The ACLU morphs into the Ministry of Truth

 

The word ‘Orwellian’ gets bandied about a little too much in the 2020s. But really, no other word will do to describe the ACLU’s latest antics. The American Civil Liberties Union, once the firmest of freedom’s defenders, has put out a quote from Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but not before erasing a certain word from it. What foul language did RBG use that forced even the liberal behemoth that is the ACLU to take the scissors of censorship to what she said? She said ‘woman’. That’s it. For that, one of America’s most celebrated justices has been given the Ministry of Truth treatment by one of America’s most celebrated defenders of constitutional rights. What is going on here?

The ACLU did its bizarre impersonation of Nineteen Eighty-Four’s Ministry of Truth on Twitter. Just as that dystopian ministry exists to rewrite history to ensure that it corresponds with the Party’s current view of the world, so the ACLU now seems to think its job is to mangle old quotations so that they don’t offend 21st-century woke sensibilities. This is what the ACLU has Ginsburg saying in its tweet: ‘The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a [person’s] life, to [their] wellbeing and dignity… When the government controls that decision for [people], [they are] being treated as less than a fully adult human responsible for [their] own choices.’

Person? People? They? Ginsburg didn’t use those words. She said woman, women, she. In two short sentences, the ACLU has carried out five acts of censure. It has corrected what it clearly believes was wrongthink on the part of Ginsburg. Ginsburg, who was a justice of the Supreme Court from 1993 until her death in 2020, may have been a much-honoured warrior for women’s rights, but she is guilty of having used incorrect speech in the eyes of the woke scolds who appear to have taken over the ACLU. She said ‘woman’, when as every good and obedient PC person now knows, we don’t use that word. It is potentially offensive to trans women or men who identify as women or non-binary people or whatever other group we are currently elevating above women and their right to talk about themselves and their lives.

Out have gone the genuine libertines of the Sixties and Seventies who defended free-speech rights even for those they loathed – the KKK, Nation of Islam, actual Nazis – and in their place are younger, woker, more intolerant campaigners who won’t even defend the right of Ruth Bader Ginsburg to say ‘woman’. 

With Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death, we lost a champion for abortion and gender equality. And on the anniversary of her death, the fight to protect abortion access is more urgent than ever. pic.twitter.com/vIKadIHouN

— ACLU (@ACLU) September 18, 2021

Black Lives Matter Students Shut Down the ACLU's Campus Free Speech Event Because 'Liberalism Is White Supremacy'

Students affiliated with the Black Lives Matter movement crashed an event at the College of William & Mary, rushed the stage, and prevented the invited guest—the American Civil Liberties Union's Claire Gastañaga, a W&M alum—from speaking.

Ironically, Gastañaga had intended to speak on the subject, "Students and the First Amendment."

The disruption was livestreamed on BLM at W&M's Facebook page. Students took to the stage just a few moments after Gastañaga began her remarks. At first, she attempted to spin the demonstration as a welcome example of the kind of thing she had come to campus to discuss, commenting "Good, I like this," as they lined up and raised their signs. "I'm going to talk to you about knowing your rights, and protests and demonstrations, which this illustrates very well. Then I'm going to respond to questions from the moderators, and then questions from the audience."

It was the last remark she was able to make before protesters drowned her out with cries of, "ACLU, you protect Hitler, too." They also chanted, "the oppressed are not impressed," "shame, shame, shame, shame," (an ode to the Faith Militant's treatment of Cersei Lannister in Game of Thrones, though why anyone would want to be associated with the religious fanatics in that particular conflict is beyond me), "blood on your hands," "the revolution will not uphold the Constitution," and, uh, "liberalism is white supremacy."

W&M put out a meaningless statement that was the functional equivalent of "Tut, Tut."  There is no free speech at W&M.  But we knew that ahead of time.

Glenn Reynolds comments:

It’s almost like they’re commie agitators, rather than peaceful civil rights supporters. But any students involved in this sort of thing should be suspended or expelled.

Judge finds NC ‘Choose Life’ plates unconstitutional

RALEIGH, N.C. – A federal judge has ruled it is unconstitutional for North Carolina to issue pro-life license plates unless the state offers similar plates supporting abortion rights.

U.S. District Court Judge James C. Fox ruled on Friday that North Carolina cannot produce or distribute the “Choose Life” plate.

Judge Fox concluded, “The State’s offering of a Choose Life license plate in the absence of a pro-choice plate constitutes viewpoint discrimination in violation of the First Amendment.”

The American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina Legal Foundation had filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina in Sept. 2011 on behalf of North Carolinians seeking a specialty license plate that supports a woman’s right to reproductive freedom.

“This is a great victory for the free speech rights of all North Carolinians, regardless of their point of view on reproductive freedom,” said Chris Brook, legal director of the ACLU-NCLF.

