Jesus Survives Latest ACLU Attack

I’ve been following this case for awhile and am pleased that the court didn’t give in to the ACLU’s ridiculous demand that a portrait of Jesus be taken off a wall inside a Louisiana courthouse:

A disputed portrait of Jesus Christ will remain at the Slidell city courthouse in Louisiana after a federal judge refused to grant a demand by the American Civil Liberties Union to have the painting removed.

The Jesus portrait, which had been on display in the courthouse for more than a decade, had spurred the ACLU to file a lawsuit claiming that the display violated the separation of church and state.

An interesting fact you won’t hear from others covering this story, especially those who sided with the ACLU, is that the judge who dismissed the case, Ivan Lemelle, is a President Clinton appointee.

Yet expect many to blame the ruling on President Bush’s efforts to Christianize the nation and drive the courts in a fundamentally conservative direction.

No Room for Jesus in Court

The clock is ticking for a Slidell, Louisiana courthouse that is being threatened by the American Civil Liberties Union with a lawsuit if it doesn’t remove its lobby portrait of Jesus this week. It looks like the Ten Commandments battle all over again:

“We were ambushed. We didn’t know a complaint had been made. The first notice we got was a letter from the ACLU — that was as I was walking out of the office, it was handed to me. And before I had even got into my vehicle, I had a call from a journalist wanting a response,” Judge Jim Lamz said.

The organization said the portrait’s presence in the court building serves to advance religion.

“Our money has God’s name on it. The Pledge of Allegiance has God’s name on it. Congress opens up with a prayer. And they run around like chickens with their heads cut off, that this is fostering religion. I don’t think it fosters anything. I don’t think that’s what the Founding Fathers had in mind,” Mayor Ben Morris said.

I personally don’t have a problem with the portrait as I believe it has as much influence on “advancing religion” as the money in my pocket that proclaims “In God We Trust” does. But you know, somebody will be bored enough to see this one through.

Free Speech is in the Eye of the ACLU

Two stories today on the ACLU. In the first one the organization is angry at a school for suppressing free speech. In the second they’re angry at a school for not suppressing free speech.

Here the ACLU “pushes” free speech:

The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio has demanded that Cincinnati State Technical and Community College stop interfering with a campaign aimed at increasing wages and health care for janitors on campus.

On Thursday, the ACLU of Ohio sent a letter to Cincinnati State President Ron Wright expressing concern about, among other things, action taken against a student for distributing flyers that encouraged recipients to sign a petition and e-mail Wright in support of the school janitors, who work for a private company.

“This appears to be a classic example of government silencing speech because they disagree with the message,” ACLU of Ohio Legal Director Jeff Gamso said in a statement.

And here’s a classic example of an ACLU lawsuit filed to punish a school for not stopping free speech:

The American Civil Liberties Union and the Tangipahoa Parish School Board are squaring off over prayer for the sixth time.

The ACLU has filed suit over a prayer said at a public high school graduation last month. According to the suit, the school knew a prayer would be included in the program that included “Lord, we thank you” and “in Jesus’ name.”

The ACLU claimed the board did nothing to stop the prayer.

Well get out the ropes ’cause it’s time to hang some board members. I mean, how on earth could they have allowed such a travesty to take place? Weren’t there like, non-religious people at the ceremony at risk of fainting? Somebody please send a donation TODAY to the ACLU so we can restore the constitutional rights that were clearly violated when God was mentioned in public, specifically the rights found in the First Amendment that I have generously reprinted:

“Congress School boards shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting allowing the free exercise thereof; or abridging allowing the freedom of speech;nor shall any person say the J-word or G-word at a high school graduation.

ACLU Happenings: Child Porn and Spotlighting Executioners

This week in ACLU Happenings, former head of the Virginia ACLU pleaded guilty to charges that he purchased child pornography so graphic that prosecutors called it “sadistic.”

Charles Rust-Tierney, 51, admitted that he accessed more than 850 pornographic images of children as young as 4, including a six-minute video depicting the sexual torture of children set to a song by the band Nine Inch Nails. Authorities said Rust-Tierney used a computer in his 10-year-old son’s bedroom to view the files, some of which were contained on CDs bearing an American flag logo.

Not much one can really say about this other than the lack of media attention for such a prominent interest group. In other news, the ACLU wants to make the names of those involved in state and federal executions public. They claim it’s necessary to know who’s involved when investigating claims of executions gone awry possibly resulting in cruel and unusual punishment. The question is whether the benefit of knowing who took part in an execution is worth the risk of their safety with their identity being known.