Free Republic

Will Barack Hussein Obama become just another name in the long list of defamed, failed, and corrupt Illinois politicians? Will he follow in Governor Blagojevich’s footsteps as another Democrat whose party abandoned him? Has his fall from political grace begun? In the short span of time this administration has provoked far more questions, than it claimed to have answers to. In a rare flash of rationality, Chris Matthews, host of MSNBC’s Hardball had some questions of his own: “President Obama has his chin out on about every hot issue out there, health care, terror trials, job losses, even the breast...

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a federal lawsuit Monday on behalf of the Dove World Outreach Center claiming the Alachua County school district’s policy against anti-Islamic T-shirts intrudes upon the wearers’ freedom of speech. The shirts, which read “Islam is of the devil,” raised controversy when students were sent home from local elementary and middle schools for wearing them. The church’s families said the shirts are protected by the Constitution under the First Amendment as religious expression. Alachua County School District spokeswoman Jackie Johnson said the district will stand by its decision to enforce the dress code and prevent...

Since the ACLU doesn't like the word "Christmas", let's send a Christmas Card to them in New York. Make sure the card is all about the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ! Address: ACLU 125 Broad Street 18th Floor New York, NY 10004 Merry Christmas!

Christians around the world, join hands and hearts, stand up and show that we are not a silent minority and that we serve a mighty God who will not be thwarted as we unite against all who would come against us! The ACLU is one such entity in the United States.

Enfield (WTNH) - The ACLU of Connecticut is warning the Enfield school board to stop holding graduation ceremonies at a Bloomfield megachurch, claiming the graduates and their families are unconstitutionally being subjected to religious messages.

Springfield Nativity Scene To Stand In Illinois State Capitol Rotunda Building For Second Year: ACLU Says It Supports Constitutional Rights To Express Religious Liberty In the Public Square by Daniel T. Zanoza, Executive Director of RFFM.org and Chairman of the Springfield Nativity Scene Committee For the second year a row, a Nativity Scene will stand in the state Capitol Rotunda Building in Springfield, Illinois. Last Christmas season, the Springfield Nativity Scene Committee (SNSC) made history with the financial and legal assistance of the Chicago-based Thomas More Society (TMS) and the support of private donations. An article written by Kurt Erickson...

Nazi Germany celebrated Christmas without Christ with the help of swastika tree baubles, 'Germanic' cookies and a host of manufactured traditions, a new exhibition has shown. The way the celebration was gradually taken over and exploited for propaganda purposes by Hitler's Nazis is detailed in a new exhibition. Rita Breuer has spent years scouring flea markets for old German Christmas ornaments. She and her daughter Judith developed a fascination with the way Christmas was used by the atheist Nazis, who tried to turn it into a pagan winter solstice celebration.

There is no way the media can ignore Holder's controversial decision to try 911 conspirators in New York courts. Don't expect them them to cover the pressure behind the scenes that made it happen though. Don't expect them to hold Obama to his past opinions either. Much has been written over the past 24 hours that does well to explain why the Obama regime's despicable decision to bestow unprecedented constitutional protections on those whose only connection to America is that they have directed the incineration of thousands of our innocent countrymen or worked not quite as "successfully" for the same...

WASHINGTON Defense Secretary Robert Gates has blocked the public release of any more pictures of foreign detainees abused by their U.S. captors, saying their release would endanger American soldiers. The Obama administration filed a brief with the Supreme Court late Friday saying that Gates has invoked new powers blocking the release of the photos.

An American who was captured by Kenyan forces in January 2007 filed suit in U.S. District Court in Washington on Tuesday, arguing that FBI agents allegedly involved in his interrogation and transfer to other countries violated his constitutional rights. The suit, brought on behalf of Amir Meshal by the American Civil Liberties Union, is the first by a U.S. citizen seeking damages for the practice of "rendition,"... Meshal, who is now back in his home state of New Jersey, has never been charged with a crime. "U.S. officials repeatedly threatened Mr. Meshal with torture, forced disappearance, and execution in order...

Immigrant advocates filed a federal civil rights lawsuit Tuesday on behalf of a Salvadoran woman who was detained by Frederick County sheriff's deputies in a case they say illustrates the problems with a federal program that has deputized dozens of state and local police departments to catch illegal immigrants. The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Greenbelt, alleges that Roxana Orellana Santos, now 29, was eating lunch alone near Buckeystown Pike in Frederick on Oct. 7, 2008, when two deputies approached her, asked for identification, then detained her and turned her over to immigration authorities for possible deportation. Orellana...

Federal Bench: Yet another judicial nominee seeks to impose the "empathy" standard on the courts. He thinks judges should base rulings on a plaintiff's status, legislate from the bench and amend the Constitution. Indiana federal judge David Hamilton stands poised to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate to assume a seat on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals serving Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin. He's a former fundraiser for Acorn and a former leader of the Indiana chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. He is also another in a series of activist judges who believe the U.S. Constitution is not...

An unsettling view of the Fort Hood victims as human sacrifices at the altar of political correctness.

Attorney General Eric Holder has agreed to give a keynote speech later this month to a Michigan group which includes the local branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations even though the FBI has formally severed contacts with the controversial Muslim civil rights organization. On Nov. 19, Holder is scheduled to speak in Detroit to the first annual awards banquet of Advocates and Leaders for Police and Community Trust, a coalition of several dozen law enforcement and community groups. An online registration form for the event includes the Council on American Islamic Relations-Michigan on a list of “official & participating...

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...