Tuesday, June 10, 2008

ACLU Aiming at Heartland

The AP reported yesterday that the ACLU plans to expand into the American Heartland.

The American Civil Liberties Union announced by far the largest fundraising campaign in its 88-year history Monday, eying a dramatic expansion of its work on social justice issues in relatively conservative states such as Texas and Florida.

"The purpose is to build a civil liberties infrastructure in the middle of the country — where battleground states are often under-resourced and our efforts are most needed," Romero said.

He cited issues such as immigrants' rights, gay rights, police brutality and opposition to the death penalty as causes that would be pursued vigorously as the ACLU expanded in heartland states. At present, the ACLU's biggest offices are in the Northeast, the Pacific states and Illinois; targets for expansion include Michigan, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, New Mexico and Tennessee, with even the smallest ACLU affiliates in line to get extra funding to hire new attorneys and launch new advocacy programs.

"We're going to build these offices into vibrant, muscular civil liberties machines, in places where our issues matter most," he said. "We've done great work in those states, but we've always been the David to the government's Goliath."

Well, that's not exactly the Heartland. It's more a matter of moving into the "M" states (though I'm not sure how Tennessee fits in with the rest of the "M's").

To this I say, "Leave Montana alone! We like it the way it is--or was." My mom's Uncle Andy used to drive around Montana in his pickup truck with a deer-leg gun rack, similar to this one, mounted on the back wall of the cab.


Sometimes those deer feet held guns. That's the way it should be, but I get the feeling that the ACLU would fight against his right to keep and bear those guns (if he were still alive), as they fight against other rights we have.

For those who are naive enough to still believe that the ACLU is an objective defender of everyone's civil rights and not just a tool of the left, I offer this quote:

"It's patently evident that the best fundraiser for the ACLU has been George Bush and his cadre of cronies," Romero said. "If the Republicans loses (sic) control of Congress and the White House, we can be sure (sic) religious right will be much more active on the state level — our work will be critical there."

They oppose the religious right, and they're starting to move into the right's territory. We'd better get busy.

7 comments:

Tsofah said...

It's so sad that Charlton Heston doesn't have an "understudy" to stand up and say "From my cold dead hands..."

Anonymous said...

Though the ACLU supports the idea of gun registration, they are officially neutral on the issue of gun control, and as far as I can find haven't taken any court action on any gun control or gun ownership issue at all, so I think Montana's guns will be safe.

Likewise, though they oppose the federal funding of religious institutions, they have a strong history of defending the rights of religious adherents, including Christians.

-ESM

SkyePuppy said...

Thank you, my son, for the update on the gun issue. It would be such a waste of all those perfectly good deer feet if the ACLU went after gun ownership laws.

I would disagree with you on the ACLU's defense of religious liberty. While they do take on some token help-the-Christians cases, I would submit (no documentation to back this up) that the majority of their religion-related cases are against Christianity.

Love you!!!

Jacob said...

The ACLU takes on a lot of cases that support religious liberty. Cases "against Christianity" arise when fundies are acting beyond their liberties, for example where people of other belief systems wouldn't be granted the same rights under similar situations. Let's face it, you can imagine how the Rancid Religious Right would scream bloody murder if some fundie Muslim set up a stone tablet on the steps of a courthouse decreeing that Allah is the only god.

I can't be arsed making much of a stink about it on a Sunday (the Lord's day and all), but it really gets on my nerves how far the Christian persecution complex goes. I mean, seriously. You're white, middle class, reasonably well off, and part of the VAST majority. If you were actually being persecuted, the ACLU would be the first to defend you.

Anonymous said...

You are not alone! If you haven't checked out these two sites already, you should. The second one is a link to a particular page on the site - I recommend you go to the home page - lots more links there!

http://www.stoptheaclu.org/

http://www.stoptheaclu.com/archives/2005/07/12/american-communist-lawyers-union/

Anonymous said...

Sorry - those should have been live links...some pages to that automatically, but if they don't, I don't know how to...

Jacob said...

Retard, use proper links.

STACLU is such a crock, by the way. I would *love* to see legislation banning that organisation, just to witness the ACLU file suit in support of them. The irony? Splendiferous.