Posted on 05/27/2005 6:02:02 AM PDT by OESY
...Atop that hill stands a six-foot cross.... That dusty hilltop and its lonely marker just might become the scene of the most significant church-state controversy since last year's fight over the Pledge of Allegiance.
In 1934, a gritty prospector named J. Riley Bembry gathered a couple of his fellow World War I veterans at Sunrise Rock. Together they erected the cross, in honor of their fallen comrades. The memorial has been privately maintained ever since....
A wrinkle developed in 1994, when the federal government declared the surrounding area a national preserve. With the cross now located on newly public land, ...the ACLU demanded that the National Park Service tear down the cross.
Mr. Buono insists that his seeing the monument ("two to four times a year") violates his civil rights. A federal district court found in his favor, and the decision was subsequently upheld by the Ninth Circuit....
The ACLU, however, has made out quite nicely. Not only has it prevailed in the courts to date, but it has managed to pocket $63,000. Owing to a quirk in civil-rights law, the taxpayer once again ended up paying the ACLU for pressing a highly controversial church-state lawsuit.
The Civil Rights Attorney's Fees Award Act of 1976 specifies that anyone bringing an even partly successful civil-rights suit may have the plaintiff pay all legal fees for both parties, a discretionary award that is routinely granted. Such fee-reversals are not permitted to successful defendants. Congress meant for the law to help citizens with little or no money, but since then wealthy and powerful organizations have perverted that intention. They use the specter of massive attorney fees to force their secularist agenda on small school districts, cash-strapped municipalities and, now, veterans' memorials....
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
I am sick of my tax dollars being use to finance this bunch of communist of the ACLU. Write you congress persons as I have done and let them know how you feel.
You and me both! All conservatives need to get on board on this issue!!!
Our congress is asleep.
Should be "grandfathered" out of contention, since it pre-existed the conversion of the surrounding land.
On top of being a bunch of limp wristed pansy's.
I wouldn't mind a bit if federal funds were used to finance a memorial to ACLU types who lost their lives in service to their agenda........
Let us wake them up! Time to start writing, Again!
And the slide into tyranny continues...
Buono is still alive. What's he complaining about?
I guess it's time to rip every cross out of Arlington National Cemetary. :0(
Yes, it is time to revise this law. As a former pl;aintiff, I would say that it even influences the behavior of attorneys for individual cases. They don't have to try as hard, as they get paid by the hour.
David Limbaugh covered this in "Persecution".
Mr. Buono, you don't like the cross? YOU go remove it and stop hiding behind the skirts of your ACLU lawyers.
Good luck!
Yes, an ACLU memorial urinal would be both appropriate and useful.
Don't expect the majority Republicans to do anything about this. They're afraid of their own shadow.
History and respect have no place in a lefty society. Tolerance is supression; knowledge is dangerous.
ping
ping
The WSJ appears to have missed a step. The Federal government doesn't just "declare" an area a national preserve unless it owns it first. The ACLU may be on sound legal footing in this case for reasons completely unrelated to religion. Who owned the land when this cross was erected on it in the 1930s?
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