Moe Lane

Nice to see that the ACLU isn’t completely useless:

The Supreme Court has rejected an Illinois prosecutor’s plea to allow enforcement of a law aimed at stopping people from recording police officers on the job.

The justices on Monday left in place a lower court ruling that found that the state’s anti-eavesdropping law violates free speech rights when used against people who tape law enforcement officers. The law sets out a maximum prison term of 15 years.

Here’s a really good, really useful rule of thumb for handling any Constitutional situation not explicitly spelled out in the document in question: if the question at hand is Would the Founders have trusted federal, state and/or local government to do X without some kind of oversight then the default answer is going to be The answer is going to not just be “No.”  It’s going to be “HELL, NO.” 

Idiot.

Moe Lane

So.  We got Maryland Governor and DGA head Martin O’Malley out there SNEERING about us awful, awful racist Republicans (for the full effect, assume that I’m fluttering my hands like I’ve got the St. Vitus’ dance):

Using Governor Rick Perry (formerly) of the RGA for that, too. You see, good old Martin here really, really respects the heck out of Rick, you understand; despite the fact that he’s voluntarily a member of a racist and prejudiced group like the GOP.  Isn’t that just… well, Caucasian… of Ol’ Whitebread O’Malley?

No, my sneer’s deliberate, too.  And much more justified.  Consider this:

• The progressive, inclusive DGA currently being run by Whitebread O’Malley has precisely one racial minority among its members: MA governor Deval Patrick.  Apparently Democrats don’t like voting for ethnic minorities – at least, not statewide.
• The racist, regressive RGA ran by Rick Perry?  Four: Nikki Haley of South Carolina, Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, Susana Martinez of New Mexico, and Brian Sandoval of Nevada.  Odd how that happened, no?  – And so enthusiastically, too. (more…)

Admittedly, attempting to do so has been done so many times in this country…

…that someone surveying the situation might be forgiven in thinking that it’s implicitly permitted: but no, we don’t actually want election fraud to happen. When it does – like it did in Pennsylvania – and we can catch them at it, we put the people who did it on trial.

And then, apparently, we have the ACLU wander in and pick the wrong side to defend (via No Sheeples Here).  They’ve decided that paying people to commit election fraud is constitutional:

PITTSBURGH — The community organizing and voter registration group Acorn filed a federal lawsuit here Wednesday claiming that a state statute that is being used to prosecute some of its former employees is unconstitutional.

[snip]

Acorn hopes the lawsuit will prevent criminal prosecution of its local leaders and office, which have been under investigation by Mr. Zappala’s office for eight months, said Witold Walczak, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, which is representing Acorn.

See also the American Spectator, which in another article notes the real estate links between the NYT and ACORN.  Just in case anyone was wondering why the sympathetic tone.

(more…)

As Jim Geraghty notes, all of Obama’s promises come with an expiration date. All of them.

Obama Opposes Releasing Photos of U.S. Detainee Abuse
President Obama has decided not to release photos which the Pentagon had planned to released by May 28 in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union.

President Obama has decided not to release hundreds of photos potentially showing U.S. military personnel abusing prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York City and the Pentagon.

A senior administration official told FOX News that Obama met with his legal team last week and told them that he did not feel comfortable with the release of the photos because he believes they would endanger U.S. troops, and that the national security implications of such a release have not been fully presented to the court.

Last week.

President Obama Reverses Course on Releasing More Detainee Abuse Photographs

President Obama met with White House counsel Greg Craig and other members of the White House counsel team last week and told them that he had second thoughts about the decision to hand over photographs of detainee abuse to the ACLU, per a judge’s order, and had changed his mind.

The president “believes their release would endanger our troops,” a White House official says, adding that the president “believes that the national security implications of such a release have not been fully presented to the court.”

They decided this last week. One wonders why it took them this long to mention it. Even the usual “new polls came in” excuse won’t fly, this time: we knew Friday that the Democrats were losing the initiative in this argument.

All very odd.

Crossposted to RedState.