To: Committee to Support Los Angeles County Seal, and Hosts: Los Angeles County Supervisor Don Knabe, Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael Antonovich, Pat Boone, Kevin Dobson, Sandra Needs and David Hernandez, Committee Chairman.

Please allow me to thank each of you, and all who join you today, in “Honoring The American Legion and [our] efforts on behalf of Liberty & Religious Freedom.”
"For God and country" has been the creed of The American Legion since its inception by GI's in 1919 after World War I. It is our creed today. It will be tomorrow.

That creed, our American values, our religious history and heritage, the Boy Scouts, your Los Angeles County Seal, and similar seals in Redlands, and in San Diego, the public display of seemingly all other symbols of our American religious history and heritage, including at the Mojave Desert Veterans Memorial, are under attack by the ACLU, and aligned special interests.

The American Legion is committed to fighting these fanatical attacks. I commend you all for your efforts to save the Los Angeles County Seal from revision -- from “secular cleansing” -- by the ACLU. I want you to know that the American Legion stands with you.

Further, I want you to know we appreciate your support of the American Legion, for our Resolution 326 which calls on Congress to end the outrageous exploitation of the Civil Rights Act by the ACLU in seeking and receiving millions of dollars in judge-ordered, taxpayer-paid attorney fees in Establishment Clause cases. It is the threat of such judge-ordered fees that has terrorized local elected officials into surrendering to the ACLU’s demands.

The American Legion is in full support of the Public Expression of Religion Act of 2005, H.R. 2679, sponsored by Rep. John Hostettler (R-Ind.), which would end this abuse by amending the Civil Rights Attorney Fees Act of 1976, 42 United States Code Section 1988, to withdraw the authority of judges to award attorney fees to the ACLU, or anyone else, in lawsuits under the Establishment Clause. I urge you to join us in calling in on Congress to pass H.R. 2679.

We must never relinquish the public expression of the symbols that represent who we are as a people. We must not surrender to such demands. Standing together, we will overcome.

God bless you all; God Bless our troops; and God bless America.

THOMAS P. CADMUS
National Commander
The American Legion