There's something not quite right about hailing the suppression of a license plate as a victory for free speech, but the ACLU seems to think so. Of course, the NC legislature could offer a "choose Death" license plate.

Governing While Republican

Small Dead Animals

Whatever happened to the outrage?

Remember the widespread anger about the amount of warrantless wiretapping that went on during the years of the Bush administration? Remember the constant drumbeat of dire warnings about this egregious violation of the Constitution, and the media's reminders of widespread public opposition, and the calls for Bush's impeachment?

It's safe to say now, in retrospect, that he was really being accused of governing while Republican

 

Doug Ross shows graphically that the Obama adminstration has not merely carried on like the "Fascist" Bush/Cheney  cabal, but in a similarity to the explosion in the federal debt, have vastly expanded warrantless surveillance.

ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATION
In fact, more people were subjected to pen register and trap and trace surveillance in the past two years than in the entire previous decade...

 

 While this type of Internet surveillance tool remains relatively rare, its use is increasing exponentially

 

 

The Jefferson and Danbury Baptist Correspondence

There seems to be little that is as misunderstood among the laity as the judicial travels of the "separation of church and state" phrase by Thomas Jefferson. 

This article from the Wall Street Journal gets the point of Christine O’Donnell’s exchange with Coons wrong. It’s not the first time that members of the press exhibit a high level of ignorance about constitutional, political, social and economic issues. Everyone in the press assumes the “separation of church and state” is part in the first amendment because Jefferson wrote a letter in which he used the term. Few of them are aware of the fact that Jefferson had nothing to do with writing the constitution (he was in France at the time) and that his letter, written to the Danbury (Connecticut) Baptists actually contradicts what most people believe about it.

Herewith an interesting history lesson.

After the election of Thomas Jefferson as president in 1800, the Danbury Baptists sent this rather flowery letter to him:

Letter to Thomas Jefferson

Danbury Baptist Association's letter to Thomas Jefferson, October 7, 1801.

Sir, — Among the many millions in America and Europe who rejoice in your Election to office; we embrace the first opportunity which we have enjoyd in our collective capacity, since your Inauguration, to express our great satisfaction, in your appointment to the chief Majestracy in the United States; And though our mode of expression may be less courtly and pompious than what many others clothe their addresses with, we beg you, Sir to believe, that none are more sincere.

Our Sentiments are uniformly on the side of Religious Liberty — That Religion is at all times and places a matter between God and individuals — That no man ought to suffer in name, person, or effects on account of his religious Opinions - That the legitimate Power of civil government extends no further than to punish the man who works ill to his neighbor: But Sir our constitution of government is not specific. Our ancient charter together with the Laws made coincident therewith, were adopted on the Basis of our government, at the time of our revolution; and such had been our Laws & usages, and such still are; that Religion is considered as the first object of Legislation; and therefore what religious privileges we enjoy (as a minor part of the State) we enjoy as favors granted, and not as inalienable rights: and these favors we receive at the expense of such degrading acknowledgements, as are inconsistent with the rights of freemen. It is not to be wondered at therefore; if those, who seek after power & gain under the pretense of government & Religion should reproach their fellow men — should reproach their chief Magistrate, as an enemy of religion Law & good order because he will not, dare not assume the prerogatives of Jehovah and make Laws to govern the Kingdom of Christ.

Sir, we are sensible that the President of the United States, is not the national legislator, and also sensible that the national government cannot destroy the Laws of each State; but our hopes are strong that the sentiments of our beloved President, which have had such genial affect already, like the radiant beams of the Sun, will shine and prevail through all these States and all the world till Hierarchy and Tyranny be destroyed from the Earth. Sir, when we reflect on your past services, and see a glow of philanthropy and good will shining forth in a course of more than thirty years we have reason to believe that America's God has raised you up to fill the chair of State out of that good will which he bears to the Millions which you preside over. May God strengthen you for the arduous task which providence & the voice of the people have cald you to sustain and support you in your Administration against all the predetermined opposition of those who wish to rise to wealth & importance on the poverty and subjection of the people.

And may the Lord preserve you safe from every evil and bring you at last to his Heavenly Kingdom through Jesus Christ our Glorious Mediator.

Signed in behalf of the Association.

Nehh Dodge

Ephram Robbins The Committee

Stephen S. Nelson

So what was the purpose of this letter?  According to Beliefnet, and supported by most historians,

The Danbury Baptist Association was founded in 1790 as a coalition of about 26 churches in the Connecticut Valley. Connecticut had established Congregationalism as its official state religion. It was as a persecuted religious minority that they wrote to President Jefferson asking for his help in overthrowing the establishment.

This is fairly obvious not just from history, but from the part of their letter I underlined.  The Danbury Baptists were not just sending a letter of congratulations, they were asking Jefferson do something: that is, to end the establishment of Congregationalism in Connecticut.

This he refused to do. 

