On Wed, May 25, 2005 at 11:46:14PM -0700, John Michael McCool wrote: > When backed by organizations with the clout and credibility of the > ACLU and NARAL, it's hard even for the hidebound to ignore these petitions.
Not everyone thinks the ALCU has all that much credibility anymore. See their stance on issues such as spam or certain forms of hate speech, for example. I've watched the ALCU take on a number of cases in which the person they were supporting were clearly doing something wrong. As one proud ALCU member put it, they have to in order to prevent the government from falling down a slippery slope and attacking people who have done nothing wrong. If I have not misunderstood the position of this individual, he was saying that it is necessary to protect a rather unpleasant guy's right to incite violence against minorities by getting a group of people together and telling them a slanted tale of the evils of said minority and encouraging them to "do something about it". His reasoning was that if a guy can't do that, next thing you know a person will be arrested for telling a group of people a (probably still) slanted story of the evils of McDonalds or Microsoft and encouraging them to "do something about it". I don't know that this is the stated position of the ALCU, but their actions seem to indicate that it could well be. Ideology is nice, but one clearly is wrong. The other is only wrong if people pick up baseball bats and shotguns and march down to the Golden Arches in the name of "justice". I'll end my rant here and veer back in the direction of topicality by saying thanks Larry for pointing out that this issue needs attention and also that Ron Wyden is involved. _______________________________________________ EUGLUG mailing list euglug@euglug.org http://www.euglug.org/mailman/listinfo/euglug
