Texas Gov. Rick Perry's 'On My Honor' Explains Attack on the Beloved Youth Organization and Leftist Attempts to Redefine American Values
AUSTIN, Texas /Christian Newswire/ — In his new book, On My Honor: Why the American Values of the Boy Scouts are Worth Fighting For, [Stroud & Hall Publishers] Texas Governor Rick Perry, examines the "scorched earth" attacks on the Boy Scouts of America over the last three decades by the secular leftist forces, explains the wider impact of this battle on the culture, and offers a rousing defense of this iconic institution and its impact on millions of young American men.
As a governor and an Eagle Scout, Perry tells of the Boy Scouts' growth and most importantly, its role in the development of character and leadership in young men. Yet, in recent years, the Scouts have been targeted by those who scoff at the Scouts' values and want to reverse its time-honored virtues such as "duty to God" and the Scout Oath's requirement to be "morally straight."
"Although the first attacks on the Boy Scouts seemed isolated and uncoordinated thirty years ago, we now see them as part of a larger movement to redefine American values," writes Gov. Perry. "If seen in the wider context of a great debate taking place in our society, then one is more likely to join the once silent majority who are now speaking out about the role of faith and family in society."
Readers of On My Honor will learn about:
- The nature of the litigation brought on by the ACLU regarding the Boy Scouts' commitment to God.
- Efforts of radical homosexuals to become Scout leaders and twist the founding principles of the organization.
- The tactics used to stop the Boy Scouts from meeting in schools and camping in public parks.
- How the United Way and employee-giving campaigns are excluding the Scouts from receiving donations.
Gov. Rick Perry hails from Paint Creek, Texas. Governor Perry was active in scouting and earned the high distinction of Eagle Scout. He assumed the office of Governor in 2000 and was elected to four- year terms in 2002 and 2006.
To schedule an interview with Governor Perry, please contact Kevin McVicker with Shirley & Banister Public Affairs at (703) 739-5920 or (800) 536-5920 kmcvicker@sbpublicaffairs.com.
Posted by Walt as ACLU at 11:39 PM EDT
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by Daniel Clark
There's a reason it's called the American Civil Liberties Union, and not the American Constitutional Rights Union. The ACLU and other liberal organizations like to say that they're defending the Constitution, but since the language of that document seldom coincides with their agenda, they've needed to devise a rhetorical fallback position. Hence the term "civil liberties," a concept whose definition is essentially a matter of individual choice.
Take a look at the controversy surrounding the NSA surveillance program. Critics charged that it violated the "right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures," as guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment. The flaws in that argument are both vast and plentiful. Electronic communications do not fit into the categories of "persons, houses, papers, and effects." Furthermore, the monitoring of those communications cannot be characterized as a search or seizure, and few people would consider the surveillance of phone calls and e-mails from known members of al-Qaeda to be unreasonable.
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Posted by Walt as ACLU at 12:03 PM EDT
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by Sher Zieve
Osvaldo Aldrete Davila is an admitted Mexican drug dealer who regularly transports Marijuana and other illegal narcotics across the US-Mexico border. In February 2005, US Border Patrol Agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean, who said Davila had a gun, fired on Davila and the drug dealer fled back across the border. It was later discovered that Davila had been hit, in one of his buttocks, by a bullet. The US Border Agents, not Davila, were convicted of "violating Davila’s civil rights".
For testifying against the Border Agents, drug dealer Davila was given immunity from prosecution on his own drug charges. Instead, Agent Ramos was sentenced to 11 years in prison and Agent Compean received a 12 year prison term. Davila is expected to renew his drug trade, as soon as possible. Note: The Mexican influence at the US border is growing even larger.
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Posted by Walt as U.S. Legal Issues, ACLU, CAIR, Immigration, U.S. Borders Issues at 10:46 PM EST
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In a report in World Net Daily:
A plan that would cut off the pipeline of taxpayer money that now flows into American Civil Liberties Union coffers has been advanced by the House Judiciary Committee.
The Public Expression of Religion Act, introduced by Indiana Congressman John Hostettler, now will move to the full House for a vote, he said in his announcement this week.
In an earlier post, ACLU Accused of Profiting at Taxpayer Expense:
The veterans organization, the American Legion, is behind the push to stop taxpayers money going to the ACLU. Many of the ACLU's legal agenda includes fighting against monuments and other public displays that display any religious symbol.
This outcry against the ACLU was because of there attempt to remove the veteran's monuments, Mt. Soledad Veterans Memorial in California and a cross on a rock outcrop erected by veterans as a memorial to World War I veterans in 1934 in the remote Mojave Desert.
Officials noted someone would have to drive 11 miles off the highway "to be offended" by the cross in the Mojave Desert.