Here is an image of his first draft of his reply in which he says: 

NOTE what he says in this draft which he later erased:

"Congress thus inhibited from acts respecting religion and the executive only to execute their acts I have refrained from prescribing even occasional performances of devotion ..."

In the current vernacular he's saying that congress is prevented by the first amendment from enacting a law "respecting the establishment of religion" which means that while they cannot create a "state church" like Connecticut has, neither are they empowered to disestablish Connecticut’s state church. And he absolves himself for interceding in the state church controversy in Connecticut because he's limited to executing congress' will. 

In other words, he saying thanks for the compliments and good wishes, but there is nothing that the federal government can do.  He hopes that the Connecticut people and legislature will change their position.  From a constitutional perspective, this is exactly the opposite of what modern jurisprudence has him saying.  Where congress and Jefferson feared to tread, the Supreme Court boldly went.

Here's the way Beliefnet put it:

Jefferson asked his attorney general, Levi Lincoln of Connecticut, to review his response for political landmines. "You understand the temper of those in the North, and can weaken it therefore to their stomachs," Jefferson noted. Lincoln replied that Jefferson's draft was too combative. By criticizing the proclamations, Jefferson would potentially insult not only Federalists but Republicans as well, as the custom is "venerable being handed down from our ancestors," Lincoln cautioned. Jefferson responded to Lincoln's warning by cutting out the offending passage. So the final letter to the Baptists ended up without the portion on proclamations - the ostensible reason for Jefferson to write the letter in the first place.Those who believe Jefferson was describing a wall of separation that would, say, keep prayer out of public schools, should look again at the word "their" - which Jefferson underlined. In responding to the Baptists complaint about the Connecticut government, Jefferson said merely that the national legislature had, at least created a wall of separation. He did not offer any help in battling the Connecticut law, except to say that he expects to see "the progress of those sentiments" of freedom. .

However, in return for their obsequious words, he wished them well.

To messers. Nehemiah Dodge, Ephraim Robbins, & Stephen S. Nelson, a committee of the Danbury Baptist association in the state of Connecticut.

Gentlemen,

The affectionate sentiments of esteem and approbation which you are so good as to express towards me, on behalf of the Danbury Baptist association, give me the highest satisfaction. my duties dictate a faithful and zealous pursuit of the interests of my constituents, in proportion as they are persuaded of my fidelity to those duties, the discharge of them becomes more and more pleasing.

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.

I reciprocate your kind prayers for the protection & blessing of the common father and creator of man, and tender you for yourselves your religious association, assurances of my high respect & esteem.

Th Jefferson

How this bit of political butt kissing on the part of the Danbury Baptists and political buck passing on the part of Jefferson became part of the rewriting of the first amendment will have to be answered by a constitutional scholar who does not do irony. For my part, it seems that this back-and-forth is a better argument against the imposition of the many federal laws and regulations respecting the way we are allowed to practice our religion than for it.

Joe Rich: An Uncivil Man from the Civil Rights Division

Hans A. von Spakovsky reveals the shocking truth about the politicization of the DOJ.  If Joe Rich is an example, God help us.

Read the whole thing.

Is Tolerance a One-Way Street?

Daniel Henninger writes "Tolerance at Ground Zero" in which the Ruling Class has gathered around the right of Muslims to erect a mosque near the spot where their fellow followers of Islam murdered nearly 3000 Americans.  He discusses the tolerance exhibited by the members of the American Ruling Class and notes that - in the case of Christianity vs. Islam - tolerance is a one way street.

Muslims vs. the West

The “West” developed immersed in - some say because of - a Christian culture. That culture is under assault from various directions.  It is most violently attacked by Islam. It would be useful if political leaders in Islamic countries would, in response to the welcome that their religion has received in the West, reciprocate by openly allowing Christians to establish churches in their countries; to worship and proselytize, as Muslims are allowed to do here. So far we see no sign of that happening. It is not even on the agenda of those who loudly proclaim that they are the representatives of the millions or billions of “moderate Muslims.”   Is toleration of other religions going to be another one-way street?

Christianity vs. Humanism

Christianity was the default faith of the vast majority of the American people until the mid 20th century. Even now, three out of four Americans profess to be Christians. Yet the secular forces of the Ruling Class has pushed the open expression of Christian expression out of the public sphere as if somehow - when Christians speak of their faith in school assemblies or erect a crèche in a public park at Christmas time - they create a theological terror. Was it really true that in 1950, when many school days began with a Christian prayer, religious expression was not repressed and Christian symbols were found in public parks the US was a theocracy? To hear the ACLU and its ideological supporters explain how those acts created an "established church" that must have been a fact.  But we know that it was not.  How were we ever led to assent to having our voices and our expression of faith be stifled by this perversion of the first amendment?  Is tolerance for religion in the public sphere only to be allowed if the religion threatens you with death if you dissent? 

