Originally Posted - February 25, 2007

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ARLINGTON, VA---Apparently the American Civil Liberties Union, or at least one of its former executives, believes that First Amendment rights and other constitutional guarantees should include the right to possess child pornography.

Charles Rust-Tierney, 51, former president of the Virginia chapter of the ACLU from 2002 to 2005 during the height of the Terri Schiavo case, was arrested Friday in Arlington for allegedly possessing hard core, commercial kiddie porn, reportedly using his e-mail address and credit card to subscribe to and access a child pornography website, according to federal prosecutors.

As an ACLU executive, Rust-Tierney had lobbied against restricting Internet access in public libraries, taking the position that "recognizing that individuals will continue to behave responsibly and appropriately while in the library, the default should be maximum, unrestricted access to the valuable resources of the Internet".

Rust Tierney, active as a coach of youth sports teams in Arlington, said that "parents should have primary responsibility for setting rules for their children regarding Internet access. Older minors should have access to resources appropriate for their age group, even if such materials may be considered by some parents to be unsuitable for younger minors".

Apparently Rust-Tierney believes that unrestricted access should include kiddie porn at any age. Let's hope he's not a parent.

According to court records, "Charles Rust-Tierney has subscribed to multiple child pornography websites over a period of years."

If intellectual dishonesty was a criminal offense, Rust-Tierney may have also engaged in same but it wouldn't be the first time that the ACLU has done so or that the ACLU practiced blatant hypocrisy.

The ACLU purports to fight for First Amendment rights, to end discrimination and the death penalty. While Rust-Tierney advocates for unrestricted Internet access at the same time he's allegedly indulging himself in child pornography websites, the ACLU's biggest hypocrisy was its position in the case of Terri Schiavo. It promoted and supported the Schiavo case as a right to die case, acting as co-counsel to Michael Schiavo (right in photo) and throwing money into the pockets of George Felos (left in photo), aiding in a prima facie case of assisted suicide and euthanasia.

The Schiavo case in which the ACLU was a monied interest active in violating the rights of a disabled person was without a doubt one of the largest cases of discrimination and violations of disability rights in the United States in the past 20 years, issues which ACLU pretends to work to protect but yet it worked feverishly to end the life of a disabled woman based solely on the self-serving hearsay of Michael Schiavo who had more to gain by Terri's death than if she lived. After all, there was always the possibility, especially with the ever-evolving technology, that Terri could recover enough to communicate what really happened 17 years ago today on Feb. 25, 1990, when she inexplicably collapsed in the early morning hours following a day of arguments and discourse with Michael Schiavo who she was contemplating divorcing.

The ACLU claims to protect the disabled, saying that "people with disabilities are still, far too often, treated as second class citizens, shunned and segregated", as was Terri Schindler Schiavo by the orders and commands of Michael Schiavo, locked away in a nursing home and then a hospice, denied even sunlight. The Florida Chapter of ACLU in advocating Terri's death worked against their own stated mission.

The ACLU fights for sexual offenders, on behalf of serial killers and mass murderers, rapists and terrorists, and apparently for Internet predators but yet despite 17 national disability groups supporting Terri Schiavo's right and will to live, ACLU fought for and continues to fight for the rights of convicted murderers and sex offenders rather than disabled people.

The ACLU maintains that the death penalty is the ultimate denial of civil liberties yet they had no problem pouring money and legal resources into advocating and causing the public execution of disabled Terri Schiavo.

On the website of the Florida ACLU which joined with Michael Schiavo, George Felos and California attorney Jon Eisenberg to advocate for the death of the brain damaged woman, it is stated that capital punishment is the ultimate denial of civil liberties yet the ACLU had no problem investing money and lawyers into denying the civil liberties of not only disabled Terri Schiavo but vulnerable adults across the country. Talk about hypocrisy.

The ACLU website says that the death penalty is "unfair and unjustifiable" and has called on a moratorium on all executions "to allow adequate time to explore ways of ensuring that innocent persons are not being executed, and that the system is being implemented equitably".

The ACLU supports a "time-out" on executions because "innocent people are being sentenced to death. There's that hypocrisy again, they didn't seem to have a problem with the public execution by dehydration of a disabled adult. They also claim that "almost all people on death row could not afford to hire an attorney. The quality of legal representation is a better predictor of whether or not someone will be sentenced to death than the facts of the crime".

Terri Schiavo was denied independent legal representation by Judge George Greer. In fact, he acted in the prohibited dual role of judge and guardian ad litem and although he supposedly was looking out of her "best interests", Greer never once visited his ward, never once sought to learn for himself firsthand who Terri Schiavo was and what her true condition was.

If Terri Schiavo had been a convicted murderer, in all likelihood, she'd be alive today with the ACLU pouring money towards her right to live. She wouldn't have been executed by the cruel and unusual punishment of starvation and dehydration over 13 days while the world watched and her trust monies paid euthanasia advocate George Felos to coo how beautiful she looked in death.

Court records indicate that Rust-Tierney, a former ACLU executive, apparently believes that the right to download videos and images which depict graphic forcible intercourse with prepubescent females supercedes the right of a disabled woman to live and receive therapy and rehabilitation as her husband swore under oath he would provide if he were awarded $20 million in a medical malpractice case which we now learn was based on fraud, that she didn't have bulimia as Michael Schiavo claimed.

How ironic that Rust-Tierney is being prosecuted in a federal court in Alexandria, Va. The ACLU, Felos and the Michael Schiavo supporters spent thousands of dollars, even money from Terri's own trust fund, to try and keep the Schiavo case out of the federal courts, away from federal review, a de novo review as authorized by Congress and the President. Judge George Greer, 2nd DCA Judge Chris Alterbernd and U.S. District Court Judge James Whittemore all blatantly refused to comply with the Title II Americans With Disabilities Act's reasonable accommodations procedural requirements and perhaps part of the blame can be placed on the attorneys for the Schindler family.

The ACLU never addressed the fact that the Florida Supreme Court's ADA conflict preemption case, Barry v. Burdines (1996) would have removed the state from the matter as the ADA preempts state laws which conflict with the ADA. Terri Schiavo was denied Equal Protection as well as Due Process as she was not afforded independent legal representation, instead Greer and the other judges allowed Michael Schiavo to speak for her and no reasonable accommodations order existed in the state court file.

These legal protections which were guaranteed Terri Schiavo should have been advanced by the ACLU instead of the organization claiming that she had a right to die without any clear cut evidence that she wanted to die. In fact, her very will to live, demonstrated all three times her feeding tube was removed, negated the ACLU's position and money funneled into the Schiavo case as well as Michael Schiavo's hearsay. By her own actions, Terri Schiavo clearly demonstrated that she wanted to live.

The right to live is the most fundamental civil liberty there is by ACLU's own standards. "Furthermore, we hold that the state should not arrogate unto itself the right to kill human beings-especially when it kills with premeditation and ceremony, in the name of the law or in the name of its people, or when it does so in an arbitrary and discriminatory fashion." http://www.aclu.org/capital/general/10441pub19971231.html

When the Florida courts, led by Greer, Alterbernd and Whittemore placed Terri Schiavo's right to live in jeopardy, not only did ACLU not fight to preserve her life as they advocate, but they joined with Michael Schiavo, Felos and State of Florida to end it.

Raping the First Amendment and advocating discrimination and euthanasia against the disabled---ACLU hypocrisy at its finest. June Maxam 2-25-07

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