No offense or anything..

[Black Lazerus]

Here are a list of ACLU accomplisments recently in Texas alone.....


As of August, 2001 the ACLU of Texas:

won our protracted legal battle to secure the separation of church and state in ACLU v. Santa Fe (Texas), now the leading U.S. Supreme Court decision to keep prayer out of the schools (and off the football fields where religious conservatives drew a line in the turf).

favorably settled two cases guaranteeing the civil rights of gay and lesbian families in local school districts and another requiring a school to recognize a gay and lesbian student group in a south Texas high school;
responded to an onslaught of religious conservative pressure on local school boards by producing and promoting a statewide Banned Books Report and Banned Books readings;

won a case against a city that tried to ban books related to gay and lesbian families from the public library;
won a case at the Texas Supreme Court affirming inmates' right to practice any religion in prison, and prohibiting the administration from favoring one religion over another;

settled a case for a substantial sum that forced former Governor George W. Bush to respect citizens' right to protest on the sidewalk in front of the governor's mansion.

The ACLU of Texas was ready, promoting new laws to curb the excesses of the drug war, prevent racial profiling and racially motivated prosecutions, and to ensure that innocent people incarcerated have a chance to prove their innocence and gain freedom.

The ACLU:

drafted and helped pass the "Tulia bills" requiring additional evidence to corroborate the word of undercover drug informants and making certain police records public;

negotiated legislation that requires the collection of racial profiling data at traffic stops;
vigorously promoted the "Soccer Mom" bill, passed by both houses but vetoed by Gov. Rick Perry, that would have prohibited jailing people for non-jailable offenses except under limited circumstances;

led negotiations to ensure that all inmates-including those who signed plea agreements-will have access to DNA testing if those tests might prove their innocence and responded promptly when Harris County attempted to subvert the new law by requiring DNA "waivers" as part of plea agreements;

sponsored the Stand Down Project, which led the state legislative effort to limit application of the death penalty to the mentally retarded (passed the legislature but vetoed by Governor Rick Perry) as well as more than a dozen other death-penalty-related bills.

Our remarkable criminal justice reform work was not limited to the legislature. In the past year, ACLU of Texas:

won two Harris county cases affirming the rights of indigent defendants to appeal their case to a higher court without losing good time credits;

filed a Justice Department complaint and a civil case against Swisher County officials in the now infamous Tulia drug bust;

intervened after dozens of African Americans were arrested in Hearne, Texas based only on the uncorroborated word of an informant. ACLU's investigation resulted in the dismissal of charges against the 17 people who did not take a plea.

like hoon said obsolete.