Perpetrators’ Rights Come First at ACLU

Los Angeles Dodgers General Manager Tommy Lasorda has a thankless job. You’re thinking: It’s finding the talent to jump-start Big Blue from its double-digit deficit.

Wrong.

Lasorda has taken on the public task of promoting a constitutional amendment to prohibit desecration of the American flag. He knows if sentiment was measured in the bleachers of Dodger Stadium, he’d be fine. But in the tony salons where the swells and the opinion leaders gather, Lasorda will be a pariah. They will wrap themselves in the flag so that others can burn the flag.

For that and other high-minded assertions of moral rectitude, not a little credit goes to our nation’s self-appointed 1st Amendment arbiter: the American Civil Liberties Union.

But the ACLU’s bodyguard of “rights” hasn’t stopped at the expression of odious ideas. It extends, we now hear, to convicted sex offenders and child molesters.

The busybodies at the ACLU have targeted Megan’s Law, which allows authorities to make known the identities of “serious” and “high-risk” sex offenders to their neighbors. This law is named after a New Jersey girl, Megan Kanka, who was killed by a convicted sex offender living in her neighborhood.

Under California’s version of this statute, police may distribute information in the community when sex offenders settle there. And when that happened recently in Northern California, a man who had been paroled after serving 13 prison years for child molestation and rape hanged himself.

First up to the plate decrying this suicide was a spokesperson for the Southern California ACLU, who hand-wrung that letting people know convicted perverts are in their neighborhood is a “punishment that never ends.” Which, of course, ignores the question of the lifetime punishment that these squalid humans inflict on their victims.

What’s wrong with those folks? Does anyone seriously agree with this extremist ACLU view that a sex criminal has liberties superior to those of a nearby child who could easily be the next prey? What earthly defense does the ACLU have against the well-deserved contempt for its position that “civil liberties” means balancing innocence against the ugliest kind of criminal conduct?

Still, the moral incongruity described above is only one of the most egregious. The ACLU wars against many other obviously un-American notions--like voluntary prayer in schools, respect for the Pledge of Allegiance, school choice and the death penalty for perpetrators of hideous murders. And more.

Item: The ACLU sued Alabama Judge Roy Moore for opening his county court sessions with prayer and for displaying the Ten Commandments in the courtroom--e.g., thou shalt not kill. Hmmm. Judge Moore sounds suspiciously subversive.

Item: The ACLU sued last year to remove a Nativity scene and menorah in front of Jersey City, N.J.’s City Hall only days before Christmas and Hanukkah. Must have been inspired by an elementary civics lesson: It was the intent of the founding fathers to outlaw holiday spirit.

Item: Several years back, the Chicago suburb of Skokie--where it happens that large numbers of Jewish people reside--sought to prevent a march through its streets by American Nazi Party members. The ACLU sued to defend the Nazis’ right to “self-expression” regardless of community sensitivities or the potential for confrontation.

Item: The ACLU is currently helping a 16-year-old California student who refuses to recite the Pledge of Allegiance sue her school because she would have to stand (silently if she wishes) or leave the room when the pledge is being said. The little darling is being “punished,” sayeth these lovers of litigation, if she has to leave the room.

Earlier this year, the head of the ACLU’s Southern California chapter, Ramona Ripston, outlined the current issues of her organization. Ms. Ripston averred that we Americans “need to reorder our priorities, and start before people become criminals. . . . We need to let children know that . . . there will be an education available to them, and a job. We need to invest in programs that will nourish and sustain children. . . .”

Let’s see. “Education,” “nourish,” “sustain” and “invest.” Oh. That’s why we don’t like educational choice, school prayer and the “punishment” of starting the day with a flag pledge. When a Nazi parade on a city street is preferred to a silent prayer in a city school, we begin to get a feel for what horrid social dissonance these outrages have wrought.

Don’t give up the fight, Tommy.