Gays vs. Straights

Sex has always been a big deal in all cultures; sexuality is closely intertwined with morality. The do's and don'ts are defined - to put it in old-fashioned terms - around sin. We in the West have become rather blase about it; putting sex on public display in every venue we visit. As a substitute for religious rules, the more "enlightened" create their taboos around public hygiene. In other cultures - such as Islam - this is not the case. We're casual about sex while Islam is deadly serious.  In our culture, open homosexuality was considered bad form by irreligious people and a sin by the more observant religious. But the "gay community" has demanded not just the tolerance of "averted glances,"  but public acceptance of its views of morality. Today we are being told that if we do not celebrate and asset to homosexual weddings we are not just homophobic, but we are evil. That our concepts of sin are, frankly, outmoded. A judge has ruled that

Religious beliefs that gay and lesbian relationships are sinful or inferior to heterosexual relationships harm gays and lesbians.

He has found it to be a "fact" that opponents of homosexual marriage are driven by (irrational) fear, that they rely on (irrational) stereotypes, that people who oppose same-sex marriage believe homosexuals are "inferior." He makes much of the fact that a large proportion of the people that voted for Prop. 8 were religious; making his ruling - in effect - a judgement based on a religious test. Until this ruling, religious test were not permitted under our constitution. The religious orientation of the people voting for or against this proposition should have absolutely no bearing on a legal judgement, but in this case it had a definite bearing.

The obvious distaste this judge has in his devaluation of religious value systems has more than a little of the flavor of Orwell's "1984" where it was not simply good enough to acquiesce, we have to positively assert our love of what we opposed before.   Not to do so exposes you as a bigot, and removes you from the Ruling Class, to be cast into an outer darkness, awaiting oblivion. 

We shall see.

Civilian terror trials are the violation of the law

Trying prisoners taken during a war in a civilian court is a crime.  I have long maintained that and am glad that I now have support from Robert F. Turner co-founded the Center for National Security Law at the University of Virginia School of Law in 1981 and chaired the American Bar Association's Standing Committee on Law and National Security between 1989 and 1992.

...detaining enemy combatants for the duration of hostilities without charge or trial is a long-recognized and lawful practice. Thus, the United States held more than 400,000 German POWs (and many Italians, too) at detention camps spread across 40-plus states -- without lawyers, charges or trials -- until World War II ended.


Before citing the 1949 Geneva POW Convention, critics should be aware what they actually say. Article 84 states: "A prisoner of war shall be tried only by a military court." And Article 97 says: "Prisoners of war shall not in any case be transferred to penitentiary establishments (prisons, penitentiaries, convict prisons, etc.)." [Emphasis added in both cases.]


It is only because terrorists like Khalid Sheik Mohammed & Co. don't qualify for full Geneva protection that we have the legal option of trying them in domestic courts.


But exercising that option is clearly unwise. The practical arguments are familiar: Such trials would likely result in theatrics like those we witnessed year after year in the Moussaoui trial (which cost tens of millions of dollars); they might endanger the lives of jurors and could compromise sensitive intelligence sources and methods.


And there's a very real risk that a judge might turn dangerous terrorists loose on American streets if the government refuses to identify and produce undercover witnesses who may have penetrated al Qaeda networks in foreign lands.


But a different issue ought to concern the ACLU: Civilian trials of these terrorists run a real risk of contaminating our own legal system.


For starters, such trials should plainly proceed in accordance with the applicable rules of international law -- rules that do not include the full panoply of protections provided by the Bill of Rights (which doesn't even apply fully to our own armed forces), Miranda warnings or our exclusionary rule.


Nor should we risk setting a precedent by holding the trials under US criminal law: Would we want some future Adolf Hitler or Saddam Hussein to have the right to try captured US soldiers under their domestic criminal laws?

Goodwin Liu: Unqualified, and Hostile to the Constitution

From Powerline. Read the whole thing.


Liu attacked Roberts for an opinion he wrote. What was left unsaid:

Roberts did, here, exactly what a judge is supposed to do--not impose his own opinion as to whether a law or ordinance is foolish, but evaluate its constitutionality according to established principles and precedents. It is worth noting, too, that Liu described Roberts' opinion in this case as though it were outside the mainstream, while in fact Roberts wrote for a unanimous court, and every judge who looked at the case ruled the same way. Liu here betrays the arrogance of the left-wing academic: anyone who disagrees with me is an extremist, even if his disagreement represents a consensus among competent jurists.

Changing America’s Legal System To Gain Foreign Approval

In the last year we have seen the Obama administration, the civil liberties movement (read ACLU) and the MSM move in the direction of changing our legal system to make it more palatable to what may be called “International Liberalism.” Exhibit “A” is the decision to “try” Khalid Sheik Mohammed in federal court. I put quotes around the word “try” because we are assured that no matter what the court’s decision is, he will not be released. If so, we have the interesting spectacle of the beginning of high profile show trials in the US; one in which the punishment is announced before the verdict.