There had been no complaints against the memorial in 60 years, until the ACLU sued to have it removed, and then asked for and got $63,000 in "extortion" fees.
"The American Legion," said former American Legion National Commander Tom Bock, "is in full support" of the plan. He said it would take away the authority of judges to award attorney fees to the ACLU in lawsuits under the Establishment Clause.
The law, approved in 1976, originally was to help individual citizens bring lawsuits against state officials who had deprived them of their constitutional rights. However, Hostettler believes it has been abused by groups like the ACLU, who claim any public official who expresses religious beliefs or displays a memorial with religious imagery, like the crosses at Arlington National Cemetery, is promoting the "establishment of religion."
For example, in 2001 Iowa county officials removed a Ten Commandments monument from a courthouse lawn rather than face the attorney's fees threatened. And in 2004, Los Angeles removed a tiny cross from the county seal when it was threatened with those fees. (Source: World Net Daily)
As in most cases presented by the ACLU, a threat to sue usually forces the plaintiff to pay fees (usually taxpayer's money), rather then go to trial and pay higher fees in a case that the ACLU would probably lose.
Posted by Walt as U.S. Legal Issues, ACLU, Activist Courts at 5:43 AM EDT
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by Thomas E. Brewton
From an intellectual viewpoint, there is no inherent conflict between religion and science. Trouble comes from the efforts of atheistic materialists to hijack science.
As noted in Science vs Religion, religion is obviously no impediment to scientific study of the natural world. All of the 17th century's groundbreaking discoveries and applications of mathematics to the natural world were the work of devout Christians. In only one case– Galileo – was there conflict with the church, and that was primarily a political matter.
Galileo's fight with the Church was not solely the result of his heliocentric theories. One of his personal friends, the local bishop, had supported publication of Galileo’s scientific work. But, after his friend became Pope, Galileo published a satirical work in which some church doctrine was presented as foolish. It was one thing to publish scientific papers, quite another to ridicule the Pope and the Church during the Reformation's spiritual and political warfare.
Religion looks at the big picture, science at particular natural instances. Mathematics is a bridge between the two: applicable to particulars, but drawing its theorems from extrapolations into the immateriality of mental constructs, as did Plato with his paradigm of Ideal Forms.
In the 17th century, when natural science emerged as a new paradigm, religion and science were understood to be equally valid ways to study God's creation. The laws of mathematics and natural science had, after all, been created by God as part of the whole universe.
The emerging paradigm of scientific experimentation was not conceived by seminal thinkers like Francis Bacon as replacing religion and classical philosophy. The physical sciences were, instead, to be a supplemental method to determine the nature of the physical world.
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Posted by Walt as ACLU, Creation, Science at 7:28 AM EDT
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(Washington, DC) Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption and judicial abuse, announced today that Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, who last week ruled the government’s warrantless wiretapping program unconstitutional, serves as a Secretary and Trustee for a foundation that donated funds to the ACLU of Michigan, a plaintiff in the case (ACLU et. al v. National Security Agency). Judicial Watch discovered the potential conflict of interest after reviewing Judge Diggs Taylor’s financial disclosure statements.
According to her 2003 and 2004 financial disclosure statements, Judge Diggs Taylor served as Secretary and Trustee for the Community Foundation for Southeastern Michigan (CFSEM). She was reelected to this position in June 2005. The official CFSEM website states that the foundation made a “recent grant” of $45,000 over two years to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Michigan, a plaintiff in the wiretapping case. Judge Diggs Taylor sided with the ACLU of Michigan in her recent decision.
According to the CFSEM website, “The Foundation’s trustees make all funding decisions at meetings held on a quarterly basis.”
“This potential conflict of interest merits serious investigation,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “If Judge Diggs Taylor failed to disclose this link to a plaintiff in a case before her court, it would certainly call into question her judgment.”
(Judge Diggs Taylor is also the presiding judge in another case where she may have a conflict of interest. The Arab Community Center for Social and Economic Services (ACCESS) is a defendant in another case now before Judge Diggs Taylor’s court [Case No. 06-10968 (Mich. E.D.)]. In 2003, the CFSEM donated $180,000 to ACCESS.)
Click here to read Judge Diggs Taylor’s financial disclosure statements.
Click here to read the CFSEM’s list of recent grants
Posted by Walt as U.S. Legal Issues, ACLU, Activist Courts at 1:03 AM EDT
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The veterans organization, the American Legion, is behind the push to stop taxpayers money going to the ACLU. Many of the ACLU's legal agenda includes fighting against monuments and other public displays that display any religious symbol.
Joe March, director of public relations for the American Legion, said the legislation "would amend or revise the Civil Rights Act, in terms of eliminating the ability of judges to award attorney's fees, in cases where there is litigation brought against religious symbols in this country … and things such as the Boy Scouts and public seals."
