The ACRU Blog

A recent article in The Sunday Paper - "What is an American? Immigration debate reveals patriotism-and nationalism" - has been brought to my attention. In this article, my essay on what it means to be an American, first published at National Review Online in the days following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on our country, was cited. I thought this was a good time to republish that essay here:

What Is An American? A Primer

You probably missed it in the rush of news last week, but there was actually a report that someone in Pakistan had published in a newspaper there an offer of a reward to anyone who killed an American, any American.

So I just thought I would write to let them know what an American is, so they would know when they found one.

An American is English...or French, or Italian, Irish, German, Spanish, Polish, Russian or Greek. An American may also be African, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Australian, Iranian, Asian, or Arab, or Pakistani, or Afghan.

An American is Christian, or he could be Jewish, or Buddhist, or Muslim. In fact, there are more Muslims in America than in Afghanistan. The only difference is that in America they are free to worship as each of them choose.

An American is also free to believe in no religion. For that he will answer only to God, not to the government, or to armed thugs claiming to speak for the government and for God.

An American is from the most prosperous land in the history of the world. The root of that prosperity can be found in the Declaration of Independence, which recognizes the God-given right of each man and woman to the pursuit of happiness.

An American is generous. Americans have helped out just about every other nation in the world in their time of need. When Afghanistan was overrun by the Soviet army 20 years ago, Americans came with arms and supplies to enable the people to win back their country. As of the morning of September 11, Americans had given more than any other nation to the poor in Afghanistan.

An American does not have to obey the mad ravings of ignorant, ungodly cruel, old men. American men will not be fooled into giving up their lives to kill innocent people, so that these foolish old men may hold on to power. American women are free to show their beautiful faces to the world, as each of them choose.

An American is free to criticize his government's officials when they are wrong, in his or her own opinion. Then he is free to replace them, by majority vote.

Americans welcome people from all lands, all cultures, all religions, because they are not afraid. They are not afraid that their history, their religion, their beliefs, will be overrun, or forgotten. That is because they know they are free to hold to their religion, their beliefs, their history, as each of them choose.

And just as Americans welcome all, they enjoy the best that everyone has to bring, from all over the world. The best science, the best technology, the best products, the best books, the best music, the best food, the best athletes.

Americans welcome the best, but they also welcome the least. The nation symbol of America welcomes your tired and your poor, the wretched refuse of your teeming shores, the homeless, tempest tossed.

These in fact are the people who built America. Many of them were working in the twin towers on the morning of September 11, earning a better life for their families.

So you can try to kill an American if you must. Hitler did. So did General Tojo and Stalin and Mao Tse-Tung, and every bloodthirsty tyrant in the history of the world.

But in doing so you would just be killing yourself. Because Americans are not a particular people from a particular place. They are the embodiment of the human spirit of freedom. Everyone who holds to that spirit, everywhere, is an American.

So look around you. You may find more Americans in your land than you thought were there. One day they will rise up and overthrow the old, ignorant, tired tyrants that trouble too many lands. Then those lands too will join the community of free and prosperous nations.

And America will welcome them.

(This article was first published at National Review Online on September 25, 2001)

Here's my latest article over at National Review Online, published July 31, 2007:

Impoverished Poverty Program
Oh, no, Obama

Barack Obama announced last week his policy agenda to combat urban poverty. As president, he would spend an additional $6 billion a year for such things as:

• Providing funding in 20 cities across the country to replicate successful child- and youth-development programs like the Harlem Children's Zone in New York City and the Town Hall Education, Arts & Recreation Campus in the District of Columbia;
• Providing federal financial support for unwed fathers who help raise their children, while cracking down on those who fail to pay child support;
• Expanding the Nurse-Family Partnership program, which provides home visits by registered nurses to new low-income mothers and pregnant women;
• Providing $1 billion in funding for jobs programs that would place unemployed workers in temporary jobs and train them for permanent ones;
• Creating an affordable-housing trust that would finance the building of as many as 112,000 new low-income housing units in mixed income neighborhoods across the country;
• Providing capital for inner-city businesses through a national network of business incubators.

Obama has also proposed to index the minimum wage to increase each year with inflation.

