Knucklehead of the Year Award

The Florida Masochist runs a daily knucklehead award and has distilled those daily awards down to an annual winner with the help of his panelists Jo at Jo's Cafe, Don Surber, John in Carolina, and Greta aka Hooah Wife.

And the award goes to.... The Justices of the Supreme Court who decided Kelo v. City of New London. That would be - Anthony Kennedy, John Paul Stevens, Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsberg and David Souter.

Tell 'em what they've won - they've won the right to have their homes and businesses seized in order to make way for a Quik-e-mart because you can never go home again. Oh, and the fact that a private company can get government to seize your property so that the private company can turn around and build condos or strip malls because they can claim economic improvements is something that the Founding Fathers never ever contemplated.

It's an interesting choice, but considering that many states and locales are already negating the effects of this decision with legislation to prohibit the kind of transaction involved in Kelo, it would not have been my choice.

A late dark horse candidate might be the South Korean scientists who apparently fudged all of his results on cloning. As if no one would ever notice the crayons and bad math involved (1+1=5)?

However, my choice would have to go to the ACLU. They've been an early and obvious favorite but several episodes stand out.

In July, the ACLU and its New York chapter sued the City of New York after it implemented random bag searches due to the subway bombings in London, England. The NYCLU lost its cases, but it made it clear that they were siding with terrorists over common sense.

At the end of the year, it has come to light that the ACLU opposed the FISA statutes as being unconstitutional (as set forth in amicus briefs in 2002). They now claim that the current sitting President acted unconstitutionally in bypassing the court altogether. Yet the ACLU didn't act with nearly so much horror when President Carter, President Reagan, President Bush, or President Clinton utilized the FISA courts. No full page ads in the New York Times for them.

Oh, and the ACLU wants an investigation into who leaked the NSA programs to the New York Times called off. Because it isn't a crime if you agree with the outcome and despite the fact that the law doesn't care about outcomes - only about the violations themselves, which in this case is the systematic leaking of classified programs.

Pretzel logic is a wonderful thing.

For standing on the side of terrorists and seeking to embue them with all the rights that US citizens take for granted, the ACLU is my clear winner for Knucklehead of the Year.

Posted to Jo's Cafe