Free speech for me but not for thee. ACLU busted!

Re: Free speech for me but not for thee. ACLU busted!


I'm glad that any other organisation in the USA publishes its interna off- and online.
(Those from the Christians and anti-abortion groups are really great .... - sorry, just lost the links, but Baldimo will certainly give them.)



Ah, well, those communist founders ... one should promote the resurrection of A. Mitchell Palmer and J. Edgar Hoover.

Let's resurrect Joe McCarthy while we're at it...

I'd thought, he came for free with the two others.

Buy 2, get 1 free! It's the WingNut discount!

Re: Free speech for me but not for thee. ACLU busted!


Agreed.
I for one am not ashamed to call a spade a spade, and neither am I ashamed to have a dislike for communism. If it causes me to be called a right wing nut by the intelligentsia of this forum, frankly I don't care what your opinions are. Too many people have died because of the miserable ideas of communists that think they have the route to utopia on earth. If some of you wish to retry those ideas, have at it. Go live in your communes, but leave the rest of us alone.

I haven't seen a commune since the 60s, let alone lived on one. How about if we just go to work everyday and try to avoid knuckle-dragging jingos who think seeing a communist under every bed equates to patriotism?

Good luck . . .

I, for one, am pleased that no one has died while trying to spread democracy, freedom, and the wholesome goodness of the market economy throughout the world.

The centers in question advertise that they provide abortion services, when in fact they provide no such services and simply try to talk the woman out of getting an abortion.

It's a clear case of false and misleading advertising, and I see no big contridiction in the ACLU supporting a law which prevents these centers from doing this.

Is there anything wrong with a place trying to talk women out of getting an abortion? I don't know why you see an issue with it. They are providing information that women might not get from an abortion clinic. Do they charge for their services? If not then what is the issue. The article called them pregnancy clinics not abortion clinics.

It wasn't the fact that the ALCU was supporting a bill it had to do with the people on the board of the ACLU being told to keep their mouths shut about not supporting the bill. They were given a gag order so to speak. Besides I don't know what a bill such as this has to do with the ACLU? Does it affect anyone's rights? No as a matter of fact such a bill would be telling those that they can't provide a service. You would think that the ACLU would be fighting against such a bill because it is prohibiting others right to free speech. Is it because the ACLU believes in murder of babies that they support a bill to silence those that don't support such a thing?

Are you pregnant or a member of the ACLU?

Thankfully my biology prevents me from being both. Why do you ask? Are you going to make this personal or are you going to comment on the thread?

Exactly, Walter. Once again, you cut right to the heart of the matter.

I have no issue with it as long as they are straightforward about what they are doing in there. How about them being upfront and honest, for once, and call the clinics The Holy Name Anti-Abortion Clinic and Advice Center? That should clear up any confusion.




Your article is by an outfit called LifeNews which is obviously a partisan anti-choice organization. From what I have read in the news, these clinics do their best to try to represent themselves as some sort of nonpartisan medical clinic, then hit the women hard with an anti-choice message once they are in there. That's not being honest.

Well, you don't know what the ACLU has to do with the bill, I wonder, why you complain about that.

Just and only following your own logic ... which has to do with thread since you created it. (And in this sense it is personal, yes.)

I'd say Kelticwizard has cut to the heart of this "issue." I've read along since this thread began, but have not commented. The first thing i did was check Baldimo's source, which is immediately and easily identifiable as an anti-abortion organization. The joker who wrote the article has a resume which includes only working for anti-abortion organizations, after getting a degree in "politics" from a college in Arkansas. It was sufficiently fishy that i've not responded, having no desire to rise to the bait of a rightwing rant.

At such time as someone produces the same story from a reliable source which cannot be said to be anti-abortion, or anti-ACLU, i'll be interested. Until then . . . typical rightwingnut horsie poop . . .

Here ya go:
May 31, 2006
ACLU's Conditional Defense of Free-Speech
By John Leo

Many people believe that the American Civil Liberties Union no longer cares much about free-speech cases. Now, the organization is thinking of curbing the speech of its own officers. It has drawn up standards, not yet promulgated, that would discourage public dissent on ACLU policies and forbid open criticism of anyone on the board or the staff. Nat Hentoff, a former board member who writes frequently about the ACLU, called it a "gag order."

The organization said it feared that internal criticism might harm its fund-raising and public support. Yes, dissent can affect a group's reputation, but not as much as the squelching of dissent by alleged advocates of free speech.

One trigger for the no-criticism standards was the loud, open dissent by board member Wendy Kaminer on the ACLU's backing of a bill calling for federal regulation of ads placed by anti-abortion counseling centers. The bill, introduced in Congress by Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D.-N.Y., would instruct the Federal Trade Commission to ban ads, under headings like "abortion" and "clinics," by centers that oppose abortion and try to convince women to keep their child. Kaminer, a Boston attorney who is "very strongly pro-choice," said, "I don't believe the pro-choice movement has the copyright on the term 'abortion services.' That seems to me a very clear example of government being the language police."

The ACLU applauded Maloney's bill and urged lawmakers to pass it, but after some resistance inside the group, the message disappeared from the ACLU Web site. A spokeswoman said the issue had not been fully vetted.

Kaminer and another board member, Michael Meyers, said the ACLU was ready to take action against them last year for criticizing ACLU stances, but the leadership decided against disciplinary action after the news media reported the story. Meyers, founder of the New York Civil Rights Coalition, has since been removed from the ACLU board. Kaminer and Meyers complained that Anthony Romero, executive director of the ACLU, had authorized extensive research on the organization's donors and members, without explaining what data would be collected and who would do the collecting. The ACLU has opposed similar data mining when government or corporations do the collecting.

Meyers leveled many criticisms at Romero, among them: that he is intolerant of dissent, withholds financial information from the board, and cuts funding of ACLU affiliates if they are critical of him. He also says Romero instructed Nadine Strossen, president of the ACLU, to create a policy restricting board members' rights to speak directly to staff. Meyers said that policy was twice changed. Now questions by board members have to be voted on and agreed to by a majority of the executive committee before Romero will agree to answer.

Meyers thinks the ACLU's backing of the Maloney bill is an indication that the organization has strayed from its "traditional free-speech roots" and turned to "identity politics." It's hard to imagine the ACLU of 10 or 20 years ago asking government to monitor advertising.

But the ACLU now has issue-oriented lobbies inside it. They are called "projects" and include the "Reproductive Freedom Project," the "Women's Rights Project" and the "Lesbian and Gay Rights Project." The influence of the projects, and the money they bring in, often tend to sway the ACLU away from its once primary concern about free speech.

For instance, the ACLU came out early against the 1970 Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), a conspiracy statute aimed at the Mafia. RICO always had the potential to be used to curb political dissent, and when defenders of abortion started to use it against anti-abortion protesters, the ACLU waffled and looked the other way. Harvey Silverglate, of the Massachusetts ACLU, said sympathy of abortion rights caused the national ACLU to drop its guard on a serious violation of political freedom.

In 2003, after 17 years of litigation, the Supreme Court ruled that abortion protesters couldn't be punished as racketeers under RICO. No thanks to the ACLU. The organization still defends free speech, but not always when that speech is directed against a group or an interest it cares about.
SOURCE

Mini bio: John Leo HERE Of note John Leo also holds a PhD in sociology.

As the fella already said ...

With his credentials and background, if John Leo is not a credible source, who would be?