Today is the last day before Congress goes on its annual August recess (iow, it goes a month without causing more harm). On top of that good news is this: the pressure put on the Senate Judiciary committee by the American Civil Rights Union and others has resulted in the committee finally approving the nomination of Judge Leslie Southwick, passing him on to the full Senate for a vote sometime after the recess.

***A special note of recognition in favor of committee member, Dianne Feinstein, who has once again proven herself to be one of the last reasonable liberals on the Hill. Feinstein joined nine Republicans in voting for Southwick (nine Democrats voted against him). "I truly believe the concerns outlined about Judge Southwick are outweighed by his service to the country, by the many cases he sat on," Feinstein said to the committee yesterday. "If I believed he was racist, I wouldn't vote for him. But I don't." She has our grateful applause:

Judiciary Committee sends Southwick to full Senate (CitizenLink.org)
Bush Judicial nominee passes big Senate hurdle (FOXnews.com)
Left smears war hero judicial nominee (Matt Barber)
GOP fights for vote on Southwick (CitizenLink.org)

Other good news from Congress is their recognition that when the government rightly asks citizens to keep an eye out for suspicious activities and behavior in order to help prevent further terrorist attacks, those citizens should be protected from lawsuits:

John Doe versus Flying Imams (Debra J. Saunders)

But while the "Flying Imams" might not get their way, some other Muslims are getting all sorts of special treatment in the nation's government schools. Where is the ACLU when we need them?! Oh, that's right: they are defending the new concept of mosque as beneficiary of the state:

Some say schools giving Muslims special treatment (USA Today)
ACLU hypocrisy? (The Daily News Record)

A mother in Maryland has killed at least four of her children upon their births. Guess who is pushing for the right to infanticide? (hint: see previous headlines):

Legality of infanticide debated in Maryland (CitizenLink.org)
OC murder charge raises legal debate (The Delmarva Daily Times)

Here's what we need: a national handgun registry for pets. Certain animals are just too mentally unstable to handle firearms. I'm just waiting to the Brady Center (formerly Handgun Control, Inc.) to try to make some anti-Second Amendment lemonade out of this bizarre story:

Pet dog shoots owner in the back (WMC-TV Memphis)

* * * * *
Are you aware of any news that the ACRU should know about? Has the ACLU been up to no good in your state? Is the Bill of Rights being undermined in some way that America needs to know about? Are the Boy Scouts, a war memorial, or another American institution under attack in your community? Then tell us about it. Post a link in the comments section below, or send us an email. Good tips will be recognized in future postings of the "Headlines"

The following YouTube video is of an "ad" for the ACLU that appeared on FOX News's "1/2 Hour News Hour" program - all in good fun, of course. ;)

(HT: Power Line)

John Gizzi over at Human Event Online, in his latest "Gizzi on Politics" post, has written an important post regarding the ACLU's efforts to thwart local ordinances to protect against the crime and costs of illegal immigration. Here's the relevant section:

The ACLU Strikes Again -- And Again -- For Illegal Immigration

At a time when thirty two states have successfully enacted legislation to deal with illegal immigration and more than fifty local governments have either taken action or are considering it on the issue, there is a major roadblock that their actions will almost surely have to overcome: the American Civil Liberties Union.

In two of the communities that have taken high-profile action to stem an alarming tide of illegal immigration, the ACLU is already hot on the job. In fact, an ACLU suit (in which the group was joined by seven other plaintiffs) against the town of Hazelton, Pennsylvania was recently upheld in U.S. District Court. Facing a rising tide of overcrowded housing and crime because of illegal immigrants, Hazelton Mayor Lou Barletta won enactment of the Illegal Immigration Relief Act, which suspended business licenses of employers who knowingly hire illegal alien and also penalized landlords who rent to them. Once the measure took effect, Barletta told me in June, "you could see the [illegal] people leaving....There was nothing to keep them there when employers and landlords were going to check them out."

Now Barletta and the city fathers must go the U.S. Court of Appeals in an attempt to overturn the decision, issued by a Clinton-appointed district judge, James Munley.

In Prince William County, Virginia, County Supervisor John Stirrup was inspired by Barletta's original measure (which he read about in HUMAN EVENTS) and offered a tough measure of his own to deal with the mounting illegal immigration problem: permitting the county police force to ask residents if they are illegal immigrants and, if found to be in the country illegally, arresting them and sending them on to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency for deportation. Following a crowded and stormy public meeting, the eight-member Board of Supervisors in Virginia's second-most populous county voted unanimously last month to enact the Stirrup measure.

