Comment by miles | Hacker News Reader

Comment by miles | Hacker News Reader

> Working with the Institute for Justice[1], a nonprofit focused on civil liberties, Henry Minh alleges a widespread pattern of unlawful package seizures at Indy’s FedEx processing facility.

The IJ does some amazing work. Highly recommend supporting them if their mission resonates with you. I always find something refreshing and uplifting in the bimonthly print magazine.

EDIT: I cannot reply to metabagel's comment (due to it being flagged?) about IJ being "right wing" but here is a smattering of recent cases[2]:

Institute for Justice Files Lawsuit Challenging Florida’s Ban on Cultivated Meat https://ij.org/case/florida-cultivated-meat-ban/

Courts Say City Owes Her Over $200,000; But Now She Has to Sue Again to Get Paid https://ij.org/case/oklahoma-takings/

New petition asks Supreme Court to let woman’s suit against her abuser’s enabler move forward after nearly a decade in court. https://ij.org/case/martinez-v-high/

Lawsuit Seeks Accountability for Unconstitutional Raid of a Political Opponent’s Home. https://ij.org/case/marion-kansas-retaliation/

Virginia Woman Challenges Permanent Punishment Preventing Her from Working as a Substance Abuse Counselor https://ij.org/case/virginia-fresh-start-2/

Family seeks to hold officer accountable after he led SWAT raid at wrong house https://ij.org/case/texas-wrong-house-raid/

[1] https://ij.org/

[2] https://ij.org/cases/

> The IJ does some amazing work. Highly recommend supporting them if their mission resonates with you.

Agreed. IJ (Institute for Justice) [0] and FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression) [1] are my two favorite organizations when it comes to doing the hard work to protect our constitutional rights as Americans!

[0]: https://ij.org

[1]: https://www.thefire.org

I respect some of the attorneys working for FIRE quite a lot. They have some great achievements. But I can't support the organization as a whole because their non-legal work is a bunch of nonsense.

Their initial statement on pro-Palestine protests was disgraceful.

Their ranking of best colleges in the country for free speech are completely wrong (and just happen to align with the political views of their big donors).

For example one factor is how many newspaper articles get written about issues with free speech at a school. Tiny private colleges that explicitly say they don't support free speech do great on this metric.

University of Virginia is championed by them as the best school in the country for free speech, which simply isn't true.

They’re a right wing organization, so just bear in mind they are most concerned about property rights and the right to participate in the free market without burdensome regulation.

Why is this downvoted and flagged? I didn’t say they are extreme right, but they clearly support conservative causes, including school vouchers. Am I wrong?

They oppose government licensing. They stand up for the little guy against the government, but not against big corporations.

I’m just saying, be aware what their agenda is before you sign on.

And yes, in this case I absolutely agree with them. But, I wouldn’t support a lot of what they do.

> They’re a right wing organization, so just bear in mind they are most concerned about property rights and the right to participate in the free market without burdensome regulation.

That description sounds more libertarian than right or left.

There is no such thing as the Libertarian party at this time after RFK Jr decided to drop out in favor of joining Trump. It's all just simple Conservative right wing.

"but not against big corporations"

Because that's literally not their mission: https://ij.org/about-us/

"Our mission is to end widespread abuses of government power ..."

"IJ is the national civil liberties law firm that represents everyday people—free of charge—when the government violates their most important constitutional rights. ..."

The fact that they choose to deal with government abuse of power and not corporate abuse of power seems totally reasonable and unrelated to left or right or whatever. I would not call them right wing simply because they have chosen to focus - all successful non-profit civil liberties law firms do this. Anything else is insane/impossible.

I'm not sure why you are choosing to paint them with a left or right brush here, when it seems mainly complaining that their mission doesn't match what you seem to want.

Most of the civil rights orgs that spend time dealing with corporate abuse of power either ignore or don't take government abuse of power cases. I don't think that classifies them as "left wing" or "right wing" either. It's just pragmatic for what they can accomplish.

They are specifically civil-libertarians and not in fact “right wing.” The in fact do a ton of work on behalf of poor people to help ensure that justice is available regardless of your financial means.

Sure, but it's a narrow kind of justice in service of the type of society they would like to live in - one which doesn't happen to have any social safety net, public services, regulations, professional licensing, etc.

And again, I think it's great that they took this case, because it's egregious. But, I just don't support their broader agenda.

I don't see any evidence that they're against these things.

Care to provide some kind of citations?

Fighting exclusionary zoning, corrupt uses of imminent domain, and abusive civil forfeiture are among the primary goals of the IJ. None of that undermines a safety net or public services. Historically in the US professional licensing has primarily existed to exclude immigrants and racial minorities from lucrative careers, and should be reformed as a moral imperative. This is not a right wing position.

Right wing populists do those things too; their disagreement is about how to administer those programs.

That’s part of what facilitated the political rotation where left and right populists formed the Unity Party (Trump, Kennedy, Gabbard, et al), while classic statists such as Cheney and Clinton allied into the Uniparty.

Unfortunately it seems nobody on the left cares about the government executive force robbing citizens.

>They’re a right wing organization,

They usually define themselves as a libertarian organization which seems a much more accurate way of describing them.

>...they clearly support conservative causes,

"Liberals" don't support ending qualified immunity? Reforming laws that prevent convicts from being able to get a job is a "conservative" cause? etc. It wouldn't surprise me that some people who consider themselves conservative would disagree with and other cases that some people who consider themselves liberal would disagree with.

On their web site they say "Our mission is to end widespread abuses of government power and secure the constitutional rights that allow all Americans to pursue their dreams."

https://ij.org/about-us/

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