News & Commentary

Eight years ago my van was rear ended by a tow truck at a major intersection in Troy, a suburb of Detroit, Michigan.  I exchanged insurance infomation with the driver that hit me and went on my way. I wasn't going to bother with a claim.  The damage was minimal (and my van was not worth the rate increase).

This week's Portland Phoenix highlights the work the MCLU and other Maine organizations are doing to investigate the treatment of Maine State Prison inmates. Read the article here.

I received this over the ACLU’s Racial Profiling email list serve.  As I’m sure you’ve heard, Henry Louis Gates Jr., a Harvard professor and prominent African-American scholar, was arrested at his home last Thursday.

Governor John Baldacci announces his support for PASS ID in today's Bangor Daily News. http://www.bangordailynews.com/detail/111221.html

We know torture is ineffective at producing meaningful intelligence. We know it’s illegal. This Washington Post article highlights another problem with torture: the Agency using the technique could not come to consensus on the technique’s effectiveness and legality.

The first successful ACLU case at the U.S. Supreme Court was, not surprisingly, a free speech case. Also not surprising, it is a bit of an overstatement to call the case “successful”.  In 1925, ACLU cooperating attorney Walter Pollack argued a criminal appeal on behalf of Benjamin Gitlow, who had been convicted of violating New York’s anti-anarchy law after he circulated a pamphlet extolling the virtues of proletariat revolution.  The Supreme Court upheld the conviction, but in doing so it recognized for the first time that Freedom of Speech was one of the fundamental rights protected by the Fourteenth Amendment, thus expanding the U.S. Constitution’s protection.

Two years ago, the ACLU of MAINE worked with coalition partners at Family Planning Association of Maine, Maine Women's Lobby, and Planned Parenthood of Northern New England in a failed legislative attempt to ensure that poor women in Maine have full access to abortion care.  (MaineCare does not cover abortions.) Today's news is an important step forward for poor women in our nation's capital. Unfortunately, poor women here at home will have to wait until the Maine legislature acts, or Congress repeals the Hyde Amendment.

I’ve just read an Unclassified Report on the President’s Surveillance Program, which was posted on the ACLU website this week http://www.aclu.org/safefree/general/40267prs20090710.html?s_src=RSS

Have you ever had one of those days that can only be described as “quite a day”?