And -- you guessed it! -- the ACLU was on the job again. In a letter sent to the supervisors on July 9th -- the day before the vote on the Stirrup measure -- ACLU Executive Director Kent Willis and Legal Director Rebecca Glenberg sent a letter denouncing "this ill-conceived resolution" and warning of "legal and policy problems that will have a severe impact on the civil liberties of Prince William County residents."

So, as Congress remains vague on what it will do to deal with the problem and local communities deal with what they say is a crisis that hits home, forewarned is forearmed: the ACLU is out there, waiting.

Here's my latest article, which ran in today's Human Events Online:

President Bush and the Constitution aren't Enemies

The latest spate of articles accusing the Bush Administration of trampling the US Constitution in prosecuting the War in Iraq have quoted Bruce Fein, cited variously as a "conservative lawyer" and "a deputy attorney general in the Reagan Administration." He is not being quoted because he is a reliable source but because he says what the opponents of the war want said. Factual inquiry stops there.

On 5 August, John Diaz, Editorial Page Editor of The San Francisco Chronicle penned the latest anti-war tirade about President Bush's July 17 Executive Order freezing the assets of certain persons who are aiding the enemy in Iraq. Bruce Fein was liberally quoted.

Diaz decries the Order as,"Bush's most brazen defiance of the Constitution." But the country and intellectual argument in general would be greatly served if he, Mr. Fein and most members of the press would bother to crack a history book. For instance, when the US declared war on Japan and Germany, one of its first acts was to freeze the assets of Japanese and German companies in the US. One of those was Bayer Aspirin, which was a subsidiary of a German firm. Oh, the aspirin factories stayed open, pumping out those useful pills. But they were placed under trusteeships, with none of the profits repatriated to Germany. After the War, things all got sorted out.

It is only common sense in any war, to shut off the economic benefits to your enemy. Dollars, and products, in enemy hands turn into weapons that kill Americans. What part of that doesn't Diaz understand?

The Diaz article further proclaims the President's Order "particularly troubling in the hands of a White House that has suggested that domestic war critics are emboldening U.S. enemies in Iraq." Mr. Diaz appears unaware that items seized in wartime to keep them out of enemy hands or to serve the purposes of American troops, are legal seizures as long as compensation is paid -- after the war is over. And, some criticisms of war policies do aid the enemy, like the America First effort headed by Charles Lindbergh in WW II, whose purpose was to keep America neutral, and out of the war against Germany.

Bruce Fein commits the greatest hyperbole, however, by claiming the Order "is the greatest encroachment on civil liberties since the internment of Japanese Americans in World War II." Now, I know Bruce Fein. I used to respect him as having a fine, legal mind. Past tense.

At the time, and to its disgrace, the US Supreme Court ruled 6-3 to uphold the internment of the West Coast Japanese-Americans. Forty years later, the test case, Korematsu v. US was reversed because the original decision was found unconstitutional. Either Bruce does not know the history of the WWII internments, in which case he should have kept quiet about it. Or, he did know and falsified the facts.

Another bete noire of Fein and the anti-war left is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), just amended by Congress over the opposition of Democrats. FISA, of course, provides the mechanism for surveilling terrorists' contacts with people in the United States. (The President has Constitutional authority, as the FISA court has held, to gather intelligence overseas without court approval.)

The truth is that wars are not fought (and won) by lawyers. The US did not say please and thank you before breaking the Japanese naval code in WW II. Americans storming the beaches in Europe or the Pacific then did not go ashore with arrest warrants naming specific enemy to be arrested and "brought to justice" in US courts. Gathering intelligence while protecting your sources is as important to warfare as the movements of armies and navies.

The Diaz article wouldn't be complete without the obligatory quote from the ACLU's national security counsel that "This order could have a serious chilling effect on charitable contributions intended to ease the suffering in Iraq." Ahem. We have several on-going criminal trials in the US today concerning Islamic "charities" charged with using gifts to buy bombs, weapons and ammunition. In the ACLU's worldview, if there even a remote possibility of something having a charitable purpose, you let the money go through. But to a President in wartime if there's a possibility of "charity" being turned into bombs and bullets, you stop the money flow.

