I received a touching letter from the national office of the ACLU today. So touching was this letter, I felt urged to share it with you, along with subsequent thoughts. While there's been some confusion as what the 'A' in ACLU actually stands for - it is in fact American, no matter what you've been led to believe. My dear friend, Anthony Romero, executive director (fancy shmancy) of the Union, shipped the letter personally to me. Beckoning for my voice and wallet, he made some strong arguments for the side of "freedom", or so they call it. But, enough from me. Here's the letter. (My comments will be made in italics, so pay attention)

Dear Friend,

When the Bush Administration says it wants to make permanent the freedom-stealing -
-- yadda yadda yadda, let's get to the point. I'm skipping ahead. Please follow. --
Ever day it is becoming clearer that our most cherished rights and freedoms are under relentless assault. -- Indeed they are. America, meet radical Islam -- And the risks we face don't come just from elected officials opposed to Civil Liberties -- Sen. Bob Byrd, anyone? -- They come as well from thoes politicians who claim to be friends of liberty, but yield to timidity when freedom needs them the most. -- Who was our president on February 26, 1993? How many American embassies were bombed? Who didn't avenge the USS Cole? --

That is where the ACLU come in. More than anything else, being a member of the ACLU means having the courage of your convictions when your civil liberties are most at risk. Our fundamental freedoms are at risk whenever out-of-control goverment officials begin stockpiling power and start to see themselves as somehow above the law. -- Ok, is GW really deserving of Kim Jong Il stature? --

It is time for all of us to speak out when our leaders demonstrate an arrogant disregard for the rule of law and the notion of government accountability. -- Shucks, it's a shame we can't hold ourselves accountable for all those post 9/11 homeland terror attacks, wait a second... --
Nothing demonstrates this more profoundly than the new powers granted to the Executive Branch when Congress hastily passed the USA Patriot Act in October of 2001.

Let's be clear about what George Bush and his allies are saying when the say we need to make the current Patriot Act the permanent law of the land: -- ladies and gentlemen, the clarity of the left --

• They want to permanently give the government the right to break into your home, invade your privacy, and rifle through your possessions without showing probable cause. -- as if the Global War on Terror weren't cause enough. --
  
• They're asserting the right of government agents to spy on the books you read, the Internet sites you visit, and the credit card purchases you make without you even knowing it happened. -- Spy on my books? I sure hope they don't do anything illegal. --
  
• And they're seeking to wipe out or render meaningless the judicial oversight that the Constitution put in place as a check on out-of-control government power. --Since when has law stopped the courts?--
  

There's no other way to put it. --Clearly would help. -- They want us to surrender our freedom. They want us to stand aside as important civil liberties are defined out of existence - or curtailed so severely as to render them meaningless. -- And as we stand up to defend civil liberty with our library and visa cards, our cities will be bombed, our neighbors killed, and our safety lost. -- Evidence of the wide-ranging assault on our most cherished freedoms can be seen in our newspapers and on newscasts every day. -- Exactly, assaults that kill 56 londoners and injure 700, demolish innocent children on Iraqi roadsides, and murder 3,000 American civilians. --

Power-hungry politicians, religious right extremists, and self-appointed "morality police" are staging a full-court press to advance their dangerous social agenda. -- aka the three man weave of Al-Qaeda, Mujahideen, and Hamas. They are moving rapidly to chip away at reproductive rights and to overturn the essential protections of Roe v. Wade. -- Reproductive rights or counterproductive rights - the irony. -- They draft memos that lay the groundwork for torturing prisoners and pronounce themselves beyond the reach of the human rights protections outlined in the Geneva convention. -- Oh of course, we break Geneva standard because it's the only way to defeat our enemies, whose methods of castration, beheading, and rape are clearly protected by an archaic convention. Please.

This unrelenting assault on our civil liberties could change the face of our democracy. But, the ACLU is leading a vigorous, spirited movement for freedom to make sure that doesn't happen. --This unrelenting assault on our country could change the face of the world. Thankfully, the ACLU is there to make sure it succeeds. Over the past five years, the ACLU and its members have shown that we can be successful defending freedom even in the most inhospitable climate. -- Defending freedom much like the Spanish and French? -- We have built bipartisan support challenging the Patriot Act and inspired a resounding chorus of voices questioning many of its damaging provisions. -- I thought I heard a bunch of bipolar eunuchs.

With your help, the ACLU will keep building a grassroots movement that will never let them use the war on terror as a cover for an assault on freedom. -- Which would make sense seeing that the war on terror is against the war on freedom.

The ACLU is also pursuing two direct constitutional challenges to the Patriot Act, contesting the provisions of the law that vastly expand the FBI's power to spy on ordinary people living in the United States, including U.S. citizens and residents. -- Thanks for informing me that ordinary people living in the United States now includes those few residents and citizens. --

Your membership in the ACLU will help us build the strength we need to continue this kind of success. And we need you with us in other critical contests over the meaning of freedom as well. -- Sounds intriguing, but I hear Al-Qaeda has a stronger benefit package. -- The Bush administration is aggressively pushing a social agenda fueled by the president's personal religious beliefs. -- And the personal religious beliefs of a relatively powerless domestic President are more threatening than the religious beliefs branded on airplanes, cars, and Islamic murderers aimed at western civilian life. --

No issue we face in the second term of the Bush Administration will be of greater consequence than our efforts to protect religious liberty and defend the separation of church and state. -- Since when is a 9/11 repeat distantly second to parochial school vouchers and faith-based federal charities? --

You can count on the ACLU's courage, our persistence, our commitment to principle, our ability to forge smart strategies, and our willingness to take bold action. And we are hoping that the ACLU and freedom's cause can count on you. -- We can also count on an Islamo-fascist willingness to blow our heads off. Fair exchange. --

The authoritarian opponents of liberty and investing enormous time, energy, and effort in their drive to grab power and foist their beliefs and values onto all of us. We're counting on you to respond with the urgency that this moment demands.

Sincerely, -- Sincerely,--

Anthony D. Romero -- Osama bin Laden --

Executive Director -- Executioner --