When I was in my young and foolish college days, I once attended a recruiting meeting for the ACLU. The speaker was Claire Ebel, long-time Executive Director of the New Hampshire chapter. One of her points was that the ACLU is hardly this big, monolithic body; that there was room for all varieties of political opinions and beliefs, as long as we all shared a common belief in the basic civil rights of all citizens as spelled out in the Constitution.
She even joked that “I keep expecting the ACLU to one day end up suing itself.”
Ms. Ebel, I think that time has come.
J.
Updates for Henry and those who agree with him:
1) Use BugMeNot for sites such as NYT, as I do.
2) Here are the first two paragraphs:
The American Civil Liberties Union is using sophisticated technology to collect a wide variety of information about its members and donors in a fund-raising effort that has ignited a bitter debate over its leaders’ commitment to privacy rights.
Some board members say the extensive data collection makes a mockery of the organization’s frequent criticism of banks, corporations and government agencies for their practice of accumulating data on people for marketing and other purposes.
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Jay, Kevin, Paul
Any and all of you.
At least post an excerpt from the story. I have not registered with nytimes.com nor do I plan to.
I’m sick of registering with 235234235324 different websites (which is just an excuse for your email to be sent out to everyone so you can get more and MORE spam).
So please post an excerpt from the story here.
thanks for the quote Jay 🙂
I appreciate it a lot, and thanks for the tip for “bugmenot”
Friggin’ hypocrites.
In the Christmas Spirit–If Only the ACLU was around when Jesus was on earth. They would have been suing his ass for getting martyred and repressing the rights of others to not believe in him by intentionally dying on a cross.
The ACLU has a long history of being rather “selective” in their support of Constitutionally protected rights so it comes as no surprise to me they would be a little hypocritical on other things.
But to be fair it’s often hard to see and correct your own faults. Just keep reminding them.
Regarding NY Times registration:
There is an even easier way around it. And it doesn’t require users, like Henry, to spend time with BugMeNot (which is a great service, nonetheless).
Go here (I’m talking to YOU Jay Tea!): http://nytimes.blogspace.com/genlink
Paste in the URI.
Get back a URI that works universally, without login.
Get the bookmarklet while you’re there too!
The only caveat is that they aren’t available instantly on there all the time… sometimes it takes a few hours after the article is published for there to be a free version.
I’ve made a policy where I simply won’t link to anything that requires registration anymore… so this is a welcome method.
Yeah, but read this:
ACLU launches kid-kicking campaign
SPEAK FRIGGIN ENGLISH OR DON’T SPEAK AT ALL!!
DAMN TIRED OF PC ….
Sorry, Aslan, it just seemed to fit. But how is a Classical Latin quote “PC?”
I’ll try to watch it in the future, though. As my mother told me, “non illegitimis carborundum.”
J.
“non illegitimis carborundum.”….
“Don’t let the bastards wear you down”?