Free Republic

Police in Boulder, Colorado, were reportedly successful last night in stopping yet another annual "nude pumpkin run" -- in which men and woman run down a pedestrian mall naked with carved out pumpkins over their heads. The local American Civil Liberties Union is outraged over what he claims is the denial of a constitutional right. Liberal Boulder residents and public officials in the ultraliberal city also are upset, according to a Wall Street Journal article on police efforts to stop the informal annual rite that the local police chief say has gotten totally out of hand. Last year, the event...

Greenbelt, a city that prides itself on its heritage as a New Deal-era social experiment, is finding its commitment to inclusiveness tested as two black candidates contend for seats on its all-white City Council in Tuesday's elections. Until this year, only two blacks had ever run for the council and none had been elected, even though blacks account for nearly half the 21,000 residents of the 6-square-mile city just outside the Capital Beltway, according to the most recent census estimates. Asians and Hispanics make up 20 percent. The disparity has caught the attention of the American Civil Liberties Union and...

Judiciary: The nominee for a California federal district court is an ACLU activist and another advocate for the empathy standard of jurisprudence. He also has a problem with "America the Beautiful." The nomination of Edward Chen is the latest in a series of nominations of people who have no particular fondness for the traditions of law and justice. These nominees see racism everywhere, and believe the courts should be used as instruments of social justice and not to discern the intent of the Founding Fathers who wrote the U.S. Constitution. They believe their "life experience" should be the final arbiter...

The government is paying the ACLU to remove war memorials In 1934, a small band of veterans of the First World War gathered at Sunrise Rock, an outcropping of stone in the Mojave Desert. There they raised a modest, handmade white, wooden cross, about five-feet high. At the foot of the cross they placed a plaque that read, "The Cross, Erected in Memory of the Dead of All Wars. Erected 1934 by Members of Veterans of Foreign Wars, Death Valley Post 2884." Many of these men had moved to Death Valley following the Great War on the advice of doctors,...

• ACLU Working to Chip Away Code of Discipline with DeSoto County Schools Editorial by Milton Kuykendall, Superintendent, DeSoto County Schools The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is attacking the Code of Discipline in DeSoto County Schools. The ACLU has just filed the 3rd lawsuit against our school district. What some may not realize is that they are challenging our safe and orderly environment--the one characteristic that separates our school district from districts near us. The ACLU can make charges against the school district saying we have done something to a student. We cannot respond because of privacy issues. In...

DeWitt, NY -- Bonnie Strunk, Faith Seidenberg and Dr. Robert Seidenberg have made local news for decades as crusaders for civil liberties. The local chapter of the Civil Liberties Union has named an award for Faith Seidenberg. Her husband was the first male president of a local chapter of the National Organization for Women. Strunk, a one-time candidate for district attorney, has championed gay rights. Now they’re in the news for a different reason. Strunk, Faith Seidenberg’s longtime law partner, is accused of stealing by using the identity of Seidenberg’s husband, Robert. The Allegations: Strunk was charged in May with...

President Barack Obama has nominated a Georgetown University law professor, Chai R. Feldblum, to the Equal Employment Opportunity Council. Feldblum, a lesbian activist lawyer, formerly worked for the American Civil Liberties Union, the Human Rights Campaign Fund, and in the mid-1980s clerked for Justice Harry A. Blackmun, the author of Roe v. Wade. Feldblum faces Senate confirmation hearings before she can assume her post at the EEOC. The significance of her nomination for Catholics is underscored by the EEOC's recent ruling that Belmont Abbey, a Catholic college, must provide coverage for contraception in its insurance plans for employees. Feldblum's record...

PHOENIX -- A judge has ruled that the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office cannot force jail inmates to prepay the cost of being transported to a clinic to obtain an abortion. Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Robert Oberbillig ruled Tuesday that the issue was covered by a 2005 injunction against the Sheriff's Office in which the department required a court order to transport an inmate to an abortion clinic. The Sheriff's Office appealed that decision all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and lost. The office then instituted a policy that inmates must prepay $300 to $600 in transport and...

