A Memorial Outrage

Today, at the start of this year's Memorial Day weekend, the WSJ has a story discussing a case brought forth by the ACLU regarding, once again, the "offensive cross". Besides the normal "separation of church and state" discussion and the obligatory "individual" who's offended, the story sheds light on an additional catalyst for such cases: money. The Civil Rights Attorney's Fees Award Act of 1976 allows plaintiffs the ability to recoup legal fees from defendants who lose the case in discretionary awards. In this case alone, at various levels of appellate courts, the ACLU has managed to pocket $63,000 paid by the defendant - in this case, the federal government.

Back to the argument of the case, there's this troubling potential consequence:

"If Buono v. Norton stands, the distance between the cross at Sunrise Rock and the headstones at Arlington National Cemetery will have effectively disappeared. It is only a matter of time until someone visits that field of heroes and takes offense at all the religious symbols inscribed in marble. Then the courts will have a hard time devising a principle by which those thousands of crosses on federal land are not as unconstitutional as the one in the desert."

Buono is Frank Buono, a retired park ranger who, according to the story, "...insists that his seeing the monument ("two to four times a year") violates his civil rights." What about those of us who feel our civil rights are violated by current and former federal employees like Buono and others, who make frivolous arguments about things like this that cause them no physical harm whatsoever. Those of us who are offended by these cases are exposed to far more of them than the "two to four times a year" he's arguing!