The Fourth Amendment explicitly affirms the “right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.” The Fifth Amendment in its Self-Incrimination Clause enables the citizen to create a zone of privacy which government may not force him to surrender. The 14th amendment “due process clause” has been interpreted to also affirm a right to privacy.

https://www.aclu.org/other/students-your-right-privacy

Sure sounds like rights to privacy are right there in the bill of rights though, an addendum to the constitution, as explained in numerous Supreme Court rulings.

<SIGH>. I thought you said “Pedantry is tiresome. Tell your friends.” Maybe take your own advice?

Some light reading…. In January 1973, the Supreme Court issued a 7–2 decision in McCorvey's favor ruling that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides a "right to privacy" that protects a pregnant woman's right to choose whether to have an abortion. It also ruled that this right is not absolute and must be balanced against governments' interests in protecting women's health and prenatal life.[4][5] The Court resolved this balancing test by tying state regulation of abortion to the three trimesters of pregnancy: during the first trimester, governments could not prohibit abortions at all; during the second trimester, governments could require reasonable health regulations; during the third trimester, abortions could be prohibited entirely so long as the laws contained exceptions for cases when they were necessary to save the life or health of the mother.[5] The Court classified the right to choose to have an abortion as "fundamental", which required courts to evaluate challenged abortion laws under the "strict scrutiny" standard, the highest level of judicial review in the United States.

Speaking of Trump, he should be boiled in KFC oil for this alone.

Hundreds Of Parents Separated From Their Kids Under Trump Still Can’t Be Found: ACLU

I think the supreme court agreed with me (edit: apparently I'm wrong there, they struck down that part of the law), voters sure do.

IDs cost money, so are a poll tax if they're required to vote. Make them free, you erase that argument. Then you only have to solve accessibility.

Tens of millions of Americans don't have ID. Trump thinks you need one to buy bread because he's never done it, but has also likely never needed ID either...why would he?
If you're paid in cash and can't afford to drive, who needs ID?
https://www.aclu.org/other/oppose-voter-id-legislation-fact-sheet

That's the only thing you took issue with? That's real progress. So forget the mail in vote fraud fraud, and we're agreed that universal voting would kill the Republican party and they only survive by voter suppression.

I picked Illinois nazis because that is (or was) the US standard; they were allowed to march in Skokie.

https://www.aclu.org/issues/free-speech/rights-protesters/skokie-case-how-i-came-represent-free-speech-rights-nazis

This infantile lie over a narcissistic vendetta against a dead American War Hero by a draft dodging business failure and liar and his sycophants comes the day after they were caught lying under oath about adding citizenship questions to the census. Fortunately, the estranged daughter of Thomas Hofeller, who's involvement the administration had hidden and denied under oath, found and turned over hidden hard drives in his effects outlining his significant involvement to the ACLU, actually proving he orchestrated the addition and personally drafted the letter from the DOJ to the Commerce Department that instigated the addition to create a "structural electoral advantage for Republicans and non-Hispanic whites" and a "disadvantage to Democrats". His records also outlined a study he did in 2015 that showed exactly that same outcome from the addition of the question, despite the administration claiming under oath that the idea was first suggested by administration officials in 2017 without outside involvement or studies.
The administration has been given until 10am Friday to address this evidence of perjury by multiple officials.

Edit: and this morning he tweeted he had no part in Russia helping him get elected....which he later realized was an admission that he's an illegitimate president elected because of help from our enemy. The dumb just never stops from the Biggest Loser in Cheat.

I'm kinda surprised the ACLU came out against this, New Jersey has already done something like this and it's worked out pretty well for them so far, or so I've heard.
Not to say that their concerns about bias aren't totally valid, but this is still a step in the right direction as the old system effectively had the poor doing time for a crime they hadn't even been convicted of yet.

If dick head liberals wouldn't try every way to ban guns then the NRA would not have to push gun owner rights so hard.

ACLU and NAACP are push just as hard for their agenda.

Good guys with guns are needed to stop bad guys with guns.



2nd amendment is rightfully needed.

Texas City Tells People No Hurricane Harvey Aid Unless They Promise Not to Boycott Israel

Say what now?!

Verification not to Boycott Israel. By executing this Agreement below, the Applicant verifies that the Applicant: (1) does not boycott Israel; and (2) will not boycott Israel during the term of this Agreement.

Our legal system up here already has codified that 'idiocy', and it's been in place quite awhile.

The women's only clothing optional spa that tried to say 'no penises allowed' is legally at odds with the provincial human rights code:
http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/male-genitalia-policy-spurs-backlash-at-toronto-women-s-spa-1.3456844

The Canadian charter of human rights also lists freedom from discrimination as being no different for choice/behaviour things like religion, alongside birth traits like race or gender. So legally our system doesn't think rejecting a clergy application for being atheist as any different to rejecting it because of race.

And I kind of hate using a 'trivial' and much trumpeted example from America but a bakery not wanting to make a cake based on people's sexual preferences was declared illegal:
http://aclu-co.org/court-rules-bakery-illegally-discriminated-against-gay-couple/

I'll try to summarise my last paragraph better.

The Democratic party needs to reach out to people that didn't vote Hillary. They are instead choosing to condemn those that didn't vote Hillary as racists or friends of racists. They need to be doing the exact opposite. They need to find things to compromise on and reach out to the people that didn't vote Hillary. That doesn't have to necessarily be on any of the ideas I've tossed out above, but they've gotta do something.

