Archive for the ‘ACLU’ Category
Obama Picks Porn Lawyer for #2 at Justice
CHICAGO – President Obama has made a major mistake and put America’s families at risk by selecting David Ogden to become Deputy Attorney General, says Fidelis, a pro-family organization.
“David Ogden is a hired gun from Playboy and ACLU. He can’t run from his long record of opposing common sense laws protecting families, women, and children. The United States Senate has a responsibility to the American people to insure that Mr. Ogden’s full record is fully reviewed before any vote on his nomination” said Brian Burch, President of Fidelis.
“Ogden’s record is nothing short of obscene. He has represented Playboy Enterprises in multiple cases, Penthouse Magazine, the ACLU, and the largest distributor of hard-core pornography videos. He has opposed filters on library computers protecting children from Internet smut, and successfully defended the right of pornographers to produce material with underage children.”
“David Ogden has collected checks from Playboy and Penthouse to fight any attempts to establish filters on federally-funded public libraries. Ogden even sued the federal government in an attempt to publish Braille versions of Playboy magazine – at taxpayer expense, of course,” said Burch.
As a lawyer in private practice, Ogden has argued for an unlimited abortion license, gays in the military, and has urged courts to treat traditional definitions of marriage as a social prejudice.
“A vast majority of Americans support parental notification before a minor’s abortion and protecting kids from Internet pornography in our libraries,” continued Burch. “Yet David Ogden has fought tooth and nail against these common sense laws protecting our children from harm. At a time when America’s families are under increasing assault, Mr. Ogden is a dangerous choice for a position whose responsibilities include the enforcement of our nation’s laws. “
For a full report on David Ogden’s disappointing legal record, visit www.fidelis.org
Posted in Boy Scouts Still Under Siege
Texas Gov. Rick Perry's 'On My Honor' Explains Attack on the Beloved Youth Organization and Leftist Attempts to Redefine American Values
AUSTIN, Texas, Feb. 26 /Christian Newswire/ — In his new book, On My Honor: Why the American Values of the Boy Scouts are Worth Fighting For, [Stroud & Hall Publishers] Texas Governor Rick Perry, examines the "scorched earth" attacks on the Boy Scouts of America over the last three decades by the secular leftist forces, explains the wider impact of this battle on the culture, and offers a rousing defense of this iconic institution and its impact on millions of young American men.
As a governor and an Eagle Scout, Perry tells of the Boy Scouts' growth and most importantly, its role in the development of character and leadership in young men. Yet, in recent years, the Scouts have been targeted by those who scoff at the Scouts' values and want to reverse its time-honored virtues such as "duty to God" and the Scout Oath's requirement to be "morally straight."
"Although the first attacks on the Boy Scouts seemed isolated and uncoordinated thirty years ago, we now see them as part of a larger movement to redefine American values," writes Gov. Perry. "If seen in the wider context of a great debate taking place in our society, then one is more likely to join the once silent majority who are now speaking out about the role of faith and family in society."
Readers of On My Honor will learn about:
- The nature of the litigation brought on by the ACLU regarding the Boy Scouts' commitment to God.
- Efforts of radical homosexuals to become Scout leaders and twist the founding principles of the organization.
- The tactics used to stop the Boy Scouts from meeting in schools and camping in public parks.
- How the United Way and employee-giving campaigns are excluding the Scouts from receiving donations.
Gov. Rick Perry hails from Paint Creek, Texas. Governor Perry was active in scouting and earned the high distinction of Eagle Scout. He assumed the office of Governor in 2000 and was elected to four- year terms in 2002 and 2006.
To schedule an interview with Governor Perry, please contact Kevin McVicker with Shirley & Banister Public Affairs at (703) 739-5920 or (800) 536-5920 kmcvicker@sbpublicaffairs.com.
Only Christians Subject to Separation of Church and State
by Sher Zieve
Who would have thought that, after the 9/11/2001 attacks on our country, all too many US citizens would run to both accept and embrace the religion of our enemy attackers? But, that is precisely what has happened. Since 9/11, Muslims throughout the US have demanded—and received—all manner of special privileges; from intimidating businesses into accommodating Muslim prayer rooms to said businesses setting aside portions of the workday for them to engage in prayer. Note: Suffice it to say, Christian prayer has been banned in the workplace and schools—for decades. The ACLU saw to that. But, the same ACLU that bans Christian practices hypocritically—perhaps illegally—either ignores or embraces special accommodations for Islam. Christian prayers—even non-denominational—have been forbidden in school classrooms and the workplace. But, everything Islam is being increasingly accommodated and adopted. Christmas has been branded "taboo" by public school administrators. But, the Islamic celebration of Ramadan is not only being instilled in an increasing number of public schools but, has even been celebrated at the White House.
