The ACLU fights for people's Constitutional rights, nothing more.

They'll fight for a church, and they'll fight for NAMBLA.

It doesn't bother me. Why would the defense of someone's Constitutional rights bother me? I guess it would only bother you if you hate the Constitution, and therefore, hate America. :p

I'm reminded of the old saw, "Never argue with a fool, listeners (readers) may not be able to tell the difference."

"I personally do not believe in burning the flag. It's a personal belief, but I'll tell you something, I think people are overreacting, oh, just a little bit.

"Hey buddy, my daddy died for that flag." Well, I bought mine. Sorry. You know they sell them at K-Mart for three bucks, you're in, you're out, brand new flag, no violence was necessary.

"Hey buddy, my daddy died in the Korean war for that flag." What a coincidence - my flag was made in Korea!"

-Bill Hicks

Generally I agree with the ACLU's actions to support individuals and organizations Constitutional rights. I don't know all the facts about the NAMBLA case, but was told just this morning that NAMBLA presents information on its web site that may not be illegal, but can be reasonably construed as promoting illegal activity (how to keep young kids quiet after molesting them). If that is in fact true, I think the ACLU should reconsider because the first amendment rights do have limits. W.O. Douglas wrote a majority opinion that the first amendment doesn't include the right to shout "fire" in a crowded theater. It shouldn't include telling child molesters how to cover up their work, either.

Sincerely,

Salmo g.

I think to blame the ACLU for case law that isn't popular is ridiculous. Ask any Police Officer or Prosecutor that's been around for a while and they'll all tell you the same thing, BAD CASES make bad case law. In other words, when you try to cut corners or circumvent the law in you investigations you are asking for the courts to slap you, and they will. I also firmly believe that all of the founding fathers would be dues paying members of the ACLU.
Nobody died for that flag, they died for our country and our RIGHTS, it's nothing more than a symbol, a piece of cloth, I don't like to see someone burn the flag anymore than anyone else but I will certainly defend their right to do it.
I wonder how RB would react if it were a religion other than his that was being forced down our throats. That is exactly the reason Thomas Jefferson, who was a very religious man, pushed so hard for the seperation of Church and State.

Oh no your precious flag! "Please monsuier do not burn my precious flag" hahahaha. When i purchased my estate here in washington there were several of your flags on my property. I have been having my gardeners use them to transport compost...and clean the stables.

One of the workers on my estate has an american flag tattoed crudely on his bicep, you americans are so guache!. I hope for your sakes he does not intend to be cremated, lest you cry yourselves silly.

Perhaps you should worry less about your flag and concentrate on being able to make a decent bottle of vin?

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The Pledge of Allegiance - Senator John McCain


As you may know, I spent five and one half years as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War. In the early years of our imprisonment, the NVA kept us in solitary confinement or two or three to a cell. In 1971 the NVA moved us from these conditions of isolation into large rooms with as many as 30 to 40 men to a room.

This was,as you can imagine, a wonderful change and was a direct result of the efforts of millions of Americans on behalf of a few hundred POWs 10,000 miles from home.

One of the men who moved into my room was a young man named Mike Christian. Mike came from a small town near Selma, Alabama. He didn't wear a pair of shoes until he was 13 years old. At 17, he enlisted in the US Navy. He later earned a commission by going to Officer Training School. Then he became a Naval Flight Officer and was shot down and captured in 1967. Mike had a keen and deep appreciation of the opportunities this country and our military provide for people who want to work and want to succeed.

As part of the change in treatment, the Vietnamese allowed some prisoners to receive packages from home. In some of these packages were handkerchiefs, scarves and other items of clothing.

Mike got himself a bamboo needle. Over a period of a couple of months, he created an American flag and sewed on the inside of his shirt.

Every afternoon, before we had a bowl of soup, we would hang Mike's shirt on the wall of the cell and say the Pledge of Allegiance.

I know the Pledge of Allegiance may not seem the most important part of our day now, but I can assure you that in that stark cell it was indeed the most important and meaningful event.

