STOP FEEDING THE BEAST (via Jeff Brokaw):

The Law Against Values: Attorney Rees Lloyd argues the ACLU should not collect profits from taxpayer-funded fees. (The American Legion Magazine, May 2005)

In a remote area of the Mojave Desert, atop a rock outcrop, stands a lone cross. Just two pipes tied together, it was erected by a private citizen in 1934 to honor the service of World War I veterans. But when President Clinton issued an order incorporating the site into the Mojave National Preserve, the American Civil Liberties Union saw a golden opportunity. In 2000, the organization filed a federal suit on behalf of retired Forest Service employee Frank Buono of Oregon, who claims to suffer a civil-rights violation every time he drives back to California and sees the cross. A district court ruled for the ACLU and ordered the cross removed.

So far, due to Civil Rights Act, 42 U.S. Code Section 1988, the ACLU has made $63,000 in attorney fees off the case. Although Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., succeeded in passing legislation swapping land with a private owner and placing the cross on private land, to be cared for by veterans, the ACLU is back in court trying to nullify the deal as a First Amendment violation.

Longtime civil-rights attorney Rees Lloyd believes Congress never intended such abuse of the law. A past commander of San Gorgonio Post 428 in Banning, Calif., he authored American Legion Resolution 326, which calls on Congress to amend 42 U.S.C. Section 1988 and end judges' authority to award attorney fees in cases brought to remove or destroy religious symbols. In a recent interview, Lloyd explained the purpose of the law and how the ACLU exploits it to impose a secular agenda.

The American Legion Magazine: What is 42 U.S.C. Section 1988, and how does the ACLU profit from it?

Rees Lloyd: The Civil Rights Attorney Fee Act was intended to provide an incentive to attorneys to take on representation of victims of civil-rights violations who could not afford legal counsel and thereby to fulfill the promise of the Civil Rights Act and certain specified federal statutes. Instead, its good intentions have been exploited by the ACLU to reap enormous profits through what I believe is manifestly in terrorem - terrorizing - litigation to enforce its secular political, cultural and social will on elected officials and the American people by lawsuits attacking Boy Scouts and every symbol of America's religious history and heritage in the public square.

While the language of 42 U.S.C. Section 1988 is simple, it has been used and abused by the ACLU, as construed by other unelected lawyers, i.e., judges, who hand out enormous hourly attorney fees to the ACLU in such a way as to defeat the intent of elected representatives of the American people, Congress, and to terrorize elected officials at local levels to cower and surrender.

An ideal red-meat issue for the congressional GOP.

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 11, 2005 11:40 PM