Not your father's AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION anymore. ACLU, RIP!
Crazytown kills another non-profit non-partisan institution.
Eugene Delgaudio, president of Public Advocate observes:
"I have been critical of the American Civil Liberties Union in the past over their political positions. But their honest disagreements did not make them my enemy. Leaders of the ACLU convinced me several times by their actions to be honest to civil liberties and religous liberty when it fits their liberal mission to be non-partisan.
This then made them my public ally due to that demonstrated common loyalty to several common principles which they, the ACLU, made clear.
In a similar manner, Public Advocate is critical of both Democrats and Republicans and the leadership in both major parties. The ACLU could previously be counted on that. No more.
I have seen members of the ACLU executive committee at the state and local level actually follow their mission and assist the expression of religous beliefs and genuinely came to appreciate the moral compass of liberal ACLU leaders who, most of the time, just had a different opinion but arrived at their liberal positions thoughtfully.
The Brett Kavanaugh nomination battle seems to have clarified or made clear the death of the American Civil Li berties Union as a non-partisan group as observed by well known lawyer Alan Dershowitz, himself a brilliant potential nominee to the Supreme court over the years, said Delgaudio.
In the Washington Examiner, "Alan Dershowitz: ACLU's opposition to Brett Kavanaugh sounds its death knell" details the financial rewards for leaving or reversing the ACLU's founding purpose of "criminal rights" mantra (innocent until proven guilty) for cash bonanza of "guilty until proven innocent".
Deshowitz writes:
Now that Brett Kavanaugh has been confirmed, it is appropriate to look at the damage caused by the highly partisan confirmation process. Among the casualties has been an organization I have long admired.
After Politico reported that the American Civil Liberties Union was spending more than $1 million to oppose Kavanaugh's confirmation to the Supreme Court, I checked the ACLU website to see if its core mission had changed - if the ACLU had now officially abandoned its nonpartisan nature and become yet another Democratic super PAC. But no, the ACLU still claims it is "nonpartisan."
[More: Former ACLU leaders blast 'appalling' anti-Brett Kavanaugh ad campaign]
So why did the ACLU oppose a Republican nominee to the Supreme Court and argue for a presumption of guilt regarding sexual allegations directed against that judicial nominee?
The answer is as clear as it is simple. It is all about pleasing the donors.
The ACLU used to be cash poor but principle-rich. Now, ironically, after Trump taking office, the ACLU has never become so cash-rich, yet principle-poor. Before Donald Trump was elected president, the ACLU had an annual operating budget of $60 million dollars. When I was on the ACLU National Board, it was a fraction of that amount. Today it is flush with cash, with net assets of more than $450 million dollars. As the ACLU itself admitted in its annual report ending 2017, it received "unprecedented donations" after President Trump's election. "Unprecedented" it truly has been: the ACLU received $120 million dollars from online donations alone (up from $3-5 million during the Obama years).