Fein asserts that, "'King George III really would have been jealous of this power." (Bruce, King George DID have this power, and used it in all areas of British control during the American Revolution.) Look it up. Mr. Diaz concluded by observing that, "The framers of our Constitution, however, would be appalled." What nonsense. When the Founders mutually pledged their "lives, fortunes and sacred honor," to the cause of freedom in signing the Declaration of Independence, it was a real commitment, not a mere political gesture.

The Founders understood that the Constitution was not a suicide pact. They would respect the efforts of a modern American government to use every legal means to prevail in a war. The Founders would not be appalled at President Bush's actions. They would be appalled at the gross misunderstandings of Messrs. Fein and Diaz of the history of the US and its Constitution.

The following is an article of mine that ran in UPI papers on September 19, 2002 - after we had declared and commenced war on anti-American terrorists but before the Iraq War:

Commentary: Are we at war?

The United States does not legitimately go to war because the president says so. Or because the United Nations, or NATO, or any other organization says so. Or even because some other nation commits an act of war against it.

The only legal way for the United States to go to war is stated in the Constitution, which gives Congress the power "To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal...." The Framers gave that power to Congress, and only Congress, because they were mindful of European wars begun by kings, without the consent of the people who paid the price in blood and taxes.

So, are we now at war? Contrary to what many careless commentators have said and written for months, we are at war now. Why? Because Congress has already acted as the Constitution requires.

By John Armor

In the August 20 edition of Newsweek, there is a column by Jonathan Alter entitled, "I Know What You Did Last Summer." In the guise of reporting facts, it reports instead the personal opinion of Mr. Alter that the extension of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) "sold out the Constitution," specifically the Fourth Amendment guarantee against "unreasonable search and seizure."

Alter claims that "historians ... will see this episode as a classic case of fear ... trumping principle amid the ancient tension between personal freedom and national security." Unfortunately, Alter's acquaintance with historians seems slight. He may know some names, but he hasn't read the books. Not about World War II, for instance.

He claims that the proceedings of the existing FISA court are kept secret "because they might be politically embarrassing." No, they are secret because revealing the details of spying on enemy agents while a war is going on will get people killed, including Americans. It is only now, more than half a century after WW II, that the best-kept secrets of intelligence gathering in that war, are becoming public.

Recent comments by Senators Leahy and Schumer critical of Justices Roberts and Alito demonstrate the senators' significant misunderstanding about the role of the Supreme Court and reveal their own flawed judicial philosophy.

According to Senators Leahy and Schumer, Justices Roberts and Alito misled the committee during their respective confirmation hearings regarding their willingness to uphold the traditions and precedents of the Supreme Court. Nothing could be further from the truth. Actually the Justices have been fairly incrementalist and supportive of judicial precedence in their approach to interpreting constitutional law.

The Attorney General of New Jersey has done the work of the ACLU in telling the Mayor of Morristown that his police should not check the immigration status of people pulled over for traffic stops or minor crimes. Mayor Donald Cresitello first proposed that in a letter to US Attorney Christopher Christie.

The US Attorney's reply claimed that this plan "directly contradicted" plans by the Attorney General of New Jersey, Anne Milgram, to check the immigration status of people charged with serious crimes or drunk driving. The US Attorney also wrote that checking status for less serious crimes is "something our office thinks should not happen."

The Mayor is trying to be more diligent in finding illegal aliens in his jurisdiction than either the State of New Jersey or the US government. And representatives of both the state and federal governments conclude - and put it in writing - that this is a bad idea. This happened in a state where the bodies are not yet cold in the ground for the assassination of three young people by an illegal alien who should long since have been behind bars, or thrown out of the US. One victim survived and told police what she saw. Two juvenile accomplices have apparently confessed.

In the entire article, only two people spoke the plain, unvarnished truth. The Mayor did so when he said the state's Attorney General had "handcuffed law enforcement in the state." The other burst of semi-honesty came from Maria Juega, of the Latin American Legal Defense and Education Fund, who said, "The mayor wants to purge immigrants from his town."

Ms. Juega is being semi-honest because she missed one word. The Mayor is not trying to "purge immigrants." If so, he would be packing his own bags, because his name sounds very Italian. He is trying to get "ILLEGAL immigrants" out of his town.

