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"most of the hostility towards the ACLU is justified by their jihad to turn the Bill of Rights on its head and subvert the Constitution"

Can you tell me which of the following cases illustrate the ACLU's subversion of the constitution?

1938 Lovell v. Griffin The Court held, in this case involving Jehovah's Witnesses, that a local ordinance in Georgia prohibiting the distribution of "literature of any kind" without a City Manager's permit, violated the First Amendment.

1939 Hague v. CIO An important First Amendment case in which the Court recognized a broad freedom to assemble in public forums, such as "streets and parks," by invalidating the repressive actions of Jersey City's anti-union Mayor, "Boss" Hague.

1941 Edwards v. California In this major victory for poor people's right to travel from one state to another, the Court struck down an "anti-Okie" law that made it a crime to transport indigents into California.

1943 West Virginia v. Barnette A groundbreaking decision, made more resonant by its issuance in wartime. The Court championed religious liberty with its holding that a state could not force Jehovah's Witness children to salute the American flag.

1946 Hannegan v. Esquire A major blow against censorship. The Court severely limited the Postmaster General's power to withhold mailing privileges for allegedly "offensive" material.

1949 Terminiello v. Chicago Protection for offensive speech expanded with the Court's exoneration of an ex-priest convicted of disorderly conduct for giving a racist, anti-semitic speech that "invited dispute." Justice William O. Douglas, for the Court, noted that "the function of free speech under our system of government is to invite dispute."

1952 Rochin v. California Reversing the conviction of a man whose stomach had been forcibly pumped for drugs by a doctor at the behest of police, the Court ruled that the Due Process Clause outlaws "conduct that shocks the conscience."

1952 Burstyn v. Wilson Artistic freedom triumphed when the Court overruled its 1915 holding that movies "are a business, pure and simple," and decided that New York State's refusal to license "The Miracle" violated the First Amendment. The state censor had labeled the film "sacrilegious."

1958 Kent v. Dulles The Court ruled that the State Department had exceeded its authority in denying artist Rockwell Kent a passport because he refused to sign a "noncommunist affidavit." The right to travel, said the Court, is protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.

1962 Engel v. Vitale In an 8-1 decision, the Court struck down the New York State Regent's "nondenominational" school prayer, holding that "It is no part of the business of government to compose official prayers."

1964 Escobedo v. Illinois Invoking the Sixth Amendment right to counsel, the Court threw out the confession of a man whose repeated requests to see his lawyer, throughout many hours of police interrogation, were ignored.

1965 U.S. v. Seeger In one of the first anti-Vietnam War decisions, the Court extended conscientious objector status to those who do not necessarily believe in a supreme being, but who oppose war based on sincere beliefs that are equivalent to religious faith.

1965 Lamont v. Postmaster General A unanimous Court found unconstitutional, under the First Amendment, a challenged Cold War law that required the Postermaster General to detain and destroy all unsealed mail from abroad deemed to be "communist political propaganda" -- unless the addressee requested delivery in writing.

1965 Griswold v. Connecticut Among the 20th century's most influential decisions. It invalidated a Connecticut law forbidding the use of contraceptives on the ground that a right of "marital privacy," though not specifically guaranteed in the Bill of Rights, is protected by "several fundamental constitutional guarantees."

1966 Bond v. Floyd The Court ordered Georgia's legislature to seat the duly elected state senator, Julian Bond, a civil rights activist denied his seat for publicly supporting Vietnam War draft resisters. Criticizing U.S. foreign policy, said the Court, does not violate a legislator's oath to uphold the Constitution.1968 Epperson v. Arkansas The Court ruled that Arkansas had violated the First Amendment, which forbids official religion, with its ban on teaching "that mankind ascended or descended from a lower order of animals."

1969 Brandenburg v. Ohio After the ACLU's 50-year struggle against laws punishing political advocacy, the Court finally adopted the ACLU's view of the First Amendment -- that the government could only penalize direct incitement to imminent lawless action -- and invalidated, in one fell swoop, the Smith Act and all state sedition laws restricting radical political groups.

1969 Tinker v. Des Moines A landmark lift for symbolic speech and students' rights. The Court invalidated the suspension of public school students for wearing black armbands to protest the Vietnam War, writing that students did not "shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate."

1971 Cohen v. California Reversed the conviction of a man who allegedly disturbed the peace by wearing a jacket that bore the words, "Fuck the draft," while walking through a courthouse corridor. The Court rejected the notion that the state can prohibit speech just because it is "offensive."

1971 U.S. v. New York Times The Pentagon Papers, a landmark among prior restraint cases. The leaking of the Papers to the press for publication by Daniel Ellsberg, a former Defense Department official, did not, said the Court, justify an injunction against publication on national security grounds.