Ignoring the announcement of indefinite detention before the trail begins, it can be argued that the trial of KSM is – in a certain sense – a move in the direction of offering greater constitutional protections people who get caught up in the American judicial system. The Left is proudly proclaiming that the forms of justice are going to be served even if those people are not American citizens and even if they were waging war … er, “man made catastrophes” …against us.

Make no mistake, one of the reasons the Obama administration is holding this trial is that it wants to curry the favor of the International Liberal community. It's an effort to get the Euro-Left and the Arab world to approve of us.

But the presumption of innocence and the demands for due process go out of the window when the accused are Americans and they work for the hated private security firm Blackwater. Indictments were recently thrown out against five Blackwater guards involved in a shooting in Iraq as they were escorting and guarding American diplomats. So what’s the NY Times headline?

Iraqis Angered as Blackwater Charges Are Dropped.

That is also a major theme of this story from the Virginian Pilot.

But back to the NY Times, we are told in this “storytorial” a few things that are rather laughable.

Many Iraqis also viewed the prosecution of the guards as a test case of American democratic principles, which have not been wholeheartedly embraced, and in particular of the fairness of the American judicial system.

This is now going to be the focus of the story: Iraqi reaction to American law. Iraqis are now judges of America’s role as a democracy. If we don't convict the Blackwater guards Iraqi cabdrivers and policemen will lose faith in the American judicial system. I wonder what the Iraqis make of the OJ Simpson trial or the dismissal of the charges against Obama associate Bill Ayers? Should we ask?

The ruling on Thursday appeared to confirm the feelings of some that their skepticism had been justified. For Iraqis directly affected by the violence, the result was incomprehensible.

Some victims and their families said they did not understand how charges could have been dropped despite what they regarded as overwhelming evidence.

As Obama would say, this is a teachable moment. Perhaps someone from the NY Times can explain the rules of evidence that American courts have created to the overwhelming applause of people who work for the NY Times and the ACLU.

The Times reporters find several gunshot victims who express their outrage at the court decision. It seems that in the case of the Blackwater guards American legal rules should not apply if it makes Iraqis unhappy. Perhaps it’s time to schedule another show trial, after the one for KSM. This time five Blackwater guards can be in the dock with a pre-determined punishment to meet Iraqi legal standards. We know what the verdict will be, the trial will come later. The Euro-Left and the Arab world will love us more. The ACLU will applaud.

I wonder, can we re-visit the Simpson and Ayers verdicts?

Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Senior Moment

When you get to be a certain age, you let go of your inhibitions (trust me on this) and say what’s on your mind. When you are a Supreme Court Justice with lifetime tenure and you are within a few years of retiring, you can let your inner racist-eugenicist out.

Jonah Goldberg is polite when he questions what Ginsburg meant in her interview with the NY Times.

Here's what Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said in Sunday's New York Times Magazine: "Frankly I had thought that at the time (Roe v. Wade) was decided," Ginsburg told her interviewer, Emily Bazelon, "there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don't want to have too many of." ...

Ginsburg's certainly right that abortion has deep roots in the historic effort to "weed out" undesired groups. For instance, Margaret Sanger, the revered feminist and founder of Planned Parenthood, was a racist eugenicist of the first order. Even more perplexing: She's become a champion of "reproductive freedom" even though she proposed a "Code to Stop Overproduction of Children," under which "no woman shall have a legal right to bear a child without a permit." (Poor blacks would have had a particularly hard time getting such licenses from Sanger.)

If Ginsburg does see eugenic culling as a compelling state interest, she'd be in fine company on the court. Oliver Wendell Holmes was a passionate believer in such things. In 1915, Holmes wrote in the Illinois Law Review that the "starting point for an ideal for the law" should be the "coordinated human effort ... to build a race."

The assumption is made by Goldberg and others that these advocates of government control - or “encouragement” - of “family planning” were race based. But this is an assumption that may have penumbras and emanations (to quote one famous Supreme Court decision). Can’t we assume also that the eugenics movement may also have as an objective the selective breeding of people who no longer believe in God? The people who were in the forefront of the that movement also believed that religious belief was irrational and even dangerous to the kind of rational, ordered society they envisioned.

Even people who in other contexts make fine distinctions, have trouble seeing the difference between - say - Ayatollahs and Christians.

I can well see Ruth Bader Ginsburg – a leading light of the ACLU – deciding that too many fundamentalist Christians were breeding. Not good for a “enlightened secular” society, eh Ruth?

Of course, John Holdren, Obama's science czar shares Ginsburg's views on culling the human race, so why should we be shocked? Their views are become mainstream Democrat beliefs - again.

ACLU: crazy but not stupid

From NRO:

What Obama, Holder & Co. have done on "enemy combatants" is a somewhat more elaborate version of what they've done on Gitmo, rendition, state-secrets, interrogations, etc. ...

