Word: aclu
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...filing this case, Olson and Boies have moved the gay-marriage debate to the front and - critically - center of American political discourse. For all the successes gay-rights lawyers from the ACLU and other groups have had over the years, they never quite escaped the perception of many Americans that the cause was somehow a fringe concern of primary interest to advocates and opponents. As recently as last year, gay marriage was considered so extreme that no major candidate from either party in the presidential election had any qualms about opposing...
...Olson's flat refusal to see civil unions as an acceptable compromise could do more to raise the pressure on President Barack Obama and the Democrats to move toward embracing gay marriage than anything the ACLU could achieve. And with such Republican credentials, his involvement quietly indicts the notion that gay rights must be a partisan issue. (Read "Why Gay Marriage Was Defeated in California...
...shouldn't be too hard to find a middle ground, theoretically. The soldier and lawyer arguments are being made, in this case, by unappealing extremists. The lawyers, led by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), believe that the detainees should be treated, more or less, under the civil-justice system as described by Article III of the Constitution. The soldiers, misled by former Vice President Dick Cheney, believe that in a time of war, the President has unlimited ability to set the rules necessary to protect the nation. "They're both wrong," says Senator Lindsey Graham, a lawyer-soldier...
...argues that much of the evidence accumulated against the detainees can't be revealed in open court, since it comes from top-secret intelligence sources and surveillance systems, as well as from third-country intelligence services that refuse to testify in U.S. proceedings. According to Chris Anders of the ACLU, an existing statute allows for classified evidence to be summarized, without source, for civilian courts. "The trouble is, in open court, the judges and the defense lawyers always want to know the source of the information," says former CIA director Michael Hayden, who says he made a good-faith effort...
...putting our best national-security argument forward in front of the courts." On Tuesday, Obama informed both Gates and Army General Ray Odierno, the top U.S. officer in Iraq, of his decision to withhold the photos. U.S. lawyers are expected to appeal the case to the Supreme Court. The ACLU was not pleased. "The Obama Administration's adoption of the stonewalling tactics and opaque policies of the Bush administration," executive director Anthony Romero said, "flies in the face of the President's stated desire to restore the rule of law, to revive our moral standing in the world...