A U.S. federal judge has ruled that hundreds of documents detailing the Central Intelligence Agency's now-shuttered overseas secret detention program of suspected terrorists, including extreme interrogation methods, may be kept secret. U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein on Wednesday refused to release documents describing Central Intelligence Agency terror interrogations, and the names of detainees or CIA contractors involved in the secret rendition program. He said he would defer to the CIA's judgment on the need to keep the papers secret in order to protect intelligence methods and sources. The American Civil Liberties Union had asked for the release of 580...

Organizers of a vigil against the mistreatment of federal detainees called for the closure of the nation's largest immigration detention center known as “Tent City” in Raymondville. The vigil was held by some one hundred people from across Texas Friday evening. The privately-operated prison in Willacy County houses some 3,000 immigrants. Some of them have turned to Action 4 News to sound off on allegations of horrendous conditions, sexual assaults, rotten food and poor medical care inside the facility. Vigil organizers, some from as far away as Austin and Laredo, said the inhumane treatment of detainees must be stopped. “We...

Upon listening to “America the Beautiful,” President Obama’s most recently confirmed District Court judge’s first thought was not of spacious skies or amber waves of grain. The judge couldn’t quite appreciate the beauty described in the song because of his cynicism towards America. “Sometimes I cannot help but feel that there…too many inequalities that prevent far too many Americans from enjoying the beauty extolled in that anthem,” said Edward Chen at the Hastings Public Interest Graduation in 2005. Chen was just confirmed as a District Judge in Northern California after a strict party-line vote; he’ll be the first Asian-Pacific-American judge...

A white Louisiana justice of the peace said he refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple out of concern for any children the couple might have. Keith Bardwell, justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish, says it is his experience that most interracial marriages do not last long. "I'm not a racist. I just don't believe in mixing the races that way," Bardwell told the Associated Press on Thursday. "I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom. I treat them just like everyone else." Bardwell...

The Senate Judiciary Committee today voted to confirm the Obama administration's first two nominees to the Bay Area federal bench, San Jose U.S. Magistrate Judge Richard Seeborg and San Francisco U.S. Magistrate Judge Edward Chen. The committee's vote moves the nominations to the full Senate for a vote, and both Seeborg and Chen are expected to gain easy approval to lifetime federal judgeships. The 56-year-old Chen, a former American Civil Liberties Union lawyer, would be the first Asian-American federal judge to serve in the northern California federal courts. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who recommended Seeborg and Chen to the White House,...

The American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia on Monday released a report documenting the stories of 10 people who say they experienced racial profiling by Cobb County law enforcement. A spokesperson for the organization said the report shows the human impact of the 287(g) program at the Cobb County jail, a partnership with the Department of Homeland Security which allows deputies to check the immigration status of inmates. Inmates who are in the country illegally are turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement to begin deportation proceedings. "Cobb police have abused the power granted to them under 287(g)," Azadeh Shahshahani,...

The Supreme Court joined in a fight between the ACLU and the federal government over a World War I memorial in the shape of a cross. While neither legal team hit the ball over the fence, the majority seems inclined to save this cross in what will be the first religious liberty case of the new Court. On Oct. 7, the Supreme Court heard arguments in Salazar v. Buono. This case is a decade-long fight over the so-called Mojave cross, pitting Obama Solicitor General Elena Kagan against the ACLU’s Peter Eliasberg. (This doesn’t mean Barack Obama necessarily wants to protect...

General Douglas MacArthur famously noted that "old soldiers never die; they just fade away." Sometimes, though, before they fade away, they get angry. And a case being argued in the Supreme Court Wednesday has veterans seeing red, white, and blue-but mostly red. Unsurprisingly, the case will go to the court courtesy of an ACLU lawsuit. The object at the center of the case is a small, unadorned cross sitting in a remote part of the Mojave Desert Preserve in Southeast California. A veterans' group erected this memorial cross on private land in 1934 to honor the dead of all wars....

