Monday's Oregonian ran a piece by Jim Rassmann entitled, Why a former critic of the ACLU decided to join it. Rassmann is one of the veterans working for the Kerry campaign. His story is a very compelling one in and of itself. But, it's beside the point here. Suffice to say that Kerry was awarded the Bronze Star with Valor for saving Rassmann.

Rassmann gives some good reasons for his change of heart about the ACLU. Reasons that I agree with. But, at the same time I can identify with being a critic of the ACLU at times. In my opinion they tend to have a pretty clear ideological bias that is sometimes counter productive and which leads them to get involved in cases that don't further or otherwise support civil rights in my view.

Take the case earlier this year where the ACLU sided with two couples suing the city of San Diego to get it's lease of city-owned land to the Boy Scouts overturned. Rather than get into the details here, I'll just add a link to a post on my The Independent Voter message board, here, where I go into the details of the case. The ACLU was dead wrong in that case. I simply don't see any grounds for a church/state violation where neither party received preferential treatment of any kind.

While I certainly can understand Rassmann's change of heart on the ACLU. They certainly don't deserve the negative label that the GOP try to pin on them. But, I think that the prudent choice is to support them where and when I agree with what they're doing... and not to when I don't agree with them.