the agreement and collect their cash. Then Romero, seemingly unable to repress any rash impulse whatsoever, pulled out of the agreement entirely, and began screaming the ACLU's favorite word from the rooftops, one so integral to the martyr myth the group was built on--"blacklist."
"It is increasingly clear that the Patriot Act and the government's 'war on terror' are threatening the ability of America's non-profit charities to do their essential work," Romero wrote in a letter to Patermaster. "By requiring non-profit charities to check their employees against a 'blacklist' in order to receive donations from the CFC, you are furthering a climate of fear and intimidation that undermines the health and well-being of this nation."
How will the health and well-being of this nation be affected by a terrorist employee of the ACLU setting off a bomb in New York City?
This is sad. To see a once well-intentioned organization deteriorate to little more than a shrill voice opposed to even the basic tenents of a free society. Once upon a time the ACLU stood for something. Now it has obviously set itself on a course to destroy the very civil liberties it had sworn to defend.
Um... would that be the same ACLU that is helping Rush Limbaugh (R-Hell) beat back the DA in Palm Beach? That ACLU?
Kj,
Her are some "facts" about your man John the "phony war hero" Kerry.
Come to your senses and stop being a liberal socialist jackass!
"Two hundred fifty-four Swift Boat Veterans have signed a letter saying John Kerry is not fit to be commander in chief, a point developed in some detail in the blockbuster new book by John O'Neill, aptly titled Unfit for Command. At the 2003 reunion of Swift Boat Veterans, about 300 men showed up: 85 percent of them think Kerry is unfit to be president. (On the bright side, Kerry was voted, in absentia, "Most Likely to Run for President on His Phony War Record.") Fewer than 10 percent of all Swift Boat Veterans contacted refused to sign the letter".
"Kerry was in Vietnam for only four months, which, coincidentally, is less than the combined airtime he's spent talking about it. It takes a special kind of person to get that many people to hate your guts in so little time. The last time this many people hated one person after only four months was when Margaret Cho had her own sitcom".
"But our young Eddie Haskell managed to annoy other servicemen even before he came home and called them war criminals. About 60 eyewitnesses to Kerry's service are cited in the book, describing Kerry fleeing comrades who were under attack, disregarding orders, putting others in danger, sucking up to his commanders, creating phony film footage of his exploits with a home-movie camera, and recommending himself for medals and Purple Hearts in vainglorious reports he wrote himself. (This was apparently before the concept of "fragging" put limits on such behavior.)"
"If the 254 veterans against Kerry got one-tenth as much media coverage for calling Kerry a liar as Clown Joe Wilson did for calling Bush a liar, the veterans wouldn't need to buy ad time to get their message out. (Wilson, you'll recall, was a media darling for six or seven months before being exposed as a fantasist by Senate investigators.)"
"Democratic Presidential nominee John Kerry’s newly appointed Middle East advisor, Martin Indyk, has been working for years to garner American support for Yasser Arafat and his terrorist regime. As the Middle East Advisor to the Clinton administration, Indyk managed to help Arafat wrest complete control over the Palestinian people through deceit and subterfuge. And now, if he gets his way, American troops may find themselves in the middle of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip-providing cover for Hamas and Palestinian Jihad".