GATE CITY — The Virginia Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union sent a letter to Gate City High School Thursday afternoon to let school administrators know it supports the First Amendment rights of students who plan to pray at a home football game Friday night. A group of students at the school and other members of the community are planning to wear T-shirts with the phrase “I still pray ... in Jesus’ name” and hold a large-scale prayer prior to the game against Bluefield High School. Nearly 700 of the T-shirts have been purchased, with an order of hundreds...

SAN DIEGO, Oct. 1 (UPI) -- The number of deaths at unauthorized U.S.-Mexico border crossings must be recognized as an international humanitarian crisis, a civil liberties group said. U.S., Mexican and international officials must respond to the deaths with reforms that make human life a priority, a report released Wednesday by American Civil Liberties Union of San Diego and Imperial Counties and Mexico's National Commission on Human Rights said. The report, "Humanitarian Crisis: Migrant Deaths at the U.S.-Mexico Border," found that border deaths have increased despite fewer unauthorized crossings because of the economic downturn, the ACLU said in a news...

Community Colleges of Spokane and Spokane Falls Community College officials agreed to a court order Thursday that settles a lawsuit filed after they attempted to unconstitutionally silence the pro-life message of a student group. SFCC officials threatened student Beth Sheeran, represented by attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund, and other members of a Christian student group with disciplinary measures, including expulsion, if they chose to hold a pro-life event on campus because the information they were sharing with other students was deemed “discriminatory” and did not include a pro-abortion viewpoint. The agreed-upon order eliminates or revises the problematic policies and...

GATE CITY — A group of students at Gate City High School is hoping to send a message at Friday’s home football game against Bluefield High School. They’re wanting to let the American Civil Liberties Union know that nothing can make them quit praying. “This Friday at the homecoming football game, students, and whomever wants to join, will be saying a prayer,” said Lindsey Burke, a senior and member of the volleyball team at Gate City. “We are also planning to wear the T-shirts at the game. By doing this we are hoping to prove a point ... that no...

One of the Supreme Court‘s “inventions� used to impose its will upon the people unknown to those who framed and ratified our Constitution, are various tests the court has created which are now used to subjugate and overcome the documented intentions and beliefs under which the various provisions of our Constitution have been adopted. These “tests� began to appear and gain a foothold during the Warren Court of the l960’s. One such test was the "rationality" test under which a law being challenged had to withstand the court’s judgment that the law in question was “rationally based� or “reasonable� to...

But what was this alleged crime that the ACLU and Judge Rodgers believed was so heinous, so evil, and so insidious that criminal contempt charges, charges that could result in a $5000 fine and/or six months in prison, needed to be leveled at high school principal, Frank Lay, and athletic director, Robert Freeman? Were they plotting a terrorist attack on the school? No. Were they engaged in inappropriate sexual activities with the students? No. Were they embezzling school funds? No. Had they given their athletes performance enhancing drugs? No. Had they altered test scores to ensure Pace High School received...

The ACLU is threatening a lawsuit against the City of Honolulu after the City Council voted to ban sleeping on sidewalks. Today's Star-Bulletin editorializes: Councilman Charles Djou introduced the bill because of concerns about how the homeless sleeping on Waikiki sidewalks is affecting tourism. Djou maintains that refusing to allow the chronically homeless to sleep on sidewalks would "put the hammer on people getting the help they need."

Wolf and Mellett in their Talk origins paper, The Role of ‘Nebraska man’ in the creation-evolution debate,[1] claim Nebraska man was a careless mistake by an honest scientist. However, the evidence suggests that Osborn deliberately overstated the find because the theory of evolution was centre stage in a struggle for control of education policy in America...

Why This Case Is Important Imagine America without our memorials. How would we remember? How would our children remember? The ACLU is threatening to tear down all monuments on public land that contain religious imagery. This fall, The Supreme Court will rule on whether these memorials will continue to stand for our freedoms, or if they will be removed permanently.   It is our patriotic duty to stand up and tell these left-wing organizations that we won't have our freedoms boarded up or our values torn down. By signing our petition, you will be showing your support for our veterans. Your...

