Hope the ACLU doesn't end up SOL like ACORN

After the first World War, which occurred between 1914 and 1918, the United States was as afraid of communists as Dick Cheney is of a pacemaker malfunction. That fear resulted in then-Attorney General Mitchell Palmer unconstitutionally rounding up and deporting so-called radicals in what became known as the “Palmer Raids.”

To fight the raids, a little group that called itself the American Civil Liberties Union was created. The ACLU championed Palmer’s targets, supported the right of trade union members to meet and organize, and helped secure the release of hundreds of activists imprisoned for anti-war activities. (Almost a century later, dim-witted conservatives still attack the ACLU for "sympathizing with communists.")

The ACLU has since evolved into one of the country’s leading defenders of the Constitution and a lightning rod for conservatives who want to be able to do whatever they want to their enemies without having to worry about constitutional protections.

Now, with more than half a million members, 200 attorneys on the payroll and offices throughout the nation, the ACLU is at times the only group standing up for a woman’s right to choose, the right to privacy, freedom of speech and other rights that most of us take for granted until they’re taken away by jack-booted thugs with marching orders from the Dark Side and right-wing politicians with American flags on their lapels.

It was the ACLU that recruited biology teacher John T. Scopes to challenge a Tennessee state law banning the teaching of evolution back in 1925 and partnered with “sophisticated country lawyer” Clarence Darrow to take on William Jennings Bryan in the Scopes Monkey Trial.

It was the ACLU that spoke out against the “relocation camps” to which more than 100,000 Japanese-Americans were sent during World War II.

It was the ACLU that joined with the NAACP to challenge segregation in public schools back in the early 1950s, leading to Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 Supreme Court decision ending the “separate but equal” era in American life.

The ACLU - which was also involved with Roe v. Wade, the Supremes’ 1973 decision guaranteeing women the right to control their own bodies - really tweaked the ears of conservatives back in 1978 when it defended the First Amendment rights of Nazis who wanted to march in the Chicago suburb of Skokie.

More recently, the group has supported free speech on the Internet and equal treatment for gays and lesbians. It has opposed torture, bringing religion into high school biology classes, and the obnoxiously-named Patriot Act, signed by Dubya in October of 2001 to give law enforcement more power and discretion and make it easier for government to spy on Americans, regulate our financial transactions and detain and deport immigrants.

I’m pleased that the organization's finances appear healthy in spite of the fact that it's maligned and disparaged at every turn by conservatives. (The ACLU's IRS Form 990s for the past five years are available at its website.) But because it defends the rights of people of color, gay and transgendered people, women, prisoners, people with disabilities and immigrants, I fear it might nonetheless end up in the same dark abyss that swallowed ACORN, that evil, nefarious advocate for poor and minority Americans.

We learned in 2009 that you can’t promote affordable housing and neighborhood safety, work to increase access to health care, and register voters and expect to be left alone by conservatives. Sooner or later, someone’s going to act like a prostitute and then selectively edit the video to make you look bad to donors and ruin, almost overnight, the unblemished reputation that you earned over four decades.

If they can destroy a group that focused on organizing in poor, black communities, imagine what they might try on an organization that once fought to protect the rights of communists and Nazis.

It's okay to try to enhance the quality of life for rich, white Republicans. But if you want to speak up for the rest of us, you just might find a wingnut pretending to be a pimp waiting in your office.