by Bridget Geegan Blanton

    Once again the ACLU has debauched sacred ground with their deceitful misappropriation of the Establishment Clause, ....

    ....as part of an ongoing search and destroy mission against symbols of America’s religious history and heritage. In the latest episode of its "secular cleansing litigation", coast to coast road show, the ACLU has taken its extortion/surrender strategy out to the unforgiving terrain of the Mojave Desert. Their target is the Mojave Desert Cross, erected atop Sunrise Rock in 1934 by The Veterans of Foreign Wars as a memorial to honor WWI veterans.

Government officials covered the cross with boards, when the memorial became the bull’s eye in another mendacious, ACLU-instigated Establishment Clause lawsuit. The act of covering the cross was done in advance of the improbable event, that someone who might be offended by the cross might also decide to hike the 11 miles off the nearest road and through the harsh, desert landscape to the site of the memorial.

In a move to save the Mojave Desert Cross, Congressman Jerry Lewis (R-CA) sponsored legislation in 2004 which authorized a transfer of the one-acre memorial to private ownership in exchange for twenty acres which were then assigned to the Mojave Desert Preserve. Congress authorized the transfer through the Department of Defense Appropriations Act of 2004 thereby removing it from federal jurisdiction.

However, the notorious 9^th Circuit Court, no stranger to arrogant judicial fiats, overruled this Act of Congress. The court issued an order approving the destruction of a memorial that has existed for over 70 years on the basis that it violates the Establishment clause; an overt distortion of the First Amendment religion clause. Moreover, it is an example of a clear and present danger that exists in an overreaching judiciary who have given themselves a veto power over both the Legislative and Executive branches of government.

The Hollywood-funded ACLU has launched an attack on any and all public expressions of religion and is pocketing millions of dollars of taxpayer money in attorney fees. But wait a minute, the ACLU has no actual attorney fees, as they never charge the people they use as plaintiffs; yet that doesn’t stop the ACLU from taking tax payer money better spent elsewhere.

A typical scenario involves the ACLU threatening small town governments with unmerited and intimidating Expression Clause litigation over religious symbols present in their public seals. These small towns can’t afford to spend the treasury on a lawsuit so, they surrender and remove the supposed ‘offensive’ religious symbol from their public seal. In the case of the Mojave Desert Cross, the ACLU has been awarded or has extorted over $63,000 so far, in court ordered attorney fees that are paid for by taxpayers, who by and large have no problem with veterans memorials.

For the American Legion, enough is enough. Their creed, "For God and country" a guiding principle since their inception in 1919, says it all. Along with the majority of Americans, they have had it with this fanatical litigation and the endless attacks on our religious heritage and our Constitution.

We have a right to honor the service and the sacrifice of our veterans in a manner that we the people see as fitting. This right is not subject to distortion by a single, activist judge in league with an elitist, secular progressive attorney from the ACLU and a so-called 'plaintiff' with no real injury. Members of the American Legion are committed to fighting back and have joined with other legal defense groups to stop the ACLU. The Legion has launched a public effort supporting the ‘Veterans Memorials, Boy Scouts, Public Seals, And Other Public Expressions of Religion Act’ (PERA), currently pending before the House as HR 725, and the Senate as S.415.

This legislation will amend the Civil Rights Attorney Fee Act, a federal law intended to assist the poor in obtaining legal counsel for claims involving true violations of Civil Rights not the bogus variety the ACLU brings on behalf of their social engineering agenda. The ACLU has profited immensely from exploiting this loophole. The passage of PERA will put an end to court-awarded, taxpayer-financed attorney fees going into the pocket of the ACLU via Establishment Clause litigation. Under the Civil Rights Attorney Fee Act, attorney-fee awards are purely discretionary. Judges are not required under the Act to award fees, yet in the case of the ACLU where there are no actual fees incurred, the judiciary sees fit to award fees according to ‘market rate’ which in urban areas can amount to $350.00/hour.

Furthermore, support for PERA will send a message to Congress to exercise its authority under the Constitution to deny jurisdiction to the judicial branch regarding Establishment Clause litigation against veteran’s memorials. I urge you to contact your elected officials to support PERA and to demand an answer as to where they stand on this issue.

The ACLU is politically motivated and it believes, fanatically, in a right to accomplish the objectives of a social engineering agenda through the assistance of activist judges and not the legislative process. In the words of Rees Lloyd, former ACLU lawyer and veteran: "It should not be forgotten by either Congress or taxpayers that this attack on a veteran’s memorial was brought by the ACLU of Southern California, whose Executive Director, Ramona Ripston, is married to 9^th Circuit Court of Appeal Justice, Stephen Reinhardt, the most reversed justice of the most reversed Circuit Court of Appeal in the U.S."

Contrary to the fanatical discourse of the ACLU, groups such as the Boy Scouts pose no threat to America. The ACLU and their rabid allegiance to a non-Constitutional, secular cleansing agenda is the real enemy.

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