Soldiers fight for desert cross By Bill Hess Published/Last Modified on Sunday SIERRA VISTA — “On a hill far away stood an old rugged cross,” goes the opening of an old hymn. But for Sgt. Zachary Thomson, a cross on a hill in California’s Mojave Desert has a different meaning. It’s not a religious symbol to the 26-year-old Sierra Vista resident, who is serving with a Military Police unit at Fort Polk, La. It’s a war memorial, put up in 1934 by veterans of World War I, to honor Americans who died in that conflict. But now the memorial is...

Jameel Jaffer, pictured above, is a litigator for the American Civil Liberties Union and Director of the ACLU's National Security Project. He is a darling of the far left who has litigated cases against the United States in support of terrorist rights. He has also fought in favor of allowing radical Islamists such as Tariq Ramadan into the U.S.; Ramadan has been barred from entering our country since 2004 because of his alleged financial contributions to two Palestinian groups designated by the U.S. Treasury as fundraising agencies for Hamas. Remember this picture, because Jameel Jaffer could become a regular fixture...

When former president Jimmy Carter accuses the opponents of Barrack Obama’s policy of nationalizing broad aspects of our economy and spending us into bankruptcy of being “racists,” perhaps he should look in the mirror. In his 1982 book, Keeping Faith, Carter disingenuously said he “was not directly involved in the early struggles to end racial discrimination.” No kidding — in fact, he directly and unambiguously supported segregation. When Carter returned to Plains, Georgia, to become a peanut farmer after serving in the Navy, he became a member of the Sumter County School Board, which did not implement the 1954 Brown...

Two Florida school officials facing possible jail terms for praying in the presence of students arrive in court Thursday enjoying the support of more than 60 members of Congress.

A judge today cleared the principal of Pace High School in Florida of a criminal contempt charge after the American Civil Liberties Union complained that Frank Lay and Athletic Director Robert Freeman violated a court order. Freeman also had faced the same criminal contempt charge, but also was cleared. Judge M. Case Rodgers decided that the meal blessing – requested by Lay and delivered by Freedom – was on church property and was spontaneous, therefore lacking an intent to violate the order.

Six soldiers dedicated to the preservation of a cross erected atop a hill in the Mojave Desert as a war memorial passed through Sierra Vista on Tuesday on their way to visit the controversial site. The soldiers, all of whom returned from a tour of duty in Iraq two weeks ago, left Fort Polk, La., on Monday and will arrive Thursday at the Mojave Desert Memorial. There, according to Sgt. Zachary Thomson, they will meet up with an estimated 500 veterans, their families and friends to commemorate the lives of slain soldiers by reading off their names, holding a moment...

By Jeremy Pelofsky Jeremy Pelofsky – 2 hrs 8 mins ago WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Obama administration has asked the U.S. Congress to extend three surveillance techniques for intelligence agencies tracking suspected militants that expire this year, according to a letter to lawmakers. Approved after the September 11 attacks in 2001 at the request of the Bush administration, techniques such as roving wiretaps and accessing all kinds of personal records drew criticism from civil liberties groups and some lawmakers who said they were unconstitutional and violated privacy rights...

War On Terror: Charges against the mastermind behind the bombing of the USS Cole are dismissed. He will be retried, but not by a military commission that would have given him the death penalty he deserves.Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell announced on Thursday that Susan Crawford, the convening authority for military tribunals at Guantanamo, has made the decision to withdraw charges against Abd al-Rahim Hussain Mohammed al-Nashiri. This is the Saudi man believed to be the architect of the bombing of the guided missile destroyer USS Cole, killing 17 American sailors, as it sat in the Yemeni port of Aden. The...