"Not only are organizations like the ACLU and others taking action against our American values, our religious symbols, our heritage and veterans memorials, but then if they are successful in the process, then they are having the courts award them tax dollars in attorney's fees even though they are organizations that work pro bono," March told Cybercast News Service on Thursday.
The legal organizations defending citizens against the cases brought on by the ACLU never receive payment form taxpayers.
Some U.S. senators this week have heard testimony from both sides on a piece of legislation that would strip legal fees from church-state lawsuits. Such legal victories, often described as "Establishment Clause" cases, have provided the American Civil Liberties Union with millions of dollars in profits as it pursues numerous cases challenging public displays of religious belief in America.
The Public Expressions of Religion Act (PERA) (S. 3696) was the topic of discussion at hearings on Wednesday (August 2) before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Property Rights. The U.S. House is considering similar legislation (H.R. 2679) that is sponsored by Indiana Congressman John Hostettler. Brownback has made it clear in recent weeks that if groups like the ACLU want to sue city after city for displays of religious images, it should be on their own dime — not at taxpayers' expense. (Agape Press)
Posted by Walt as U.S. Legal Issues, ACLU, U.S. Constitutional Issues at 9:52 PM EDT
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From Stop The ACLU!
Convincing liberals that the ACLU is leading us down a dangerous path is about as productive as talking to a rock. Perhaps this is because I mostly deal with far left liberals who share the same insane views and have the same radical agenda as the ACLU. Anyone who believes that the ACLU is there to purely defend the Constitution is naive at best. Surely there are some moderate liberals out there that can concede that the organization is in need of reform.
A balanced society can not survive resting in the fringe. A Nation only concerned with security will drift toward a police state, and one that follows the absolutist views of liberty like the ACLU will drift toward anarchy.
The ACLU proudly display a banner that states, Keep America Safe and Free, but any honest person will admit that the ACLU have done nothing for the safety of America. As a matter of fact, all evidence leads to quite the opposite. The ACLU are always ready to put the security of America at risk in the pursuit of its absolutist views of liberty.
Many of the ACLU’s former leaders have noticed the irresponsible shifting of the ACLU away from true civil liberty protection into a much more dangerous agenda. For example take the words of this former Executive Director of the ACLU
The right to express unpopular opinions, advocate despised ideas and display graphic images is something the ACLU has steadfastly defended for all of its nearly 80-year history.
But the ACLU, a group for which I proudly worked as executive director of the Florida and Utah affiliates for more than 10 years, has developed a blind spot when it comes to defending anti-abortion protesters. The organization that once defended the right of a neo-Nazi group to demonstrate in heavily Jewish Skokie, Ill., now cheers a Portland, Ore., jury that charged a group of anti-abortion activists with $107 million in damages for expressing their views. Gushed the ACLU’s press release: “We view the jury’s verdict as a clarion call to remove violence and the threat of violence from the political debate over abortion.”
Were the anti-abortion activists on trial accused of violence? No. Did they threaten violence? Not as the ACLU or Supreme Court usually defines it, when in the context of a call for social change.
The activists posted a Web site dripping with animated blood and titled “The Nuremberg Files,” after the German city where the Nazis were tried for their crimes. Comparing abortion to Nazi atrocities, the site collected dossiers on abortion doctors, whom they called “baby butchers.” …
This is ugly, scary stuff. But it is no worse than neo-Nazi calls for the annihilation of the Jewish people, or a college student posting his rape fantasies about a fellow coed on the Web, both of which the ACLU has defended in the past.
None of the anti-abortion group’s intimidating writings explicitly threatened violence. Still, the ACLU of Oregon refused to support the defendants’ First Amendment claims. Instead, it submitted a friend-of-the-court brief taking no one’s side but arguing that speech constitutes a physical threat only when the speaker intends his statement to be taken as one.
…Before anti-abortion zealots started getting sued, the ACLU had much more tolerance for menacing speech. Few of the 20th century’s great social movements were entirely peaceable. The labor, civil-rights, antiwar, environmental and black-power movements were an amalgam of violence, civil disobedience and highly charged rhetoric. But to gag fiery speakers who call for harm to the establishment because others in the movement pursue their political goals with fists, guns or bombs would do terrible damage to strong, emotive pleas tot social change. It is something neither the ACLU nor, thankfully, the courts have countenanced in the past.
That’s why in 1969 the ACLU helped defend a Ku Klux Klan member who had called for violence against the president, Congress and the Supreme Court. At the ACLU’s urging, the Supreme Court ruled that speech advocating violence was constitutionally protected unless it incited imminent lawless action and was likely to produce such action. This case was later used to defend the speech of black militants.
