ACLU Surrenders on Patriot Act

Could it be possible that the ACLU has finally figured out that consistently advocating against the United States is bad for their business? Probably not, but at least they've finally given up the notion of defeating the Patriot Act:

DETROIT - The American Civil Liberties Union on Friday dropped a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the USA Patriot Act.

The ACLU said it was withdrawing the lawsuit filed more than three years ago because of "improvements to the law." The Justice Department argued last month that amendments approved by Congress in March 2006 had corrected any constitutional flaws in the Patriot Act.

"While the reauthorized Patriot Act is far from perfect, we succeeded in stemming the damage from some of the Bush administration's most reckless policies," Ann Beeson, associate legal director of the ACLU in New York, said in a written statement.

The lawsuit, filed in July 2003 on behalf of the Muslim Community Association of Ann Arbor and five other nonprofit groups, was the first legal challenge to Section 215, the part of the Patriot Act that lets federal agents obtain such things as library records and medical information.

The ACLU really didn't accomplish anything with their lawsuit other than further convince Americans that the ACLU is not on their side. For once, the ACLU made the right decision in backing out of this lawsuit.