Aclu

THE AMERICAN Civil Liberties Union plans to file two federal lawsuits today against the Philadelphia Police Department for wrongfully arresting a journalism student for photographing a cop and a West Philly woman who was observing police action in 2011. The latest filings will be the ACLU's third this year in which citizens have been arrested for videotaping, photographing or observing police activity. Another was filed in January. These suits also come a week after a Philadelphia woman sued the city after a cop allegedly beat and arrested her and a friend for videotaping an arrest two years ago. "Certainly the right to observe police officers and their interaction with the public is at the core of what the First Amendment is supposed to protect," ACLU attorney Molly Tack-Hooper said, adding that the latest cases are not isolated.

EVER USE this brand of shorthand? In deciding what you think of an issue, you look to see who's for it and who's against it - at least to get started. If retiring Congressmen Bob Barr and Dick Armey - or their colleague Henry Hyde - were against something, liberals would be for it. Yet the war on civil liberties - er, terrorism - has removed that simple short cut. Since Sept. 11 , Attorney General John Ashcroft has moved to put increasing numbers Americans under surveillance without benefit of court orders, harnessing new technologies to track the buying and reading habits, as well as the travel itineraries, of ordinary citizens.

Quick, what do the following people have in common: astronomer Carl Sagan, the Episcopal bishop of Washington, D.C., and former American Bar Association president Chesterfield Smith? Time's up. They're not only American Civil Liberties Union sympathizers. They're on its national advisory council! That's ACLU, in case you don't recognize it written out. George Bush is banking that voters will take his shorthand description of that organization as a bunch of left-wingers, maybe even Commies, since they're "card-carrying" types.

When Vice Pesident George Bush, before the Republican platform committee, called Gov. Michael S. Dukakis "a card-carrying member of the American Civil Liberties Union," he injected into the campaign a pale whiff of the witch- hunting McCarthyite '50s. How desperate Bush must be to become so shrill and so ill-advised! The accusation might be hot stuff at Yale's Skull and Bones but it's too esoteric to set Peoria ablaze, where few have ever heard of the ACLU. Does Bush think it's subversive to care enough about the First Amendment to join an organization devoted to its preservation?

Downingtown public school officials seem hellbent on bedeviling the principle of separation of church and state, lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union contend. In a federal suit filed yesterday against the Downingtown schools, ACLU lawyers said permitting Christian clergy to pray at school events is unconstitutional and could make non-Christians "feel like second class citizens. " ACLU legal director Stefan Presser, in a hearing in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia, initially sought to block a minister from praying or preaching at tonight's commencement exercises for Downingtown Area High School in Chester County.

DENVER - A civil-liberties group plans to provide free representation to a 35-year-old Colorado man who faces criminal prosecution and a jail sentence for giving the finger to a Colorado State Patrol trooper. The American Civil Liberties Union says the gesture may be rude, but it is protected free speech. The ACLU says Shane Boor was driving to work in April when he saw a state trooper pull over a car. As Boor passed by, he extended his middle finger in the trooper's direction.

I tremble at the thought of what America would be like without the existence of the American Civil Liberties Union. Since 1920 when it was founded, the ACLU has been one of the foremost agencies in the battle to keep the flame of freedom alive. As citizens of the freest nation in history, we owe a measure of our liberty to this organization that has existed in controversy all the years it has fought to expand the rights of individual Americans. Despite the fact that the Bill of Rights was adopted almost 130 years before the founding of the ACLU, the rights of Americans were routinely denied both by government officials and political demagogues.

Imagine a work world where bosses search their employees' desks at will. Now, imagine being a kid and dealing with things like that regularly in school. Children's rights can be dramatically different. Schools can have some control over their students' clothing, behavior, writings, e-mail, locker content and under some circumstances, can even monitor their blood for drugs. The shootings in Littleton, Colo., in April intensified many of these regulations and even spurred new ones.

An official of the American Civil Liberties Union said yesterday it appeared that the district attorney's office was handling prosecution of the Sean Daily and Stephen Crespo murder cases differently because one victim was white and the other Puerto Rican. In a letter to District Attorney Ronald D. Castille, Stefan Presser, legal director of the Philadelphia chapter of the ACLU, called on Castille to "re- examine both the charges and bail of the defendants in the Daily case. " In a letter of response, Castille denied any partiality and said, "The charges and the bail in these two cases accurately reflect individual culpability and nothing more.

The American Civil Liberties Union's name is becoming a paradox, as the organization's commitment to a robust defense of civil liberties against the government continues to diminish. Take the issue currently before the U.S. Supreme Court of whether the Boy Scouts of America have a First Amendment freedom-of-association right to exclude homosexuals. Instead of defending the Boy Scouts' right of association, the ACLU has filed a brief arguing that the government can and should compel the Boy Scouts to accept gays as Scout leaders and members.