The ACLU also applauded a 1982 Supreme Court decision that found that speeches promising violent reprisals were protected by the First Amendment. During the civil-rights movement, a leader of the NAACP called for “breaking the necks” of blacks who violated a boycott of white-owned businesses in Mississippi, and published a list of those who did. Some of the boycott violators were beaten. The court ruled that despite the atmosphere of fear, all the speeches and lists were part of a debate on a public issue that needed to be “uninhibited, robust, and wide-open.”
I would argue that the Constitution doesn’t protect all of these extreme positions of the ACLU, but that isn’t the point he is trying to make. The issue is the ACLU’s curious commitment to “uninhibited, robust, and wide-open” free speech when it involves things such as virtual child pornography, but not when it involves a something like a boss making racially offensive statements.
Unfortunately, there are some people who are so hypnotized by the ACLU’s absolutist views and of the ACLU’s campaign for pedophilia and child pornography that they are prepared to defend an organization that has become a shadow of its former self–a group that lets its idealistic and skewed understanding of the establishment clause trump freedom of religion and freedom of speech.
Stop the ACLU had the opportunity last year of interviewing a former ACLU lawyer. He was concerned with much of the same things.
The ACLU played a helpful role in the civil rights movement defending these people, and I can’t turn my back on that. I have to give credit where credit is due.” “But….that being said, what they have done in the past is completely eviscerated by what they do in the present. The ACLU has become a fanatical anti-faith Taliban of American religious secularism.”
“The ACLU is involved in the secular cleansing of our history. This is not just a fight about free exercise, but about the protection of our American history. The ACLU want to deny America the knowledge of their Christian heritage.”
It seems that the many of the ACLU’s greatest critics came from their very ranks. The division within the ACLU will continue as long as the ACLU continues on the irresponsible, hypocritical path it is on. America needs a civil liberties union, sadly the ACLU isn’t doing that job. If the ACLU succeeds in the dangerous direction it is steering America, they will ironically be putting in jeopardy the very liberty they claim to protect.
This was a production of Stop The ACLU Blogburst. If you would like to join us, please email Jay at Jay@stoptheaclu.com or Gribbit at GribbitR@gmail.com. You will be added to our mailing list and blogroll. Over 150 blogs already on-board.
Posted by Walt as U.S. Legal Issues, ACLU, U.S. Constitutional Issues at 11:33 AM EST
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Are the ACLU and the New York Times aiding the terrorist enemies of the United States with the recent leak on domestic eavesdropping operation? This puts the terrorist and the United States enemies on-guard for any future intelligence gatherings.
It is evident that the ACLU has no regard to the safety of American lives and completely disregard national security. An insider to the Bush administration leaked the story to the New York Times about the National Security Agency domestic eavesdropping operation approved by President George W. Bush. They did not ever take in consideration a federal law was broken by a traitor with inside knowledge of this operation, and American lives could be in danger since this news story was in fact aiding and abetting the enemy.
The US justice department has opened an inquiry into how information about President George Bush's secret spying program was leaked, officials say. The investigation is expected to focus on how the New York Times newspaper obtained the information.
If they are able to identify the traitors involved with this leak, they should be treated as traitors against the United States.
President Bush has admitted that persons with known links to al-Qaeda and related terrorist organizations were being monitored since the 9/11 attacks.
Of course, the ACLU is ranting that the investigation should be called off because they see this operation as a violation of the Constitution. In the yesterday's press release from the ACLU website:
NEW YORK - The American Civil Liberties Union today sharply criticized a Justice Department investigation into the disclosure of an illegal National Security Agency domestic eavesdropping operation approved by President George W. Bush.
In a letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales as well as two full-page advertisements in the New York Times, the ACLU has called for the appointment of a special counsel to determine whether President Bush violated federal wiretapping laws by authorizing illegal surveillance of domestic targets
The following statement can be attributed to ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero:
"President Bush broke the law and lied to the American people when he unilaterally authorized secret wiretaps of U.S. citizens. But rather than focus on this constitutional crisis, Attorney General Gonzales is cracking down on critics of his friend and boss. Our nation is strengthened, not weakened, by those whistleblowers who are courageous enough to speak out on violations of the law."
"To avoid further charges of cronyism, Attorney General Gonzales should call off the investigation. Better yet, Mr. Gonzales ought to fulfill his own oath of office and appoint a special counsel to determine whether federal laws were violated."
The ACLU brags very openly about its two full page advertisements in the NY Times attacking President Bush for lying to the American people, when in fact he has admitted there is ongoing domestic eavesdropping. There are links to these ads and other like-items on the ACLU website.
Posted by Walt as U.S. Legal Issues, ACLU, Terrorism at 12:57 PM EST
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