A flower of TRUTH grows from an Email SPAM

WASHINGTON -- Meeting on Capitol Hill for its annual Washington Conference, the nation’s largest veterans organization today launched a national effort to close a legal loophole that gouges taxpayers when lawsuits against religious icons, veterans memorials, and the Boy Scouts are successful.

“Title 42 U.S. Code, Section 1988 was intended to help the poor obtain legal counsel in claims of real, tangible violations of civil rights,” said Tom Bock, national commander of The American Legion. “To leverage defendants into submission and enrich themselves at the same time, organizations like the ACLU have exploited it.”

A bill pending in the U.S. Congress, the Public Expression of Religion Act (H.R. 2679), would take away the authority of judges to award attorney fees in Establishment Clause cases involving religious heritage, such as veterans’ memorials.

The American Legion became involved at its 2004 National Convention by passing Resolution 326, Preserve Mojave Desert Veterans Memorial, after a federal judge in Riverside, Calif., ordered a solitary Latin cross located in the Mojave Desert - a World War I veterans memorial - to be destroyed. The court then awarded the ACLU $63,000 of taxpayer money in attorney fees.

“The Mojave Desert World War I Veterans Memorial case is a very dangerous precedent,” Bock said. “There are 9,000 crosses and Stars of David at Normandy. There are 22 national cemeteries with veterans at rest beneath religious symbols. There is nothing in the law to prevent groups like the ACLU from filing Establishment Clause lawsuits against those sacred grounds and then receiving taxpayer-paid attorney fees.

Bock is charging the nearly 15,000 American Legion posts across the nation to “educate and activate” their communities on this issue. Their mission is to create a ground swell of public demand on lawmakers to pass PERA in the 109th Congress. He has mailed to every post in the Legion a booklet, In the Footsteps of the Founders, which provides a complete step-by-step plan to conduct “educate and activate” campaigns in every town and neighborhood across the country.

Bock believes that stopping the flow of millions of dollars of taxpayer money to the ACLU and other organizations should remove or seriously decrease the incentive for them to pursue self-enriching suits against American values.

“Most people don’t know the ACLU receives taxpayer dollars when they challenge our values and heritage,” Bock said. “The American Legion aims to make sure Americans not only learn about it, but also learn how they can take action to stop it once and for all.”
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