ACLU Uses Wrong Approach

The ACLU filed suit today to attack an Indiana law that requires book stores to register with the state and pay a fee if they sell sexually explicit materials. From an Indy Star report:

The American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana and attorneys for several national organizations representing booksellers filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court today seeking an injunction barring enforcement of a new state law which requires businesses that sell sexually explicit material to register with the state.

The new law, approved earlier this year by the General Assembly, takes effect July 1.

The lawsuit names the prosecutors of Indiana's 92 counties as defendants because they are responsible for enforcing the law. The law covers new businesses and existing businesses that move to a new location after June 30.

I know what you're thinking- this is America, and banning speech is patently un-American. You're right! This case has enormous merit, and is exactly the sort of law an organization that defends civil liberties should attack. It's that I find their method boring.

The ACLU is made up of lawyers, so they think and act like lawyers. They sue. Not me. I think one of the best ways to get rid of bad law is to force compliance.

Instead of naming all 92 prosecutors as defendents, the ACLU should have pressed them all to prosecute every new or relocated religious book store that has the Bible on its' shelves, or the Chirstian 'birds & the bees' manual for parents. Make them register with the state and let them be labeled 'pronographer' or 'smut peddler'. Let these very innocent and innocuous examples be prosecuted to the full, embarassing extent of the law. See if they don't rush to have the law repealed. See if the prudes in the Statehouse aren't eaten alive by the very people they tried to pander to with this stupid, offensive law.

On another note, it sure makes me glad that our state reps and state senators find time to pass this law, yet fail to provide real, non-shell-game tax relief. Complete bastards.

License Plate Suit Being Pressed

No surprise here, but in conjunction with the ICLU, an Indiana man has filed suit regarding the state's "In God We Trust" plates. From an Indy Star report:

The lawsuit filed in Marion Superior Court in Indianapolis claims motorists who request the "In God We Trust" plates receive preferential treatment because they do not have to pay a $15 administrative fee that the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles collects. The administrative fees are added to other fees whose proceeds promote the causes of the other specialty plates.

The plaintiff bringing the case, Mark Studler, said he pays an additional $40 for one of the popular environmental plates depicting an eagle above the word "Environment." Of the total fee, $25 goes to a state trust to purchase land set aside for conservation or recreational purposes and the remaining $15 is for the administration fee.

The 2006 law establishing the "In God We Trust" plate waives the
administrative fee.

I don't like the premise of license plates to begin with, let alone vanity plates. But I stringently object to the state, via the BMV, collecting money for any extraneous purpose. It doesn't matter to me whether the cause is the environment, one of the state universities, or Riley; or if the plate is just a motto or the image of a team like the Pacers or the Colts. The state shouldn't be a clearing house for a cause. It's bad enough that we have license plates at all. Must the state make a cottage industry of it?

It will be amusing listening to the so-called conservatives wailing about this suit as frivolous, mainly because it bothers them in the perception as an assault on God. Real conservatives would have opposed using the state as a tool for creating special interest imagery and the whole premise of special interest vanity plates. No, today's conservatism merely calls for "balance". The environmentalists have a license plate? Well, then we should have one with the word 'God' on it, too!

This is just as where conservatives used to oppose all welfare, they are now unified in providing balance, in the form of corporate welfare. &c.