It’s an adage that not everything is as it seems. And it has been pointed out before that “illusion is the first of all pleasures.”
Look at the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ); it’s a fine example of an entity aping a nonprofit group dedicated to religious freedom. The organization was founded years ago by televangelist Pat Robertson, supposedly to counter the work of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Today the ACLJ still trumpets its reason for existence as dedication to the “ideal that religious freedom and freedom of speech are inalienable, God-given rights. The Center’s purpose is to educate, promulgate, conciliate, and where necessary, litigate, to ensure those rights are protected under the law.”
Despite the lofty rhetoric, Robertson’s ACLJ looks more and more like an appendage of the Republican Party. Its top attorney, Jay Sekulow, likes to schmooze and network at right-wing political functions, such as the recent Conservative Political Action Conference, where he was caught on YouTube hobnobbing with pundit Ann Coulter.
And yesterday, Sekulow sent out an ACLJ e-mail to supporters attacking the “new liberal Congress on Capitol Hill” and asking, “Who runs this country … President Bush or Nancy Pelosi?”
The March 26 missive has nothing whatsoever to do with religious freedom. It’s a rant against the Democratic Party that now holds power in Congress — political hackery, pure and simple.
With Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and the Bush administration on the defensive over what appears to be a political purge of U.S. prosecutors, the ACLJ is calling its members to buck up in support of the president — and, in doing so, ripping the Democratic Party.
“The liberal-leaning House of Representatives is pushing hard,” Sekulow’s e-mail asserts, “putting pressure, grasping at whatever means possible to defy the President. True to form, the political spectacle is being led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.”
Sekulow then pleads with ACLJ supporters to sign a petition in support of the administration.
“I want,” he says, “to deliver to the White House tens of thousands of names of United States citizens who will be standing strong beside our President.”
No, the e-mail is not from Republican National Committee, it only sounds that way.
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