ACLU

The White House said today it was reversing course on its decision to turn over 44 photos depicting alleged torture of detainees abroad by U.S. soldiers.

After years of litigation under the Freedom of Information Act, four secret memos from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel were finally released Thursday by the Obama administration.

The U.S. Court of Appeals in New York (2nd Cir.) this week struck down a portion of the Patriot Act that placed a gag order on recipients of "national security letters."

After nearly five years of fighting between the federal government and the American Civil Liberties Union over images of torture at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, a federal appeals court ruled today that the photos must be made available to the public.

A federal judge in Minnesota yesterday rejected protesters’ requests to get closer than 84 feet from the Republic National Convention, as currently allowed under a St. Paul city protest permit.

As The Associated Press reported, Judge Joan Erickson wrote that the request for closer proximity, from the Coalition to March on the RNC and Stop the War, created security hazards.

From the The San Diego Union-Tribune:

Three news organizations have appealed a judge's decision barring Vista officials from making public the identities of employers registered under the city's day-laborer law.

The ACLU is suing a city in California to prevent the public release of names of employers registered to hire day laborers.  The longtime civil rights defender wants to keep the names primarily from a local offshoot organization of the anti-illegal-immigration group the Minuteman Project (see below). 

It's no secret that the ACLU and the Minuteman folks don't like each other.  But now their PDA (public display of acrimony) is wounding bystanders... namely, the public and the public's records.