Like clockwork, it’s September and the ACLU is at it again attacking the Pledge of Allegiance in schools! Extending the idea that the students don’t have to say the Pledge in some states, they want those children to be informed by their teachers and administrators that they don’t have to say the Pledge – what some are calling a “Miranda warning” to remain silent during the Pledge, inferring that the Pledge is something wrong or potentially criminal. Here’s my take: I think students without conscientious objection must say the Pledge or at least stand and be quiet. The Pledge is...

It's a new school year, but an old fight is brewing in American classrooms. Teachers and administrators around the country are scratching their heads once again over the Pledge of Allegiance. The courts have consistently ruled that students have the right not to recite the pledge in public schools. But now some First Amendment advocates are taking it one step further, arguing that the law compels educators to inform kids at the beginning of school that the decision is entirely up to them. They're advocating a "Miranda warning" for the Pledge... See the rest of article posted at http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,550063,00.html.

On July 22, 2009, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) filed a lawsuit in Federal Court in Pittsburgh against the Attorney General of Pennsylvania, Tom Corbett (R), and the District Attorney for Allegheny County, Stephen A. Zappala, Jr. (D) to enjoin these officials from applying a law that makes it a crime for an organization or individual to “give, solicit, or accept payment or financial incentive to obtain a voter registration if the payment or incentive is based upon the number of registrations or applications obtained.” ACORN argues that the law and its enforcement precludes ACORN “from...

When the government accuses a doctor of running a "pill mill," prosecutors portray every aspect of his practice in a sinister light. Prescribing painkillers becomes drug trafficking, applying for insurance reimbursement becomes fraud, making bank deposits becomes money laundering and working with people at the office becomes conspiracy. When Siobhan Reynolds thinks a doctor has been unfairly targeted for such a prosecution, she tries to counter the official narrative by highlighting the patients he has helped and dramatizing the conflict between drug control and pain control. But now the government has turned its reinterpretive powers on Reynolds, portraying the pain...

The O'Reilly Factor went after the John Adams Project tonight. Kudos to O'Reilly for doing this. The project is to follow CIA officials around and photograph them and show the photographs to Guantanamo terrorists. O'Reilly condemned this exposure of America's defenders to America's enemies as disgusting. And he zeroed in on the olympic hypocrisy of liberals who pretended to be concerned over the exposure of Valerie Plame's covert identity but think nothing of exposing other CIA officials (who don't share Plame's leftwing agendas). Yes, but hypocrisy is second nature to radicals because they are on a mission from their god...

If you follow the daily ins & outs of the political world, you will be familiar with two common sayings among the bases of both major political parties : Republican In Name Only - RINO. Democrat In Name Only - DINO. Republicans will point at Senator Olympia Snowe as a Republican In Name Only, and Democrats will point at former Georgia Senator Zell Miller as a Democrat In Name Only. While the political bickering is fun, which I succumb to at times, I have a new INO to showcase to the world.American In Name Only - AINO.

Here is video of Factor Producer Dan Bank confronting "John Adams Project" lawyer Nina Ginsberg. O'Reilly explains "the John Adams Project is secretly photographing CIA agents and showing the pictures to terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay." Ginsberg said "CIA agents put a lot of people in danger, they put this country in danger, they put American Soldiers in danger." After trying to grab the microphone away from Bank's hands she said "You are making me feel threatened, get out of my face!" (Watch Video)

Security: A Senate bill lets the president "declare a cybersecurity emergency" relating to "nongovernmental" computer networks and do what's needed to respond to the threat. Didn't they just collect our e-mail addresses?We wish this was just a piece of the fictional "Dr. Strangelove" that fell to the cutting-room floor, but it's not. It is a real piece of disturbingly vague legislation sponsored by Sens. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., Bill Nelson, D-Fla., and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine. Senate Bill 773 would grant the administration emergency powers (where have we heard that before?) in the event of a cyberemergency that the president would have...

