Works for me.
Posted on 07/31/2004 5:17:06 PM PDT by BenLurkin
NEW YORK (AP) - The ACLU withdrew Saturday from a program that allows federal workers and military personnel to contribute to charities because it requires participating nonprofit groups to check their employees' names against a government watch list of suspected terrorists. The American Civil Liberties Union called the Combined Federal Campaign's policy unconstitutional and said it would reject more than $500,000 in donations from the program rather than submit to the requirement, which was instituted under the Patriot Act, said Anthony Romero, the ACLU's executive director.
Romero withdrew the ACLU from the program and said the organization plans to sue the government over the policy. The group says the watch list is filled with errors that people listed on them have no way of correcting.
"The Patriot Act and the government war on terror now threatens America's nonprofit organizations," Romero said. "We believe the new requirement violates our fundamental principles as well as the constitutional rights of our employees."
The ACLU has been an aggressive opponent of the Patriot Act, which Congress passed shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
The Combined Federal Campaign, which is administered by the Office of Personnel Management, the government's human resources agency, has raised millions in fund-raising drives for more than 2,000 nonprofits, including the NAACP, National Public Radio and the Alzheimer's Association. Federal employees can choose where their money is donated.
Under the new policy, groups wanting to join the program must certify they do not "knowingly employ individuals or contribute funds to organizations found" on lists of suspected terrorists compiled by the U.S. government, the United Nations and the European Union.
A message left Saturday for Mara Patermaster, the director of the charity program, was not immediately returned.
But Patermaster told The New York Times in Saturday's editions that charities and nonprofit organizations that did not check their employees' names against the federal terrorist watch list could be permanently excluded from the program.
"We expect that the charities will take affirmative action to make sure they are not supporting terrorist activities," she said. "That would specifically include inspecting the lists. To just sign a certification without corroboration would be a false certification."
The ACLU had participated in the program since 1983, but the policy's new language did not appear until the group signed an agreement extending its involvement in January, ACLU spokeswoman Emily Whitfield said.
The ACLU did not think the policy's language required it to check employees' names against the watch lists, Whitfield said.
The organization withdrew from the program after reading Patermaster's comments in the Times, Romero said. He added that the ACLU would not have participated in the program if it had known about the requirement.
"Our biggest concern is that these government watch lists are notoriously riddled with errors," Romero said. "And they allow no recourse for individuals on the list to correct those errors."
The ACLU was projected to raise about $500,000 from the program, Romero said. He spoke to the directors of several other charities and said they were also concerned about the policy.
"This is not about the money," he said. "It's about principles."
Lessee, the ACLU is not with us in the war on terror.
In fact, if I'm reading this correctly their "principals" suggest the opposite.
No, it's about the money.
You're scum sucking, life-destroying lawyers.
As far as I am concerned, the less money going to the ACLU, the better.
Works for me.
The crooked bastards deserve each other, I reject both.
Why not? The ACLU has been terrorizing decent people for years. They should be ON the terrorist list!
Why are rich lawyers getting any money from anybody?
"The ACLU withdrew Saturday from a program..."
They withdrew because this morning on FOX news it was disclosed that they were accepting the money, but their director (or some other high-up official in the organization) had declared that they just haven't bothered to read the list and have been accepting the funds anyway. So, their deception was exposed and they now have to cover their butts rather than face a government investigation. Way to go FOX!!!
Not only that, there is a possible implication that terrorist affiliations would be discovered if only had they done their required due diligence.
Another disposable federal program. Federal employees can donate directly to their own charities.
-PINGING THE EVILASHCROFT&HISHITLERESQUEPATRIOTACTARIANS-
The truth about why the ACLU opposes the Patriot Act: it exposes their collusion with terrorist organizations.
Sure looks that way. . .
The American Civil Liberties Union is closely affiliated with the communist movement in the United States, and fully 90 percent of its efforts are on behalf of communists who have come into conflict with the law. It claims to stand for free speech, free press, and free assembly; but it is quite apparent that the main function of the ACLU is to attempt to protect the communists in their advocacy of force and violence to overthrow the government, replacing the American flag by a red flag and erecting a Soviet government in place of the republican form of government guaranteed to each state by the federal Constitution.
The House committee members had good reason to arrive at that conclusion. The ACLU’s membership, leadership, and projects soon gave rise to claims by critics that the organization’s acronym really stood for Atheists, Communists, and Libertines United, or Anti-Christian Lawyers Union. The ACLU was launched at a party given for Roger Baldwin upon his release from prison for draft evasion in 1919. The main attendees at the soiree were Norman Thomas, who would become the patriarch of the Socialist Party; Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, who would become the Communist Party’s national chairman; and Agnes Smedley, who would become a Soviet espionage agent in China. Top Communist Party officials who became national committee members or members of its board of directors included Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, William Z. Foster, Louis Budenz, Corliss Lamont, and Scott Nearing, as well as hundreds of Communist fellow travelers.
Roger Baldwin directed the ACLU for 30 years. Earlier, he described his own philosophy this way in his college yearbook: "I am for Socialism, disarmament, and, ultimately, for abolishing the State itself as an instrument of violence and compulsion. I seek the social ownership of property, the abolition of the propertied class and sole control of those who produce wealth. Communism is the goal." He gave no evidence of ever having swerved from that goal. However, he did give his comrades good advice on effective stratagems for disguising their true intent.
In 1917, Baldwin wrote to Louis Lochner of the People’s Council, a Communist group, counseling:
Do steer away from making it [the People’s Council] look like a Socialist enterprise. Too many people have already gotten the idea that it is nine-tenths a Socialist movement.... We want also to look like patriots in everything we do. We want to get a lot of good flags, talk a good deal about the Constitution and what our forefathers wanted to make of this country, and to show that we are the folks that really stand for the spirit of our institutions. - LINK
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.