Essentially, we're no longer going to call our captives "enemy combatants" ... but we're still going to detain people without trial, and Obama claims the unilateral authority to decide who gets detained. ...

In sum, Bush's policies are validated, and Obama is banking that his base will be content with a few rhetorical crumbs. Of course they won't be — the ACLU, which is crazy but not stupid, is already blasting this move.

The ACLU is populated by a very smart group of people who have no concern about the result of their activities. Focused like a laser beam on their objectives: a totally secular society ruled by law, not custom, in which neither reason nor need is permitted as a course of action and only abstract rules, of the kind they prefer, apply. The ACLU is much like HAL, the crazed computer from “2001” who applied its logic to every situation ...resulting in death.

Gene Nichol Out at William and Mary

Gene Nichol, whose tenure at W&M has been a disaster from the beginning, has resigned.

His resignation followed a decision by the Board of Visitors, W&M's governing board, not to renew his contract.

His resignation is as full of self righteous sound and fury as his tenure.

For my original comments on Nichol, click HERE.

Good riddance.

Is Gene Nichol Recreating East Germany in Williamsburg?

Stanley Kurtz raises concern about the Nichol's new speech codes and anonymous tips.

I’ve heard of speech codes, but I’ve never heard of anything quite like this: a mechanism to anonymously report "bias related to race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or other protected conditions" to the university administration, for possible action against the perpetrator. This system has been set up at William and Mary, and a website protesting it can be found here. Is this something new, or at least rare, or is it perhaps more common than I realize?

The definition of "bias" that should be reported to the W&M Speech Code Police:

A "bias incident" consists of harassment, intimidation or other hostile behavior that is directed at a member of the William and Mary community because of that person's race, sex (including pregnancy), age, color, disability, national or ethnic origin, political affiliation, religion, sexual orientation, or veteran status. A bias incident may be verbal (whether spoken or written) or physical.

If you are not certain whether an occurrence meets the above definition, please report the occurrence under this protocol and allow the College to make the determination.

The Bias Reporting Team them springs into action:

A student or college employee who would like to report an incident may use the online form if the event in question is not presently occurring, and if there is no continued threat of harm to person or property. For immediate response, use the phone report or personal report (listed below). A person reporting online may report anonymously by leaving the personal information fields blank. The Bias Reporting Team will assume that providing a name and phone number indicates a desire for follow-up contact, which will occur within 24 hours, Monday through Friday, 8am to 5pm. Reports submitted on the weekend or holidays will not receive a response until 24 hours from the normal business hours of the College. Those submitting an online form will receive an auto-reply email that will include a list of the steps to be taken next, and a timeline for personal contact.

Or not, but always urgently:

Regardless of the means of reporting (phone, personal, or online), the Bias Reporting Team Chair receives the complaint in the time frame described above, and initiates the following process:

The Chair reviews the report, and decides whether the event fits the mandate of the Bias Reporting Team (is it a bias or hate related event).

If the Chair determines that it is an issue of bias or hate, proceed to the next step. If it does not fit the Bias Reporting Team mandate, the report will be passed on to the appropriate office for reaction and response.

The Chair then determines the level of significance of the report, and whether the Bias Reporting Team should convene. This meeting will occur no more than 24 hours from the time this determination is made. The Team will ALWAYS convene if any of the following are true of the event:

The event includes physical harm, or its potential.

There is the potential or reality for large-scale impact (to the campus or wider community).

The event includes the presence of hate or bias-related symbols. The more public, the more urgent.

The establishment of an entire organization to track down and punish speech code violations via anonymous tips at W&M is the subject of discussion at The Volokh conspiracy.. Volokh himself is not too concerned before students are actually haled before the kangaroo court. But most of his correspondents don't share his view.

There is a difference in the view of a tenured law professor and some poor schlub at W&M who will get hauled in front of this star chamber with the real possibility that he will be expelled, or sent for "psychological counseling" with permanent black mark against him that will follow him for the rest of his career.

Law professors rarely appreciate the transaction costs of lawsuits and analogous actions. I refer not only to economic costs, but to the time and agita' that result from being haled before an official tribunal and forced to defend oneself.

Even if the W&M bias squad were scrupulously fair, and if there were a real presumption in favor of the accused (which is not always true with campus disciplinary bodies), the accused still has to appear and explain himself. The publicity of being accused harms people's reputations. (Yeah, these tribunals are supposed to be confidential.)

Exactly. Law professors make a living teaching people how to participate in a process that can destroy a person's life (at worst) and which is never pleasant. For them, it's what life is about. For others, it's a nightmare. And this is what William & Mary is institutionalizing.

And let's not forget the reason Gene Nichol came to national attention in the first place. Patrick216 reminds us:

I was a 2000 graduate of W&M. In my time there, the university was never a bastion of leftism and I never felt unsafe or unwelcome as a right-of-center student there. To be sure, the professors were predominantly left of center, and in some cases were not afraid to express those views to students in their classes. But I always felt comfortable expressing right-of-center views in class and my grades were never penalized as a result.

