Wendy Kaminer Discusses Worst Instincts

Wendy Kaminer discusses her new book Worst Instincts on PBS Greater Boston. She writes about the serious faults of the current leadership of the National ACLU. She says it is a crisis of hypocrisy. Anthony Romero, Executive Director of the ACLU lives with his life partner a psychiatrist. Psychiatric professionals are notoriously control freaks. That is the opposite of what the ACLU was founded to promote. It appears that Romero merged his personal life with his professional life.

Kaminer admits she is not objective because she is personally involved. She says it is a story about suppressing dissent, covering up misconduct of leaders, and compromising principles for fund raising. It sounds as if she is talking about Cambridge Community Television which I saw exhibiting the same pattern of misconduct.

She saw the ACLU acting in a way that the ACLU condemns in others. The ACLU and non profits in general are focused on fund raising. They indicate the same abuses -- corporate negligence, lack of oversight -- as the financial industry.

Kaminer laments the ACLU profiling and data mining its donors and members, violating their privacy. The current ACLU leadership gives an exemption to non profits to do what they condemn in government and for profit corporations. The ACLU gives an exemption to the City government of Cambridge MA.

She accuses the Executive Director of lying to the Board of Directors. Is this unique?
Asked why the ACLU attacks her, she says it is because she is most aggressive and persistent. The ACLU marginalized and demonized her. Staff of CCTV and the Cambridge City officials did the same to me. She calls it "group think," when people get together to suppress dissent. Though she is aware that the ACLU Board members are reading her book they are still not talking about the institutional problems she reveals.

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http://www.nypost.com/seven/06222009/postopinion/opedcolumnists/the_aclus_sellout_on_watch_lists_175409.htm

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http://tinyurl.com/mtjya9


THE ACLU'S SELLOUT ON WATCH LISTS
By BILL FLANIGEN
New York Post
Last updated: 1:50 am
June 22, 2009
Posted: 1:27 am
June 22, 2009