One day the Vietnamese searched our cell, as they did periodically,and discovered Mike's shirt with the flag sewn inside, and removed it.

That evening they returned, opened the door of the cell, and for the benefit of all of us, beat Mike Christian severely for the next couple of hours. Then, they opened the door of the cell and threw him in. We cleaned him up as well as we could..

The cell in which we lived had a concrete slab in the middle on which we slept. Four naked light bulbs hung in each corner of the room.

As I said, we tried to clean up Mike as well as we could. After the excitement died down, I looked in the corner of the room, and sitting there beneath that dim light bulb with a piece of red cloth, another shirt and his bamboo needle, was my friend, Mike Christian. He was sitting there with his eyes almost shut from the beating he had received, making another American flag. He was not making the flag because it made Mike Christian feel better. He was making that flag because he knew how important it was to us to be able to Pledge our allegiance to our flag and country.

So the next time you say the Pledge of Allegiance,you must never forget the sacrifice and courage that thousands of Americans have made to build our nation and promote freedom around the world.

You must remember our duty, our honor, and our country "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible,with liberty and justice for all."

I still say until you americans can produce a good bttle of wine and a halfway decent loaf of bread, yur flag isnt worthy of wiping a frenchman's bottom.

When I'm as old as you AuntyM I sure hope I'm not as angry and embittered as you apparently are.

Senator John McCain...

Would that be the same John McCain the neocons villified as being unpatriotic during the bush campaign of 2000?

You changed my quote--imagine that.

Liberal name-calling reaches a new low

By Paul M. Weyrich
web posted April 24, 2000

The liberals clearly are running out of arguments that work. Their ideas have long been discredited. Big government solutions have failed. Permissive fam\ilies have disintegrated. Alternative lifestyles are death oriented. So what do you do when you can no longer be credible with what you advocate? Why, of course you call your opponent names.

For years now the left has labeled anyone who disagrees with them "racist" or "sexist" or homophobic". Ironically, by overreaching in the use of those terms they have devalued the case against those who really are racists, sexists or homophobes. Still, those descriptions of their political opponents have worn thin. They simply cannot make moderate politicians who happen to oppose affirmative action, or who oppose so-called gay marriage or who don't subscribe to the latest radical feminist agenda into racists or sexists or homophobes. It isn't working and it hasn't worked for some time now.

So what to do if you are a liberal? Well, you ratchet the charges up a few notches. The latest fad now in the increasingly scary world of apocalyptic liberalism is to label their opponents as crazy. The Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen says that Charlton Heston is nuts because his views on the culture war contradict today's notion of political correctness. Jesse Jackson says that Mayor Rudy Giuliani of New York "sounds like a mentally disturbed person" because the Mayor had defended police action in New York City respecting the shooting of unarmed suspects.

And so on the list goes on and on. Mind you these people are not saying that their opponents ideas are crazy. That is perfectly legitimate. There are many sane and rational people who have proposed absolutely insane and irrational ideas to solve one problem or another. That is because they perhaps don't really understand the nature of the problem or because they have bought into an unsound ideology that requires that they find a so-called solution to a problem that fits into their ideological framework regardless of reality or for any number of reasons. Ideas are often completely nuts even when their proponents are quite mentally sound. No, it has now become fashionable to label the proponents of ideas these liberals oppose as crazy. That is now a charge far worse than racist or sexist or homophobic. After all, if I personally am nuts, as opposed to this commentary being crazy, then I do not deserve to be listened to at all. We simply do not afford mentally ill people the time of day because by their nature what they say is not meaningful.

The idea of branding people crazy is not new. It was practiced for more than seven decades by the former Soviet Union. Dissidents there were not just enemies of the state because of their beliefs. They had to be mentally ill because after all to oppose the glories of the great Soviet Union was in and of itself proof that the person was out of his mind.