Most recently, with yet another strong backhand applied to the faces of all non-Muslims (specifically Christians), the University of Michigan has become the latest public entity to make the decision to ignore the US Supreme Court ruling concerning the separation of church and state in the US. With their actions, its leftist/liberati administrators have also made the decision that the SCOTUS decision does NOT apply to the Muslim faith. Instead, these same officials are making increasing adjustments for Muslims and their "faith" in direct conflict with the aforementioned SCOTUS decision. This is yet another example of liberals, leftists and other enemies of the United States of America being allowed to break the laws of our land, while the rest of us are subject to arrest for not being duly submissive to the lawbreakers. As yet another example of school administrators caving to Muslims’ intimidation, 23 year old Stanislav Shmulevich was arrested for placing a copy of the Islamic Koran in a toilet at Pace University. After the originated-by-terrorist-Hamas-officials group CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) complained to NYPD, police authorities charged Shmulevich with a ‘hate crime’. A hate crime against a book? However, if one does the same to a Christian Bible the authorities traditionally and historically ignore it. In other words, desecrating the Bible—or for that matter the Torah—is not considered a crime by US officials. Said "hate crimes" only applies to the Islamic Koran; just as separation of church and state applies only to Christianity and Christians.
Currently, all that is Islamic or even radical Islamist is "okay" with the American Liberati. Even one of the Democrat press’ bastions of liberalism, the Washington Post, is now attempting to instruct its readers that radical Islamists are really ‘moderates’. One of that publication’s staff writers, Michelle Boorstein, tries to shove this concept down their throats in her article From Muslim Youths, a Push for Change. By their continuing capitulation actions, our feckless liberal "leaders"
appear to be her audience. Again, their appeasement-of-all-that-frightens-them mantra grows louder: "Anything and everything Islam is okay with us!" And perpetrated by these same groups, anything and everything Christian is in process of being removed from life as we know it. Christianity, which essentially preaches peace, is being barred from American life while Islam—that preaches war and death to all non-Muslims—is being deified. Note: Isn’t it the liberals and leftists who claim to be anti-war? If so, why do they support a movement—Islam and its Muslim religion—that bases its existence on death and war and ridding this planet of all non-Muslims? No wonder the Left is considered by an increasing majority of we-the-people to be insane. It is.
In regards to the above growing atrocities, we-the-people again have two choices. We can ignore these mounting perils to our existence—and choose to end our lives—or we can fight them. Unless Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and his minions are successful in shutting us up, we can still contact our elected officials—local, statewide and national—and tell them to stop this insanity! US laws either apply to everyone or they apply to no one. If our elected leaders don’t understand that—they shouldn’t be in office. We can still vote them out. And we-the-people need to continue to take a stand against all of the increasing atrocities being committed against us. If we don’t, it won’t be long before we can no longer stand at all.
References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_church_and_state
http://avoiceofreason.wordpress.com/2007/04/19/public-schools-embrace-islam/
http://www.riseofislam.com/western_world_03.html
http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/188866.php
http://counterterrorismblog.org/2007/07/cair_hamas_implications_and_an_1.php
http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/07/moderate_islam_and_its_muslim.html
Sher Zieve is a staff writer for the New Media Alliance, Inc. (www.thenma.org). The New Media Alliance is a non-profit (501c3) national coalition of writers, journalists and grass-roots media outlets.
Civil Serpents: Beware of Snakes Bearing “Liberties”
by Daniel Clark
There's a reason it's called the American Civil Liberties Union, and not the American Constitutional Rights Union. The ACLU and other liberal organizations like to say that they're defending the Constitution, but since the language of that document seldom coincides with their agenda, they've needed to devise a rhetorical fallback position. Hence the term "civil liberties," a concept whose definition is essentially a matter of individual choice.
Take a look at the controversy surrounding the NSA surveillance program. Critics charged that it violated the "right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures," as guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment. The flaws in that argument are both vast and plentiful. Electronic communications do not fit into the categories of "persons, houses, papers, and effects." Furthermore, the monitoring of those communications cannot be characterized as a search or seizure, and few people would consider the surveillance of phone calls and e-mails from known members of al-Qaeda to be unreasonable.
Rutherford Institute Urges Berkley (Mich.) City Officials to Display Nativity Scene in Front of City Hall, Despite ACLU Threats
Berkley, Mich. — Attorneys for The Rutherford Institute are urging the Berkley City Council to allow a nativity scene to continue to be displayed outside city hall, despite objections from the American Civil Liberties Union. In a letter to Berkley Mayor Marilyn Stephan and members of the Berkley City Council, Institute president John W. Whitehead pointed out that the City’s holiday display, which includes symbols of Christmas, Chanukah and the secular aspects of the year-end celebrations, does not violate the Constitution.
“It is plainly a legal, time-honored practice for local governments to sponsor the kind of holiday display that the City of Berkley has traditionally erected,” said John W. Whitehead, president of http://www.rutherford.org. “The City should not fear to commemorate the various aspects of the holiday season, both religious and secular, and should stand by its tradition confident that there is no offense to the requirements of the Constitution.”
