Yesterday, we told you that Gawker and its investigative report John Cook were preparing a civil suit against New Jersey Governor Chris Christie in an effort to obtain records that he had met with Fox News head Roger Ailes on September 11th of last year. Cook believes Ailes has a direct hand in GOP politics and may have encouraged Christie to try and seek the Republican nomination for president. The American Civil Liberties Union decided to help the website in its legal pursuits, filing the suit on behalf of Gawker Entertainment LLC.

Now, however, it seems that the organization is having a change of heart.

What role – if any – should a school play when a student badmouths a teacher online? That’s the question with which California’s Mesa Verde High School and the ACLU currently find themselves wrestling. The school suspended a student named Donny Tobolski after he took to Facebook to vent his frustrations about a teacher, calling the educator in question – biology teacher Mr. Cimino – a “fat ass who should stop eating fast food, and is a douche bag.”

The President didn’t have a lot of laugh lines in last night’s State of the Union address, and one line–designed to be light and amusing–has provoked the ACLU. When President Obama talked up investing in high-speed rail, he joked that one of the advantages would be “for some trips, it will be faster than flying – without the pat-down.”

Not much in the way of humor–it fell flat in the hall–but more than enough to get a reaction from the ACLU: not laughter, but outrage. As Sahil Kapur reports on Raw Story:

Judson Phillips, the leader of the Tea Party Nation who already made some controversial comments about only letting property owners vote, is at it again now singling out the “top five liberal hate groups” for distinction. The lucky winners to have made his list include: the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the ACLU, the SEIU and the NAACP. Claiming that too often conservative groups are defined as “hate groups,” Phillips is eager to return the favor.

Former President George W. Bush seemed content as “the retired guy” on The O’Reilly Factor last night, but if the American Civil Liberties Union has anything to do with it, that retirement probably won’t be quite as peaceful as he envisioned.

If you live near Ames, Iowa, you could have killed two birds with one stone yesterday. Nondenominational Cornerstone Church is the first of two houses of worship in the area to offer satellite voting at the same time that services are going on.

Perhaps the most unsettling thing about this clip is that, despite being a cable news moment where a guest basically calls the host clueless while the host argues that members of Al-Qaeda want to kill Americans, the average vocal volume is maintained at a stable low. On tonight’s Factor, Bill O’Reilly debated a lawsuit filed by the ACLU intended to defend the rights of Al-Qaeda suspects, and his guest didn’t mince words on what he thought of his opinion.

Who would’ve thought in the early 2000s that Bill O’Reilly and the president of the ACLU would agree on anything? The organization has expressed disapproval of President Barack Obama‘s policies and, well, that’s where the agreements end. But O’Reilly had ACLU member E. Christopher Murray on the Factor to explain the ACLU’s grievances with Obama– mainly, that he has yet to fulfill some of his campaign promises.

“It is of utmost importance to me that those who were responsible for the attacks of 9/11 face a court,” expresses the mother of a fallen firefighter. This is the sentiment throughout a new video making the rounds online in which family members of 9/11 victims voice their support for federal trials of terrorism suspects. It’s a far cry from the “off with their heads!” heat of Saturday’s NY Post, but this measured and moving video can be seen inside.