The deliberate sloppiness of claiming that steps against illegal immigrants are steps against all immigrants is how the ACLU and its allies - like this legal defense fund - try to defend the idea of open borders for the United States. They get away with this deception in part because members of the press, including Newsday in this very article, do not point out the critical deception. Perhaps in the midst of their personal bias, the press does not even notice this deception.

The facts for this article, but not the legal conclusions, are drawn from an article in Long Island Newsday on 27 August. (Go here to find this article on the Net)

Interesting groups of people show up, sometimes, filing amicus curia briefs in the US Supreme Court. This is especially true in the latest case to review the legal rights of illegal enemy combatants held at Guantanamo, Cuba. These are some of those groups which are supporting the ACLU idea that all prisoners, regardless of their status, are entitled to full-dress trials in Article III courts, rather than the kind of military tribunals under which Nathan Hale was tried and executed by the British, and Major John Andre was tried and executed by the Americans.

There is, of course, a more recent example: the trial, conviction, and execution of six of eight German saboteurs in 1942 by a military tribunal. That was approved by a unanimous Supreme Court in the Quirin case in that year.

Twenty retired federal judges signed onto the argument that the unanimous Quirin case was wrong, and that these detainees should be tried in ordinary courts, with public trials and all those benefits which are not permitted in military tribunals.

Tribunals are conducted in secret because in wartime letting the enemy know what you know will get people killed. We are at war; that's when military tribunals are used. Makes you wonder who appointed these judges, and what they did while they were on the bench. Reading law books on unanimous Supreme Court decisions was obviously not part of that.

A competent reporter might have inquired into the political backgrounds of those twenty judges to help the readers understand why they want the Supreme Court to overturn existing law. At the very end of the article, it says the judges "are both Republicans and Democrats." That phrase conceals, rather than reveals. How many of each? Appointed by whom? There is a tendency of most judges to follow the judicial philosophy of the President who appointed them.

Joining the judges are "two rear admirals and a Marine general." My understanding is that there are several thousand retired flag officers, which would include these three gentlemen. Again, the reader gets a better understanding, when the fact that three flag officers signed onto this brief, that 2,351 (or whatever) flag officers didn't sign on.

The final and most appalling group are "383 current or former members of the European and British parliaments." What business is it of residents of other nations, who are or have been members of foreign governments, to tell the US Supreme Court how to rule on the US Constitution for the safety and welfare of US citizens?

The 383 European politicians are described as having "divergent political views." Given the current membership of the European Parliament, that probably means they range from hard-left to left.

In another brief in the same case, "25 retired American diplomats" are quoted as claiming that anything less than full access to American courts for the detainees will be "seized upon by repressive governments as a license to incarcerate their own citizens and others with impunity."

Let's put this in context. Robert Mugabe, who has robbed and murdered his way through Zimbabwe so a nation which was once prosperous and exporting food now faces genocidal starvation, blames this on Britain. He's behind the times. These former American diplomats think he should blame the US.

Again, it would be helpful to the readers of this article to state what American administrations first appointed these former diplomats. That information might provide a strong clue why a small fraction of retired US diplomats are siding with the ACLU and against the Supreme Court on this critical issue.

The facts for this article, but not the legal conclusions, come from an Associated Press article in the San Diego Union-Tribune on 24 August. (Go here to find this article on the Net)

The supposedly anti-war organization, A.N.S.W.E.R., has just filed suit against the District of Columbia for fines imposed on the organization for defacing public property with its rally signs. Anyone who has traveled at all in D.C. is aware of the A.N.S.W.E.R signs, since they are plastered on light boxes and light poles, especially in the downtown area. The D.C. Department of Public Works has imposed fines in excess of $10,000.

The organization claims that its signs are posted with "a water-soluble glue that is easily removed." The fact that some of this group's signs from rallies years ago are still tenaciously clinging to public property after hundreds of rainstorms puts the lie to this claim. The group also claims that it is being discriminated against, as compared to "election or crime prevention posters."

The experienced traveler in D.C. knows that political posters sprout like weeds in the rain in election seasons, but are swiftly removed thereafter. Other posters, such as for rock bands, night spots, and other entertainments, are plastered on the plywood at construction sites. Those posters, conveniently, come down when the plywood comes down.