DENVER - Two men are pursuing a discrimination complaint against a Colorado bakery, saying the business refused them a wedding cake to honor their Massachusetts ceremony, and alleging that the owners have a history of turning away same-sex couples. As more states move to legalize same-sex marriage and civil unions, the case highlights a growing tension between gay-rights advocates and supporters of religious freedom. "Religious freedom is a fundamental right in America, and it's something that we champion at the ACLU," said Mark Silverstein, the legal director of the group in Colorado, which filed the complaint on behalf of the couple.

THE AMERICAN Civil Liberties Union plans to file two federal lawsuits today against the Philadelphia Police Department for wrongfully arresting a journalism student for photographing a cop and a West Philly woman who was observing police action in 2011. The latest filings will be the ACLU's third this year in which citizens have been arrested for videotaping, photographing or observing police activity. Another was filed in January. These suits also come a week after a Philadelphia woman sued the city after a cop allegedly beat and arrested her and a friend for videotaping an arrest two years ago. "Certainly the right to observe police officers and their interaction with the public is at the core of what the First Amendment is supposed to protect," ACLU attorney Molly Tack-Hooper said, adding that the latest cases are not isolated.

WASHINGTON - Black people are arrested for possessing marijuana at a higher rate than white people, even though marijuana use by both races is about the same, the American Civil Liberties Union reports in a new study. The ACLU's analysis of federal crime data, released Tuesday, found marijuana arrest rates for black people were 3.73 times greater than those for white people nationally in 2010. In some counties, the arrest rate was 10 to 30 times greater for blacks. In two Alabama counties, 100 percent of those arrested for marijuana possession were black, the ACLU said.

BLACK PEOPLE are five times more likely than white people to be arrested for marijuana possession in Philadelphia - and 10 times more likely in some parts of Pennsylvania - according to an American Civil Liberties Union report released yesterday that found coast-to-coast racial disparities in pot busts. The report, which blasted the nation's marijuana policy as a "fiscal fiasco," estimated that states spent $3.6 billion in 2010 alone to enforce marijuana-possession laws and make arrests, on average, every 37 seconds - with little to show for it. "It used to be focused more on crack and cocaine, but now half of all drug arrests in this country are for marijuana," said the ACLU's Ezekiel Edwards, the primary author of the report.

WASHINGTON - The pending nomination of James Comey to be FBI director began on Thursday to reopen old debates over George W. Bush-era national security policies. And despite Comey's well-publicized role in challenging some of the controversial practices, he has come under attack from civil liberties advocates. One day after President Obama's plan to nominate the former senior Justice Department official to run the FBI became public, the American Civil Liberties Union became the second civil liberties group to raise questions about Comey's involvement in the Bush administration's post-Sept.

Philadelphia police have committed "an intolerably high level" of civil rights abuses through their stop-and-frisk program, the American Civil Liberties Union said Tuesday, threatening new court action against the city. The state chapter of the ACLU, which has monitored the program for nearly three years, said in its first public report to U.S. District Judge Stewart Dalzell that nearly half the police stops in 2012 were unconstitutional and that few guns were found in the searches.

Philadelphia police have committed "an intolerably high level" of civil rights abuses through their stop-and-frisk program, the American Civil Liberties Union said Tuesday, threatening new court action against the city. The state chapter of the ACLU, which has monitored the program for nearly three years, said in its first public report to U.S. District Court Judge Stewart Dalzell that nearly half the police stops in 2012 were unconstitutional and that few guns were found in the searches.

SHILLINGTON, Pa. - The ACLU accused a Berks County school district Wednesday of blocking Internet content about gay people. The American Civil Liberties Union said Governor Mifflin School District's filtering software blocked sites that a student tried to access for research. That violates students' free-speech rights, the ACLU contends. The ACLU has sent a letter to Governor Mifflin asking that it reconfigure the software. A district spokeswoman did not return a message seeking comment.

More than three-quarters of New Jersey police departments failed to give the public correct information when they were asked how to file a complaint against officers, the American Civil Liberties Union has found. The organization Tuesday released a report based on a 2012 survey of 497 departments. It followed a similar study conducted in 2009 that produced similar findings. "The results remained disconcerting," the report said. "Once again, a majority of local departments provided inaccurate information in response to the most basic questions regarding individuals' rights to file [internal affairs]

More than three-quarters of New Jersey police departments failed to give the public correct information when they were asked how to file a complaint against officers, the American Civil Liberties Union has found. The organization Tuesday released a report based on a 2012 survey of 497 departments. It followed a similar study conducted in 2009 that produced similar findings. "The results remained disconcerting," the report said. "Once again, a majority of local departments provided inaccurate information in response to the most basic questions regarding individuals' rights to file [internal affairs]