The White House invited an ACLU attorney, who has built a career over the past six years of litigating against the United States in support of terrorists, to an official White House dinner last night to celebrate Ramadan with President Obama. Jameel Jaffer, who runs the ACLU's "national security project," has filed lawsuits challenging the FBI's "national security letter" authority, the constitutionality of warrantless wiretaps, and has been a leader in pushing for the shut down of Guantánamo Bay, and providing legal rights to terrorists held by the United States overseas in such countries as Iraq and Afghanistan. His efforts...

State officials are examining whether public money has been improperly used to pay for Islamic mosques on charter school campuses in Blaine and Inver Grove Heights. Chas Anderson, deputy commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Education, said officials will study Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy's (TiZA) use of state "lease aid'' grants, which were created more than a decade ago to help charter schools rent adequate facilities. "If it is subsidizing a mosque, in our view, that would be a violation of state and federal law,'' Anderson said. The probe is the latest in a series of church-vs.-state conflicts involving TiZA...

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court will cut short its summer break in early September to hear a new argument in a momentous case that could transform the way political campaigns are conducted. The case, which arises from a minor political documentary called “Hillary: The Movie,” seemed an oddity when it was first argued in March. At issue is whether the court should overrule a 1990 decision, Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, which upheld restrictions on corporate spending to support or oppose political candidates. The court’s order calling for re-argument, issued in June, has generated more than 40 friend-of-the-court briefs....

The two groups have formed together to stand up to the outrageous ‘fishy’ email program that Obama installed at the White House to ‘turn in your neighbor’ with emails that you felt were giving false information about the healthcare plan in the House (H.R. 3200). From the AAPS website: “The lawsuit was prompted by the White House solicitation for the public to report any “fishy” comments to ‘flag@whitehouse.gov.’ Although the White House slightly revised its data collection procedure last week, the email address still exists, the illegal activity continues, and is part of an “unlawful pattern and practice to collect...

Savor the silence of America's self-serving champions of privacy. For once, the American Civil Liberties Union has nothing bad to say about the latest case of secret domestic surveillance -- because it is the ACLU that committed the spying. Last week, The Washington Post reported on a new Justice Department inquiry into photographs of undercover CIA officials and other intelligence personnel taken by ACLU-sponsored researchers assisting the defense team of Guantanamo Bay detainees. According to the report, the pictures of covert American CIA officers -- "in some cases surreptitiously taken outside their homes" -- were shown to jihadi suspects tied...

Savor the silence of America's self-serving champions of privacy. For once, the American Civil Liberties Union has nothing bad to say about the latest case of secret domestic surveillance -- because it was the ACLU that did the spying. Last week, The Washington Post reported on a new Justice Department inquiry into photographs of undercover CIA officials and other intelligence personnel taken by ACLU-sponsored researchers assisting the defense team of Guantanamo Bay detainees. According to the report, the pictures of covert American CIA officers -- "in some cases surreptitiously taken outside their homes" -- were shown to jihadi suspects tied...

Federal Judge refuses to certify class action lawsuit against Sheriff Arpaio and his office for alleged racial profiling during saturation patrols. Phoenix, AZ - The United States District Court in Manuel de Jesus Ortega Melendres vs. Arpaio denied the motion to certify the lawsuit for class action treatment against Sheriff Arpaio and the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office. The judge determined that the motion failed to present sufficient evidence of the fact that a real and immediate threat of future constitutional injury from the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office exists to bring their lawsuit in the form of a class action. The...

If you liked the Valerie Plame non-outing, you'll love this: A Spy 'Outing' Game For Real 84rules August 27, 2009

Last week, The Washington Post reported on a new Justice Department inquiry into photographs of undercover CIA officials and other intelligence personnel taken by ACLU-sponsored researchers assisting the defense team of Guantanamo Bay detainees. According to the report, the pictures of covert American CIA officers -- "in some cases surreptitiously taken outside their homes" -- were shown to jihadi suspects tied to the 9/11 attacks in order to identify the interrogators. The ACLU undertook the so-called "John Adams Project" with the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers -- last seen crusading for convicted jihadi assistant Lynne Stewart. She's the far-left...