A last point, the moral relativism or correctness of the cause here isn't the only thing that matters. If you can't convince a majority of the population that you are on the side of their self interest and liberties and freedoms, then you are going to lose. The things I've listed are examples of the left taking away freedoms that many on the right consider important or even fundamental to them. If no compromises can be made, the Democrats haven't got much reason for optimism about the next election looking any better.

You obviously haven't been watching too much of the footage then, and you've bought the narrative hook, line and sinker.

The "anti protestors" showed up with bottles of quick dry cement, balloons filled with urine and feces, fireworks, glass bottles, mace, hairspray cans used as impromptu flamethrowers etc. Plenty of signs advocating the scalping/punching of nazi's of course. But yeah, totally impromptu and they were totally peaceful... 8 |

After the ACLU stepped in to get the permit reinstated for the right wing rally, the police the next day were ordered to stand down, leaving the rally attendees with zero protection and access to the event required passing through the anti-protester crows, which precipitated rapidly in to violence. Funny that, right? Almost like the powers that be set the whole thing up to guarantee it turned in to a riot... And then there's the grandstanding afterwards by the (D) mayor about those horrible racists... /grin

This has been documented by many left, right and center sources for anyone who bothers to look for it. It's less to do with Trump and more to do with the constant narrative that white = shit and how people are getting pissed off about it.

Far, far too easy just to label them all Trump loving nazi's than invest even the slightest bit of effort in to trying to work out what's truly going on, eh? \= |

I have no interest in defending Trump.

...Yeah, you smell it coming. BUT:

Budgetary concerns for telling trans people "thanks but no thanks" regarding desire to serve in the military might possibly be defensible and comparable to other conditions / states / whatever.

Manning was in jail (whether you think that deserved or not) and got ACLU assistance to be provided with hormone therapy and eventually gender reassignment surgery, because it was deemed psychologically damaging to withhold them. That's some pretty expensive treatment. Paid with tax dollars.

Perform a thought experiment and replace barring trans people from military service with some other group that would similarly require expensive medical maintenance. There's a pretty good example available: Type 1 Diabetes, requiring insulin. And guess what -- diabetics are barred from military service. If you develop diabetes while in the military it isn't grounds for discharge, but if you have it beforehand and want to join up you're SOL.

Back to trans. Do I personally think that they should be barred from service? No, not based purely on that. But if somebody feels that they need hormone replacement and/or gender reassignment surgery, I think they should be paying for that themselves, not on government / military dime.

I'll admit that I see those things not as necessary, but elective. Maybe that's unfair, but at what point does it become ridiculous? Can bald soldiers get hair transplants? Botox? Breast implants?

Trans people want to serve and either A) don't need hormone replacement / gender reassignment or B) are willing to pay out of pocket for them? Sign 'em up. Otherwise, it becomes murky. If that seems insensitive / bigoted, sorry. But plenty of things beyond your control can make you ineligible for military service.


**edit:
Oh, forgot to mention. Do I think Trump really had that sort of argument in mind when he made this decision? HELL NO. He's a spiteful prick. He probably did it for a combination of trying to curry favor with prick GOP congressclowns and just to prod.

For your collection:
https://twitter.com/ACLU/status/877916375209181184

A comment from Youtube:
"So, this horrible and blatant act of racism happened to occur to a former ACLU civil liberties counselor who majored in Critical Race Studies -- described as a major aimed at "naming one's own reality" by "using narrative to illuminate and explore experiences of racial oppression." Isn't it ironic and unfortunate that this would happen to her of all people?

What's also a little ironic is that Ms. Suh not only received these texts from a "Tami," but also happens to have a Facebook friend named "Tami" who posts on Facebook about "Tiny House Listings" -- a house rental service.

Speaking of which, it's kind of interesting that Tami showed up as "Tami" on Ms. Suh's phone, rather than as a phone number, isn't it? And there's a photo for Tami too. That means Tami is saved as a contact. It's a little odd for some random Airbnb host that Ms. Suh never met in-person to be a contact with a photo on her phone, isn't it?

Interestingly, if you look at Facebook-friend "Tami's" photos, they're all sort of artistic, colorful photos of inanimate objects -- just like Tami's photo in the texts.

If I didn't know better, I would almost, almost think that this stilted, formal, perfect little racist exchange between house-renter Tami and critical race studies major Ms. Suh, and the passionately tearful speech in the rain that followed -- why was she making speeches in the rain anyway? -- was, in fact, a carefully constructed "narrative" that Ms. Suh conspired to create with her Facebook-friend Tami.

But hey, that couldn't be right, could it?"

Hmmmm...

On top of all this, according to several sources, including Edward Snowden, the FBI already have the ability to reset the number of attempts to unlock the phone. Here's an ACLU post about it:
https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-future/one-fbis-major-claims-iphone-case-fraudulent

According to the article, if there are too many attempts to unlock, the data on the phone doesn't get deleted, just the key to unlock that data. It's possible (and not all that difficult for an organisation like the FBI) to take a copy of the key ahead of time, and restore that key if they cause it to be wiped.

The money and manpower that have already gone into this case would easily cover the effort to go through this process. For those of you so inclined, this raises the question (and obvious answer) of why would the FBI go to so much bother to force apple to do it. You don't get a locked mass-murderer's phone and public support like this too often.

I've been watching for a good counter to that claim since I read it about a week ago, and haven't seen one. Anyone out there able to enlighten me?