For 65 years, the City of Berkley has allowed a holiday nativity scene to be displayed in front of its City Hall. The nativity scene has been displayed alongside other symbols of the holiday season, including a Star of David, snowmen, Christmas trees and a Santa Claus mailbox. However, after the American Civil Liberties Union reportedly accused the City of violating the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment with its nativity display and threatened a lawsuit, city officials began debating whether or not to continue their long-standing practice of allowing the holiday displays in front of City Hall. City officials have been discussing alternatives to the holiday display, such as moving the crèche to a nearby business property, establishing a free-speech zone where religious groups can display their symbols or allowing a coalition of religious leaders to decide where to place the scene.
However, as Whitehead pointed out in his letter to city officials, the display does not offend the Constitution. Whitehead assured Mayor Stephan that by including symbols of Christmas, Chanukah and the secular aspects of the year-end celebrations in its holiday display, the City conveys a “message of pluralism” that does not constitute improper endorsement of any particular religion or religion in general. The Institute’s letter also pointed out that “[t]he City of Berkley’s display, which includes a crèche, a Star of David and various secular symbols of the holiday season and winter, falls safely within the parameters established by the courts for compliance with the Establishment Clause.”
Missouri School Appeals Judge’s Decision Barring the Distribution of Bibles
Today, the South Iron Elementary School in Annapolis, Missouri, appealed a decision of federal Judge Catherine Perry, who issued a preliminary injunction barring the school from allowing the distribution of Bibles. The lawsuit, filed by the ACLU, centered around the Gideons distributing Bibles to fifth graders last year. The Judge's injunction prohibits any distribution of Bibles on school property during the school day. Liberty Counsel is defending the school.
It has long been the practice of the Superintendent to allow many groups to present information to students at District schools and to treat all requests to distribute literature equally. These groups included, among others, the Army Corps of Engineers, Red Cross, Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, Iron County Health Department, Missouri Water Patrol, Missouri Highland Healthcare, and Union Pacific Railroad. The District had an unwritten open access policy and had not limited access to any particular groups. In accordance with its policy, the District also authorized access to schools by the Gideons, although the Gideons were only allowed to present information during the last hour of the day, which is a study period. After the lawsuit was filed, the District passed a written policy that explicitly treated all requests to distribute literature on equal terms.
Judge Perry issued an injunction, finding that the distribution of Bibles to elementary school students is unconstitutional. When confronted with the fact that the District had passed a policy treating all requests to distribute literature the same, the Judge stated, "Bibles are different. Bibles are religious literature and many Christians believe that they contain the word of God." The Judge described the Bible as an "instrument of religion" that was being passed directly to school children who were impressionable and may feel coerced to accept the Bible.
Erik W. Stanley, Chief Counsel of Liberty Counsel, stated, "The Bible is not a radioactive device that harms children when they are exposed to it. The District in this case has an equal access policy for literature distribution. Singling out the Bible for censorship is patently unconstitutional. We are hopeful that the Eighth Circuit will reverse this unconstitutional injunction and treat the Bible on equal terms with all other literature that is distributed in the District."
Anita L. Staver, President of Liberty Counsel, stated: "We are pleased to defend the actions of the South Iron School District against unfounded attacks by the ACLU. The District is providing equal access. The ACLU might not like the fact that equal access means equal access for religious speech, but equal treatment is required by the Constitution."
Thought Police & PC: Surveillance the ACLU Way
First posted on Aug 14, 2006 in The View from 1776
by Thomas E. Brewton
The View from 1776
British MI-5’s success in thwarting the plot to blow up a large number of transatlantic airliners reminds us that hamstringing our own intelligence forces by the ACLU and its sympathizers has a long history.
The op-ed page of today’s Wall Street Journal carries an article by David B. Rivkin, Jr., and Lee A. Casey. The authors describe the important differences between British and American legal doctrine that enabled British intelligence forces to work more effectively than can our own intelligence and law-enforcement community. Great Britain is the home of personal liberty and limitations on arbitrary government power, but the British, in the area of surveillance and apprehension of terrorists, have been considerably more realistic than have we.
There is a long pedigree for the liberal mindset that leads to assiduously blocking effective methods of surveillance and detention of enemies of the United States, the same mindset that produced repeated, putatively criminal revelations of top-secret national security programs by the New York Times.
It goes all the way back to the late 1800s, when socialist and anarchist agitators began to make their presence felt in the United States. On Manhattan’s Lower East Side and in Union Square, with Greenwich Village intellectuals’ propaganda support after World War I, anarchists and socialists staged protest rallies that blocked traffic and interfered with ordinary business. Police often had to stop violence, which usually involved mass arrests of demonstrators.
Those socialist and anarchist activists, in effect, demanded that the First Amendment’s freedom of speech be interpreted as a suicide pact that would allow them to carry out their openly avowed aim to destroy formal government under the Constitution (in the anarchists’ case), or to replace the Constitution with a collectivized socialist system that would seize private property and redistribute it to the masses.
Socialist and anarchist leaders were involved in, and openly advocated, assassination of political and business leaders. Emma Goldman, the most widely-heard oratorical voice of anarcho-socialism, was the leftist version of Timothy McVeigh, the radical right-winger who in 1995 bombed a Federal office building in Oklahoma City killing 166 people.