But that was under the old President, Tim Sullivan. The new guy, Gene Nichol, strikes me as a total disaster. This was the guy who last year ordered the Wren Cross to be removed from the Wren Chapel out of a fear of offending religious minorities. (Mind you, no religious minorities actually felt offended.) Now we have the Bias Reporting System. Is there any indication that ethnic, religious, sexual orientation, etc. minorities are under assault at W&M such that this system is needed? Or is this another Gene Nichol gross PC overreaction? (Given that Nichol was formerly associated with the ACLU, I'm inclined to believe he's overreacting for no reason.)

There is currently a board that's been appointed by the Board of Visitors to consider whether they want to retain Nichol as President following the expiration of his contract on June 30, 2008. You better believe I am going to write a letter advocating that he not be reappointed. This kind of stuff is over the top and is defaming the good name of a great school.

For more on the Wren Cross fiasco go HERE.

UPDATE: Mike Adams, a professor at UNC-Wilmington reminds us that Nichols and his wife are no strangers to controversy (A Tale of Two Bigots):

Although websites like www.SaveTheWrenCross.org have done a good job of exposing the history of the current controversy, some facts have been omitted. These accounts have incorrectly suggested that President Nichol has acted alone out of some individual animosity towards Christianity. That is unfair because it fails to mention the probable role of his wife Glenn George, a professor at William and Mary School of Law.

Glenn George was named as University Counsel at UNC-Chapel Hill on December 7th, 2002. Just three days later, a Jihad was launched against religious organizations at that school. Thirteen letters were written to religious groups - twelve to Christian groups – threatening to de-fund them and kick them off campus.

These threats were issued because the groups did not allow membership and voting privileges to students hostile to their religious views. There was also a mandate that the groups adopt policies that allow all students to hold office in the religious groups they oppose.

The policy was so absurd that it should not have required a lawsuit to correct. But it did.

After a religious group filed suit, a federal judge issued an injunction against UNC that caused the policy to be amended. Eventually, Glenn George and her husband Gene Nichols – then the Dean of UNC School of Law – moved on to William and Mary. And they took their penchant for harassing Christians with them.

A comment below refers us to a website devoted to dumping Nichol. William & Mary's Board of Visitors also has a website from which you can e-mail them.

The ACLU is becoming very selective about what it considers "free" speech.

From the OpinionJournal.

BY WENDY KAMINER
Wednesday, May 23, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT

"ACLU Defends Nazi's Right to Burn Down ACLU Headquarters," the humor magazine The Onion announced in 1999. Those of us who loved the ACLU, and celebrated its willingness to defend the rights of Nazis and others who had no regard for our rights, considered the joke a compliment. Today it's more like a reproach. Once the nation's leading civil liberties group and a reliable defender of everyone's speech rights, the ACLU is being transformed into just another liberal human-rights group that reliably defends the rights of liberal speakers.

This transformation is gradual, unacknowledged and not readily apparent, since evidence of it lies mainly in cases the ACLU does not take. It's naturally easier to know what an organization is doing (and advertising) than what it is not doing. But a review of recent free-speech press releases turns up only a handful of cases in which ACLU state affiliates defended the rights of conservative, antigay or otherwise politically incorrect speakers. And lately the national organization has been remarkably quiet in several important free-speech cases and controversies.

One of the clearest indications of a retreat from defending all speech regardless of content is the ACLU's virtual silence in Harper v. Poway, an important federal case involving a high-school student's right to wear a T-shirt condemning homosexuality. Of course, the ACLU doesn't speak out on every case, but historically it has vigorously defended student speech rights, as its Web site stresses. It is currently representing a student in a speech case before the Supreme Court, Morse v. Frederick (involving the right of a student to carry a nonsensical "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" banner at an off-campus event). The ACLU pays particular attention to the right to wear T-shirts with pro-gay messages in school, proudly citing cases in which it represented students wearing pro-gay (as well as anti-Bush) T-shirts. This year, the ACLU awarded a Youth Activist Scholarship to a student who fought the efforts of her school to bar students from wearing T-shirts that said "Gay, Fine by me."

So in 2004, when Tyler Chase Harper was disciplined for wearing a T-shirt declaring his religious objections to homosexuality, civil libertarians might have expected the ACLU to protest loudly. Mr. Harper was barred from attending classes when he wore the antigay T-shirt to school on an official "Day of Silence," when gay students taped their mouths to symbolize the silencing effect of intolerance. Represented by the Alliance Defense Fund, he sued the school district. That same year, the ACLU initiated the first of two actions against a Missouri school that punished students for wearing "gay supportive T-shirts," eventually securing a promise from the school to "stop censoring," the ACLU Web site boasts. Mr. Harper, however, was unsuccessful in his quest to stop school censorship. In a patronizing, antilibertarian decision in which Judge Stephen Reinhardt stressed the imagined feelings of gay students, the Ninth Circuit rejected Mr. Harper's First Amendment claims. (There was a sharp dissent from Judge Alex Kozinski.)

