Our Friends at the ACLU

If anyone loves a good fisking, Heaven knows it's me. And if anyone deserves to a good fisking, it's the ACLU. And Heather Mac Donald, from National Review Online, does a nice job of putting those terrorist loving jack-a$$es in their place.

Unreality Activists
For the ACLU, Bush and Ashcroft have created a climate of fear, not terrorists.

By Heather Mac Donald

It's official: The Left doesn't believe that Islamic terrorism exists. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, terror watch lists are nothing more than the product of John Ashcroft's paranoid imagination, and should play no more role in government policy than a compendium of his favorite anthems.


The ACLU's dismissal of terror information is just the latest manifestation of the Left's blindness to national-security reality. The only remaining question is why such posturers continue to influence national defense.

The ACLU's diatribe against terrorist watch lists comes as it is caught out in rank hypocrisy and deceit. This self-described fighter for freedom has been misappropriating hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in federal money, contributed by federal employees through a philanthropic payroll-deduction program. To participate in the program, a charity must certify that it does not employ or fund suspected terrorists included on government watch lists. (The necessity for this precaution was demonstrated just last week by the arrests of executives from the Holy Land Foundation, a Virginia-based Muslim charity, for funneling $12 million in charitable donations to Hamas killers.)

The ACLU eagerly signed the pledge (we will leave aside the ludicrous designation of the ACLU as a "charity") and opened up the federal money spigot. But it turns out that it had its fingers crossed behind its back. In the view of committed civil libertarians, you see, a terror watch list is nothing more than government totalitarianism in disguise. But doesn't it contain extremely dangerous people, you ask? We don't know and don't care, reply the civil libertarians. And so upon learning of the ACLU's promise not to fund terrorists, several board members accused it of "McCarthyism," tantamount to accusing George W. Bush of multilateralism.

Gee, ya think? There's more (lot more) to this article. Go check it out. It's a long read, but worth the time, I promise.