A.N.S.W.E.R. seems to be the only group which routinely pastes its posters on permanent, public structures, so the posters won't come down. Other users of posters usually don't paste over them, because other users generally lay off the light poles and transformers.

In its suit in the US District Court in D.C., the group claims that it is being subjected to a "politically targeted harassment campaign" by the D.C. government and the US Park Service. It seems the Park Service detained a couple of the group's people defacing a public park by pasting posters on it. It's unknown whether the ACLU is involved in trying to protect the group's right to deface public property. It is clear that the ACLU is a long-time political ally of the group.

The newspaper simply accepted A.N.S.W.E.R. at its word as an "anti-war" coalition. Had the reporter gone to its website and followed the links she would have discovered that the group favors certain wars and certain mass murderers. Several of its leaders have visited with and praised Kim Il Sung of North Korea. Its best-known organizer is Ramsay Clark, the lawyer who defended Saddam Hussein, among other tyrants whose primary virtue is virulent anti-Americanism.

A spokeswoman for D.C. injected some common sense into the discussion, saying, "The District hosts marches and protests all the time and we never weigh in on the merits of the issues, rather our role is to keep the city neat." The law suit will probably be thrown out. But justice will not be done unless both the group and its lawyers are fined with costs for engaging in frivolous litigation and wasting the court's time.

The facts for this article, but not the legal conclusions, come from an article in The Hill, published in Washington, D.C. on 21 August. (Go here to find this article on the Net)

Here's my latest Op-Ed, published yesterday at Human Events Online:

Gonzales is Gone but Dems Should Be Careful They Ask For

Score another one for the politics of personal destruction. Democrats have managed to run out of town one of President Bush's longest serving aides from Texas -- Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.' But they may want to put the champagne glasses down because this resignation may end up for the Democrats being a case of "be careful what you ask for."

For months the Democrats have been clamoring for Gonzales' resignation. And for months he and the White House have been giving back a figurative flip of the hand. Even major media critics such as the New York Times and the Washington Post recently came to accept that Gonzales was here to stay.

But this didn't stop senior Democrats and their insurgents in the blogosphere. They managed to escalate things to the point of a potential constitutional crisis between the Legislative and the Executive Branch. While there were many high minded claims made about the fight, the truth is for Democrats the battle over Gonzales was an essential tool in making up for signature failures by the Democratic controlled Congress: slow-walking ethics reform, inability to get the appropriations process on track, and having no real plan for dealing with the war in Iraq.

And what a great tool it was. But while Attorney General Gonzales proved to be a remarkably effective whipping boy for Washington Democrats, his departure could potentially leave Democrats without any distractions to turn the focus away from themselves and their own lack of achievements.

The 110th Congress has been a remarkable failure up to this date -- energy independence, taxes, appropriations, intelligence reform -- all are in various states of disarray. In fact, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi have mismanaged Congress so effectively that they've quietly accomplished what many thought was impossible, a 19 percent approval rating for Congress. And with Gonzales out of the picture the media will likely spend more time seeking answers about their leadership skills or lack thereof.

Additionally, without the fight over Gonzales, Democrats in Washington will actually be accountable for their actions in two areas in particular -- Iraq and national security. While the virulent anti-war wing of their party wants a unilateral removal of American troops, many Democrats realized early on that was impractical and even dangerous. They didn't however dare to admit this to their Jacobin supporters nor did they wish to take any pressure off of Republicans.

Early on after the elections, the anti-war wing of the party signaled that they would punish Democrats if they didn't act accordingly. And Gonzales proved to be essential to get them past that point. Now that he's leaving town, many of these activists are going to start clamoring for action by the Democrats -- action that Democrats have been loath to admit was never going to happen. The other part of this equation involves national security -- in particular anti-terrorism measures. Almost every major Democrat candidate running for President is opposed to the strong measures put forward by the White House as part of the recent Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act reform and so did a majority of House Democrats. In the backdrop of the Gonzales fight, Democrats were free to do this with impunity and only at the last minute offered up a face saving 6 month trial period for these updates. They've done this all year without so much as a whimper from the press. Now that Gonzales can't be used as their pretext, they'll likely have to explain why their party has an almost visceral hostility to measures that safeguard the American people.