Perhaps the ACLU was observing its own prolonged Day of Silence, because, while it pays close attention to federal appellate court decisions on civil liberties, it effectively ignored this terrible precedent, even when Mr. Harper appealed to the Supreme Court. The Court dismissed the case as moot because Mr. Harper had graduated but took the unusual step of vacating the decision so that it no longer exists as precedent (no thanks to the ACLU). Mr. Harper's younger sister, still in school, continued pressing his claims and her case is pending before the Ninth circuit. The ACLU has not adopted her cause either.

The Harpers didn't need representation from the ACLU. But the organization frequently speaks up for the rights of people it does not represent, like Guantanamo detainees, and often files amicus briefs in important civil liberties cases. Given its focus on student rights and religious liberty (one of the ACLU's priorities), it's hard to explain the ACLU's apparent equanimity about the violation of Mr. Harper's First Amendment rights--unless you consider the content of his speech.

Read the rest.

Like the bias in the MSM, the causes that the ACLU does not represent are often a better indication of their goals and orientation than the causes they do represent.

The ACLU and precedents

The popular web site Freerepublic has the following article posted recently:

When Rep. John Doolittle attacks Democratic rival Charlie Brown for his membership in the American Civil Liberties Union, the Roseville Republican describes it as an organization that defends pedophiles.

The Massachusetts case giving rise to the congressman's indignation -- and that of many others -- is serving as exhibit A as Doolittle seeks to make the argument that Brown is too liberal to represent his district.

The issue raised in the Massachusetts civil lawsuit is about the right to publish and read controversial material, regardless of how unpopular and despicable the content might be, the ACLU says.

These are the facts: In October 1997, 10-year-old Jeffrey Curley was lured into a car in Cambridge by Charles Jaynes and Salvatore Sicari. He fought back for as long as 20 minutes before he was suffocated with a gas-soaked rag. His body was sexually molested before it was finally packed in a container and dumped into the Great Works River in Maine.

Sicari was later convicted of first-degree murder and Jaynes was convicted of second-degree murder and kidnapping. Both are in prison on life sentences, Sicari without chance of parole.

Sicari and Jaynes were members of the North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), although Jaynes' membership check had apparently bounced.

Curley's family filed a federal wrongful death suit in 2000 against NAMBLA in Massachusetts, seeking $200 million on allegations that the organization had turned Jaynes from a timid and confused soul into an aggressive pervert.

NAMBLA has since been dismissed from the case, but several of its members who were responsible for its Web site and published materials remain as ACLU clients.
Among the allegations is that Jaynes read material he obtained on NAMBLA's

. . . The ACLU of Massachusetts is defending the case

In a response to this, someone wrote

:Funny how the ACLU is always ready to defend unpopular ideas, but just try and get them to help conservative college students whose positions are belittled in class. A few years ago at the University of Penna a conservative editorial was not allowed to be distributed by black students. Papers were confiscated by a black faternity, university administrators did nothing. When the conservatives went to the ACLU, they were told there was nothing they would do. Kinda depends on whose ox is being gored, doesn't it?

To which another replied:

Or maybe it depends on whether the institution is public or private. UPenn is a private university, and so the ACLU has nothing to do with it. From the ACLU’s position statement on “speech codes” on college campuses: “The First Amendment to the United States Constitution protects speech no matter how offensive its content. Speech codes adopted by government-financed state colleges and universities amount to government censorship, in violation of the Constitution. And the ACLU believes that all campuses should adhere to First Amendment principles because academic freedom is a bedrock of education in a free society.”

This is a popular misconception held by many people, especially of Libertarian bent because it reinforces their own prejudices regarding the separation of the public and private sphere. It excuses the ACLU by claiming that the ACLU is bound by precedent from staying out of the private affairs of private institutions. However, it has long been established that by accepting federal funds via research grants and federal aid to students, even "private" institutions are required to adhere to legal and constitutional rules. This includeas all the amendments.

Hillsdale College is the only college that refuses to accept any federal aid, even indirectly for this very reason. So the ACLU is being disingenuous when it fails to support free speech on private universities.
But assuming for a moment that the Libertarians are correct, the ACLU is not an organization that simply follows precedent, it helps create precedent. Roe vs. Wade (for example) established a precedent based on premises that even most legal scholars consider ridiculous. The court position that a prayer by school students was an impermissible establishment of religion was precedent setting. The list of ACLU precedents is virtually endless. To suggest that the ACLU would not find a reason to defend free speech in an institution that had part of its budget paid for by the federal government simply because of precedent is ludicrous.