Key Words: In Its Tracks

Published on April 12, 2005

The head of the 2.7 million-member National American Legion, Commander Thomas P. Cadmus, has entered the Boy Scout fray with written requests to Congress, asking it to amend Title 42, The Civil Rights Act, to prevent the American Civil Liberties Union from “using the courts to ‘destroy American values at taxpayer expense.'” Cadmus wrote separate […]

The head of the 2.7 million-member National American Legion, Commander Thomas P. Cadmus, has entered the Boy Scout fray with written requests to Congress, asking it to amend Title 42, The Civil Rights Act, to prevent the American Civil Liberties Union from “using the courts to ‘destroy American values at taxpayer expense.'” Cadmus wrote separate letters to Sen. Bill Frist and Rep. Jo Ann Davis, expressing guarded support for their proposed legislation, the “Support Our Scouts Act of 2005,” but argued that, unless the ACLU is prevented from conducting further establishment of religion clause cases, any such statute authorizing official military support for the Boy Scouts would likely be found unconstitutional, in keeping with recent court decisions that found the Boy Scouts’ required religious oath to be discriminatory. Tricky thing, courts ruling on constitutionality. How does Commander Cadmus propose getting around it? Not by anything so exposed to public scrutiny as a law preventing religious establishment cases, but the more discreet alteration of the Civil Rights Act itslef to prevent the ACLU from receiving any attorney fees awards from such cases: “‘to stop the cash flow to the ACLU in its tracks.'” If that’s a little questionable, constitutionally, Cadmus offered Frist and Davis the consolation of mass outrage: “‘As more Americans learn the ACLU adds insult to injury by collecting taxpayer dollars in the process of attacking the moral values of our nation, there will be a groundswell of “We the People” united to stop this practice dead in its tracks.'”

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