I had decided that what the LP needed was its own ACLU to focus on litigating freedom issues. Showing unusual initiative Manny called me, having discovered through a fellow attorney my intentions. Manny told me his Libertarian Law Council was handling that and so my efforts were unnecessary. I invite you to notice the number of cases the LLC has litigated in the last 28 years. The group exists; it is an adjunct of the Federalist Society in Los Angeles if you check out the Volokh Conspiracy blog.
Lists do not get much shorter. This might lead you to believe that no issues of individual rights have arisen in the last 28 years. But Manny is the head of the litigation arm for what is now called the David Horowitz Freedom Center , formerly the Center for the Study of Popular Culture. Check it out and you will find that one Manny Klausner is the General Counsel with 'affiliated attorneys' unnamed. The Freedom Center, which might fit neatly into Horowitz's bathtub, shortened its name and its focus. It is the Horowitz Group that co-sponsors what is called the Freedom Film Festival. Various groups from the Conservative Christian faction have decided to take on Hollywood, working to compete in sending their own message out into the wasteland of American values. Nothing wrong with that; honest messaging in values should be respected as the right of all Americans. Free Speech, you know.
But the operative word here is honesty in advertising. The storm of objections to The Path to 9/11 and related threatened law suits for a project that presumed to position itself as a documentary show two things. First, the truth is a slippery concept for anyone associated with the Neocons; reports on the content show the 'documentary' to actually be a carefully manufactured disinformation film that ignores facts only established after overcoming the full force of Neocondom. (Neocondom is the Official World of Neocons; information carefully covered with plastic, in case you did not know.)
Second, Liberals, at least the ones not presently serving in Congress, are still capable of ensuring their opinion is heard. Those Democrats serving in Congress evidently are nervous about the content of the tapes from the NSA, probably rightly so.
The story of how Manny acquired the IRF is also interesting and David Horowitz is, of course, involved.
In the early 90s an attorney in San Diego named John W. Howard started doing individual rights law suits. The Individual Rights Foundation litigated issues unpopular with Liberals that found intense support among Libertarians and Republicans. The IRF was set up to do great things. Then fate in the form of David Horowitz, Manny Klausner, and John Fund's college roommate intervened.
Horowitz, that Pink Diaper Baby who has now worked his way through the Libertarian Party and into the Republican Party indiscriminately selling his books to everyone credulous enough to buy, had invited Howard to come on board with the Center for the Study of Popular Culture. Howard's IRF was doing great fundraising. CSPC was not. After an amazingly short period of time Howard was out on his ear and the IRF had been stapled to the CSPC. The fundraising continued but the law suits petered out. However, within a remarkably short period of time the Institute for Justice had been founded and Clint Bolick, the previously mentioned Fund roommate, had been installed as its President. The IJ would go on to a career of law suits that were less than stellar but which raised and spent money, badly filling the niche for a much needed ACLU in Libertarian Land.
I got an amazing insight into Horowitz around 1999 when my daughter Morgan attended the Horowitz wedding, hosted by Arianna Huffington as her home in Beverly Hills. Morgan and her then-boyfriend, Eugene Volokh, had arrived early and Morgan wandered off in search of entertainment. She found Arianna's two daughters galloping their Breyer Horses across the carpeted pastures of a bedroom. As a child Morgan had a collection of around 1,000 Breyer horses her self. So Morgan was cantering a diminutive mare across the carpet to the barn when two loud and very distinctive voices approached and entered the room next door. Arianna had offered to hostess the event; Horowitz was responsible for food and beverages. What David had brought, mostly bagels and a few scant accompaniments, might have been fine for a hasty nosh after picketing but certainly was not for an event at Arianna's home. Arianna filled out the menu to be offered. As soon as Horowitz ascertained that he would not be paying he was happy to concede.
Obviously, Horowitz is used to getting other people to pay.
By all reports it was a nice event. We can hope that David and his lovely bride were properly thankful to Arianna but given David's behavior with those who offer their help to the CSPC of him personally perhaps Arianna should be grateful she was not sued.
It is just amazing how connected the Bush folks are with those with whom I once rubbed elbows.
Manny was also an attorney involved in the notorious Sidney Blumenthal. Matt Drudge lawsuit. In case you do not recall, Sidney Blumenthal, effectively accused of spousal abuse by Matt Drudge, sued to establish his innocence. This became a cause ce'lèbre among Libertarians and Conservatives, with funds flowing into the coffers of the Drudge Defense Fund-to the immediate benefit of Manny Klausner and Matt Drudge. Unfortunately, it was all too true: Drudge had conspired with John Fund to put out the story in yet another Arkansas Project-related smear, in a textbook example of how you can libel someone and profit simultaneously-all the while doing the job that pays to fill up the offshore account.
Not that I liked Sidney especially, but the truth is the truth. John babbled the truth about how the abuse story had been orchestrated when he was well into his cups the evening the suit was settled. Even Fund worries occasionally that justice might unexpectedly prevail. I had discerned the outlines of the Arkansas Project, funded by Richard Mellon Scaife, by the mid-1990s. It was the story about the tattoo of the flag on Clinton's privates that did it for me: I wondered how Fund had managed to see that for himself!
On his blog on Professors, Horowitz had placed an article about a teacher who burned the American flag as a demonstration of free speech. Evidently, in the world of David Horowitz, such an act is a Bozo No-No. Curiously enough, I did not see any mention of the even more frightful situation that confronted parents and children in the mid-1990s at Hillsdale, the college that supposedly loved liberty and free speech. Of course, this was not an errant professor, it was the administration.
My daughter, Ayn, called me from the school one day, terribly upset about a situation that had shocked her. Now, at this point you might think I am referring to the suicide of Lisa Roche, who shot herself because of her longtime lover and father-in-law, George Roche, who was then Hillsdale President and the man who nearly single-handedly turned the faltering college serving about 1,000 students around into one of the best-endowed institutions on the face of the Earth. Roche had recently divorced his wife and married another. No, that was not it. Ayn was shocked because two students at the college had been expelled for (gasp) daring to put out an alternative newspaper. Imagine that, thinking they had a right to pay for their own free speech! I immediately informed my old friend John Fund about this. Naturally, he did nothing, having assured me he would take action. John was routinely paid huge amounts of money to speak at Hillsdale, by the way.
I really think David should note that all idiotic behavior does not involve Liberals. There is more than enough stupidity to go around.
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