SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Alabama lawmakers have voted 24-4 to allow Briarwood Presbyterian Church in Birmingham to establish a police department. The church has over 4,000 members and is also home to a K-12 school and a theological seminary with 2,000 students and teachers:
"After the shooting at Sandy Hook and in the wake of similar assaults at churches and schools, Briarwood recognized the need to provide qualified first responders to coordinate with local law enforcement," church administrator Matt Moore said in a statement, referring to the mass murder of 20 first graders and six teachers at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut by a deranged man with an AR-15 style rifle just before Christmas 2012. "The sole purpose of this proposed legislation is to provide a safe environment for the church, its members, students and guests." The church would pay the bill for its officers.
[...] "It's our view this would plainly be unconstitutional," Randall Marshall, the ACLU's Acting Executive Director, told NBC News. In a memo to the legislature, Marshall said they believe the bills "violate the First Amendment or the U.S. Constitution and, if enacted, would not survive a legal challenge." "Vesting state police powers in a church police force violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment," his memo states. "These bills unnecessarily carve out special programs for religious organizations and inextricably intertwine state authority and power with church operations."
(Score: 1, Redundant) by jmorris on Thursday April 13 2017, @04:32AM (4 children)
Ok, fair enough. Hadn't seen those so good on them! However I knew they used to be more aggressive defending the rights of anyone. I was thinking of the recent big splashy cases where they said the right stuff but didn't do more, letting organizations like FIRE do the actual work. And did you notice that you only found the one example from Obama's election forward to now? And it was defending a student newspaper, not a high profile speaker. When UC Berkley went up in flames to shut Milo up, where was their lawyer drop? How about any of the other speakers being silenced in the $current_year? Do you see -anything- on aclu.org right now that isn't perfectly aligned with the Democratic Party's agenda?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 13 2017, @07:21AM
When UC Berkley went up in flames to shut Milo up, where was their lawyer drop?
Just who exactly do you think the ACLU should be suing, the rioters? What specific policy was the cause of the 'flames?'
How about any of the other speakers being silenced in the $current_year?
Yeah, more vagueness. Name one of these speakers that was silenced. Not disinvited after protest but still free to stand in the quad and say their shit, actually silenced.
I don't think you really understand what the ACLU does, they are just a generic liberal boogeyman to you. How come they don't live up to your strawman expectations? Because they are strawman expectations.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Magic Oddball on Thursday April 13 2017, @07:30AM (1 child)
It would've made no sense for the ACLU to be involved in the UC Berkeley case, as the campus had fully backed his right to appear and had provided campus security (who also acted as armed escorts to & from the location). He was in the student union building waiting to speak when masked anarchists (who have become a huge problem at Bay Area protests) showed up at the peaceful student protest outside and essentially began rioting — smashed the student union's massive windows, threw fireworks, etc. They evacuated him for safety reasons at that point, put the whole campus on "shelter in place" lockdown and called in help from local police & other campuses.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 13 2017, @08:56AM
So. What you are saying is. Its all the ACLU's fault and they should sue themselves into non-existence?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 13 2017, @02:40PM
This is why we denigrate you jLo, you are proven to be incredibly wrong about the ACLU but you double down with a more recent story that doesn't really apply. At least you acknowledged the ACLU did defend conservatives, but that doesn't stop you from trying to land your original point. Brainwashed fool.