1974 U.S. v. Nixon This test of Presidential power involved Nixon's effort to withhold crucial Watergate tapes from Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski. In the only amicus brief filed, the ACLU argued: "There is no proposition more dangerous to the health of a constitutional democracy than the notion that an elected head of state is above the law and beyond the reach of judicial review." The Court agreed and ordered the tapes handed over.

1975 O'Connor v. Donaldson The Court's first ruling on the rights of mental patients supported a non-violent man who had been confined against his will in a state hospital for 15 years. Mental illness alone, said the Court, could not justify "simple custodial confinement" on an indefinite basis.

1978 Smith v. Collin The peculiar facts of this, one of the ACLU's most controversial First Amendment lawsuits ever, attracted enormous attention: American Nazis wanted to march through a Chicago suburb, Skokie, where many Holocaust survivors lived. The ACLU's challenge to the village's ban on the march was ultimately upheld.

1992 R.A.V. v. Wisconsin An important First Amendment victory. A unanimous Court struck down a local law banning the display, on public or private property, of any symbol "that arouses anger, alarm or resentment in others on the basis of race, color, creed, religion or gender."

1993 Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye v. Hialeah A religious freedom victory for unusual, minority religions. The Court held that local ordinances adopted by the City of Hialeah, banning the ritual slaughter of animals as practiced by the Santeria religion, but permitting such secular activities as hunting and fishing, violated the First Amendment's Establishment Clause.

1995 Lebron v. Amtrak Extended the First Amendment to corporations created by, and under the control of, the government in the case of an artist who argued successfully that Amtrak had been wrong to reject his billboard display because of its political message.

Straw man argument. You can do better. Posting only the times where the ACLU ended up strengthening the Constitution does not take into account the source of Freeper's point of dispute, namely, the cases in which they defended all sorts of anti-Constitutional positions. Duh.

1975 O'Connor v. Donaldson The Court's first ruling on the rights of mental patients supported a non-violent man who had been confined against his will in a state hospital for 15 years. Mental illness alone, said the Court, could not justify "simple custodial confinement" on an indefinite basis.

Interesting that you celebrate this "victory for the rights of mental patients", given that this case is now notorious for leading to the mass de-institutionalization which created the "Homeless" crisis and led to people like Andrew Goldstein, who pushed a woman to her death in front of a NYC subway "N" train because he couldn't be held despite his doctor's assertions that his scizophrenia posed a "dangerous" risk to others. This ruling let crazy people out, with the "freedom" to come back to take their medication. The problem is many of them did not, and hundreds of people have been murdered as a result.

Geraldo Rivera lobbied strongly for this case at the time and now repudiates it. You were talking about ignorance...you demonstrate it brilliantly here.

The ACLU is a disgusting band of jihadists bent of the destruction of religion, morality and decency anywhere and everywhere they find it in the United States.

The ten comandments are not a religion but a basis for all civilized legal systems. Try not to compare Religious Symbols/monuments, like Mohammad or Buddha, with historical legal fact.

Can you tell me which of the following cases illustrate the ACLU's subversion of the constitution?

Check mate. That was great.

Oh, wait, I was supposed to call you a leftists, sodomite loving agent of the anti-christ./sarcasm

This thread topic has now entered the same category as the WOD, Atkins Diet, Evolution vs. Creationism, and the war between the States threads.

Can you tell me which of the following cases illustrate the ACLU's subversion of the constitution?
Four cases in the last 25 years?

1992 R.A.V. v. Wisconsin An important First Amendment victory. A unanimous Court struck down a local law banning the display, on public or private property, of any symbol "that arouses anger, alarm or resentment in others on the basis of race, color, creed, religion or gender."

Interesting contrast to all the anti-Christian lawsuits they're pursuing now, isn't it?
BTW, in your selective reporting (most of which is ancient history), you omitted their current representation of NAMBLA - why?

But you failed to mention the enormous number of cases where the ACLU threatens small towns with bankruptcy unless they take down the Cross from their town shield, or the Ten Commandments from the town square, or a Nativity Scene. I have been told that this is how they make some of their money - they sue a small town, and then get the court to force payment of their legal bills.

The ACLU are bullies. They pick on those who can't defend themselves.

The ACLU spearheaded the attack to delay the CA recall, just to choose a recent example.

Good God!! Griswold for one was an awful decision that led in turn to another awful decision, Roe v Wade, that is wholly without any constitutional basis. 30 million killed by that line of bogus anti-Constitutional reasoning...

Most of the decisions after that time are also wrong and suspect ... Now Judge Moore's 1st amendment rights on the 10 Commandments are taken away, while the right to trade porn and engage in obscenity to undermine the culture are secure. blech - not what the Founders gave to us! We've turned god into dross!

The ACLU is dangerous wrong and after our Constitution.