Another consequence of Gonzales' departure is that naming a replacement will give President Bush a needed opportunity to consolidate support among conservatives. Especially after the immigration debacle, the President has needed to make a major effort to reach out to the activists within his own party. This effort could happen a couple of ways: by the naming of the replacement or by announcing a major new domestic policy. On the one hand, the President could name Ted Olson as Gonzales' replacement. Conservatives would be excited and even if a fight from the left ensued it would galvanize Republicans. More importantly the fight would also reveal to the rest of America how much invested the Democrats are in for obstructionism solely for its own sake. Such a revelation would likely add additional clarity to the ongoing obstruction of President Bush's judicial nominees. A win here would likely raise the President's approval ratings and could get more of his nominees confirmed.

But the president -- having named Solicitor General Clement as acting Attorney General -- seems more inclined to avoid a politically-regenerating fight. But President Bush could still focus his energies on a major policy announcement in the fall, such as a push for a new federal flat tax or the creation of a new Grace Commission tasked with the responsibility of eliminating wasteful government programs. Doing either would signal a commitment to push conservative principles for the duration of his term. And doing so without being in the midst of an ongoing fight over Gonzales would mean that Democrats would be forced to fight on territory they aren't used to. A win here would confound the punditry and would tremendously reinvigorate Mr. Bush's presidency.

Democrats have gotten comfortable pretending that the only problem facing America was the competence and mendacity of Alberto Gonzales. Pretending to long for the days of John Ashcroft as Attorney General worked for a season. But now things have changed and if they're not careful, Democrats will likely be the saddest to see Gonzales go.

Below is the text of my letter on behalf of the American Civil Rights Union to the Guilford County School Board of North Carolina, in response to their plans to suppress the recruiting efforts and meetings of the Boy Scouts in the county's school districts:

August 27, 2007

Dear School Board Member:

We understand that the Guilford County School Board will consider a couple of proposals relating to the Boy Scouts at its meeting this Thursday night, August 30. One proposal, allegedly based on safety concerns, would prohibit the Scouts and others from meeting in District schools during after school programs until 6 pm each night. The Scouts would have to hold any of their meetings at schools after 6pm.

Another proposal would prohibit the Scouts from distributing literature to other students and their families through the school's notice distribution system that provides flyers to students to take home to their parents.

The federal Boy Scouts of America Equal Access Act, 20 USC 7905, Section 9525 of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, as amended by Section 901 of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, provides,

"Notwithstanding any other provision of law, no public elementary school, public secondary school, local educational agency, or State educational agency that has a designated open forum or a limited public forum and that receives funds made available through the Department shall deny equal access or a fair opportunity to meet to, or discriminate against, any group officially affiliated with the Boy Scouts of America, or any other youth group listed in title 36 of the United States Code (as a patriotic society), that wishes to conduct a meeting within that designated open forum or limited public forum, including denying such access or opportunity or discriminating for reasons based on the membership or leadership criteria or oath of allegiance to God and country of the Boy Scouts of America...."

The school district cannot evade its responsibilities under this federal law through a sham claim regarding safety that is dubious on its face. We have seen no evidence that after school meetings by the Boy Scouts have raised any safety concern. Transparently, safety concerns are raised by requiring children to come back to school after dark for their meetings.

Similarly, under the federal law, the Boy Scouts cannot be prevented from using a school's notice distribution system regarding their meetings at the school if any other outside group, or any student club or organization affiliated with an outside youth or community group, is allowed to use the notice distribution system. This would include the Red Cross, Selective Service, or the local homeless shelter.

We would be happy to receive and review any materials justifying these two proposals. But absent such a convincing demonstration, if the School Board adopts either or both of these proposals, we will seek an investigation by the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Education. Among the possible sanctions that could result from such an investigation is the loss of federal education funds for the school district.

In addition, if our investigation of the school district's policies leads us to conclude that the rights of public school students in Guilford County are being violated, we will not hesitate to bring legal action to vindicate and enforce those rights.

Sincerely,

Peter J. Ferrara
General Counsel

From the study:

Whether causative or not, the consistent international pattern is that more guns equal less murder and other violent crime. Even if one is inclined to think that gun availability is an important factor, the available international data cannot be squared with the mantra that more guns equal more death and fewer guns equal less death. Rather, if firearms availability does matter, the data consistently show that the way it matters is that more guns equal less violent crime.

Download file, courtesy of the Center for Individual Freedom. (Total file runs 49 pages and is 610.52kb)