who watches the watchers?

When the leadership of the ACLU (an organization I support even when I do not agree with its selection of fights to pick) starts to limit the speech of its own board, we’ve got a big problem.

The American Civil Liberties Union is weighing new standards that would discourage its board members from publicly criticizing the organization’s policies and internal administration.

“Where an individual director disagrees with a board position on matters of civil liberties policy, the director should refrain from publicly highlighting the fact of such disagreement,” the committee that compiled the standards wrote in its proposals….

Nat Hentoff, a writer and former A.C.L.U. board member, was incredulous. “You sure that didn’t come out of Dick Cheney’s office?” he asked.

I love Nat Hentoff. I wrote about him here.