Tapper on Civil Liberties

Earlier, regarding civil liberties, I said “Also on the hopeful side, there is the fact that civil rights, when and only when it comes to non- intrusive government, is probably the only common ground between most of the left and much of the right. Picture the ACLU and the NRA working together.”

Jake Tapper has a Salon piece on this very subject: Conservative constitutional catfight! Right-wing activists team up with the left-wing ACLU to bash the PATRIOT Act. The Justice Department is not amused.”:

With leaders like Daschle on the left, Norquist feels compelled to take up the fight he says he previously “always sort of assumed the ACLU and the liberals would take care of. I’m not sure … we can count on our left-of-center friends.”

There seems to be agreement on both sides of the aisle on that point. So the result was an ACLU forum Thursday billed as the “first time organizations from the left and right in Washington have come together publicly to discuss their growing common ground on civil liberties in the post-9/11 world,” featuring not only Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform; but three other notable conservatives as well: David Keene, president of the American Conservative Union; Lori Waters, executive director of the conservative Eagle Forum; and outspoken former Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga., a 1998 House impeachment manager. The four were invited by Laura Murphy, director of the ACLU Washington legislative office…

I enjoyed Grover Norquist’s Hillary Test: “Someday Hillary Clinton’s going to be attorney general and I hope conservatives keep that in mind.”

AB