Did You Know...

Yes, it’s true. The San Diego City Council voted yesterday to pass a resolution “commending the American Civil Liberties Union of the San Diego and Imperial Counties for its continuous advocacy for the rights and freedoms of all San Diego” and proclaiming an “American Civil Liberties Union Day” in the City of San Diego. (Hat tip – Rick Roberts)

The city bestowed the honor despite the ACLU’s litigious vendettas against San Diego, which cost some $900,000 in city tax dollars (remember the Mt. Soledad Cross case):

Two speakers opposed the recognition, including Heather Cameron, a representative of the law firm of Charles LiMandri.

LiMandri also serves as the West Coast director for the Thomas More Law Center, which along with other organizations, including the American Center for Law and Justice, donated thousands of hours of time to fight the ACLU’s demand that San Diego remove a historic cross from the Mt. Soledad Veterans’ Memorial. The case continued even after the federal government took over the site and San Diego no longer had control over it.

Cameron told the council members “one of the great myths” is that the ACLU started out as a pro-civil rights organization.

ACLU founder Roger Baldwin said, “Communism is the goal,” she told the council.

Cameron said Baldwin asserted that only a “small group of highly educated intellectuals” should dictate what everyone else believes.

In San Diego, the ACLU cost the city’s taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars by raising the fight over the Mt. Soledad cross and continued the battle even after 76 percent of the voters supported maintaining the cross where it was built.

James Hartline, a Christian activist in San Diego, also spoke. He said the proposal to honor the ACLU was “one of the most repugnant acts” ever accomplished by the council and blamed the ACLU for a “long-term campaign of hate and religious bias against Christians.”

He cited a previous case brought against the city by the ACLU in which the organization collected $900,000 from city taxpayers.

“We do not want our names to be used to honor the American Civil Liberties Union,” Hartline said. “You are doing so in our name.”

A bipartisan team of council members, Tony Young and Brian Maienschein, opposed the resolution, and Jim Madaffer did not vote. The other five members – Kavin Faulconer, Atkins, Donne Frye, Ben Hueso and Scott Peters – went along.

Is your city council up to the same kind of government-sponsored self-flagellation?