ACLU fights for the right to party

We wouldn’t say the ACLU has acquired its “License to Ill,” but it is fighting for some law enforcement officers’ right to party. The head of the S.C. chapter of the organization is saying that a sheriff’s assertion that his deputies can’t go into a booze den may violate the First Amendment right to association.

Earlier this week, Colleton County Sheriff George Malone said his staff should not go to bars and nightclubs after they clock out. He referenced two recent incidences of gun play at such places. Of course, it occurs to us that in a rural area, such roadhouses, juke joints, honky tonks and the like are probably going to have people with loaded firearms near them.

The Charleston City Paper’s Chris Haire was on the lookout for this long ago.

My grandfather was a cop. And for a brief time in my life, I thought about joining the force. But I didn’t. And it was for the same reason I ultimately decided I didn’t want to go into the service — Beer.

Malone, naturally, probably didn’t see the CCP story and definitely doesn’t care what the ACLU has to say on the matter.

“I don’t have a reaction to it,” he said to The Post & Courier. “They have their opinion and I’ve got mine.”