Now these days to oppose the most insane ideas propounded by liberals in this country is to be called mentally ill. If we let this sort of argumentation stand, then the whole national dialogue on issues will be devastated. We need to stand up and challenge this nonsense now before it becomes so accepted that we can no longer exercise our freedom of expression without the suggestion that we should be locked away for doing so.

That will be the next step, you see. It was liberals who unlocked the doors of our institutions and thus created the homeless crisis in the United States by insisting that most mentally ill people would be better off sitting on heating grates eating garbage than being cared for in mental hospitals. Their view, in the 1960s and '70s was that almost no one was really mentally ill. Now, since they have revived the category of being nuts, the next logical step will be for them to advocate that all of us who contradict their ideology and brand of this week's political correctness should be taken away to newly re-opened mental hospitals. Yes, they did that in the Soviet Union as well. Many perfectly mentally sound dissidents were treated for years in mental hospitals for their beliefs. They were even given mind-altering drugs in an effort to get them to confess that they were wrong.

That is exactly where all of this is headed if we don't stop it in its tracks. Each and every time we hear someone claiming that because a person has a certain belief in the political process he is mentally disturbed we have to call time out and insist that this is out of bounds. To say that my ideas are crazy is quite acceptable. To say that I am crazy is libel and slander.

If we succeed in stopping this absolutely intolerable practice of labeling people whose ideas you disapprove of as nuts we will force the liberals who use this tactic to debate the issues on the merits. Since they can no longer do so, if we win the first battle we will win the second as well.

Anyone want to guess how many times RB has called people names in his debates?

Then, guess how many times he's whined about OTHER people calling names.

"Hello pot, meet the kettle" comes to mind.

thats a mighty fine source you are quoting there! a five year old "web post"....welll, thats it im convinced! with a source like that, I do now believe liberal name calling has in fact reached a new low (at least as far back as 2000, who knows? maybe the liberals have been able to reach even lower since then?). Im totally sold. excellent post.

Actually he's right Aunty M. dont call him names. edit: right about you calling him names...but i havent been here long maybe there's some history i dont know about ...carry on...nevermind me.

do not be too hard on the lad Madmoiselle M.
The military is not a fitting career for someone of class and status ,someone such as..........theMillionaire. Perhaps your rival there is of superior breeding and therefor exempt from service...or perhaps they army will not accpet him with his spikey mohawk (you mentioned he was a punk rocker), I hear they have very stringent rules for your military in this country regarding boufant hairdos... I would agre tho that all good americans should enlist, absolutely! Someone has got to do this job and sure isnt going to be me or my garcons.

Man, I dunno. If you've seen some of the high-n-tights around here you'd swear the kid either had a dead cat on his head or a bad toupe. Not as bad as Karl Rove's comb-over, but still...

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OK DanS,

It's time to actually back up one of your statements--Other than jokingly referring to goharley as Klinger or goAMFharley (goharley is someone on the left who despite my disagreeing with him on political matters over 90% of the time I actually think is kind of witty and has a good sense of humor) How many times in the last 6 months have I referred to a board member with a personal attack or name other than their moniker or an acronym of said moniker?

I take politicians (public officials) and their politics to task all the time--but I try to be respectful of board members and steer clear of personal attacks and name calling.

I've said this before and it would be nice and very refreshing if more people (particularly those on the left) adhered to the same philosophy:

There's nothing wrong with attacking someones personal politics, but personally attacking someone because of their politics seems to be unnecessary, inappropriate and just plain childish.

So what you're saying is, that 10% of the time you're not in cranial-anal loopback?

Actually, concerning the name-calling thing, I don't think it makes any difference whether someone is a public figure or not. And in a perfect world, perhaps we could respect our elected officials enough that we would much rather call each other names than our nation's leaders.


Yeah, right. :rolleyes:

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So Aunty,

I'm still waiting for some recent examples where I've personally insulted or attacked PP board members by name....

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So in other words you're saying that I shouldn't be allowed to post anything you disagree with?

I thought liberals were all about tolerance and diversity?