ACLU Steps Up

I ran into a pollster outside of Powell's Bookstore last fall. He was canvasing for the ACLU. Boy, oh, boy, I've been wanting to talk to someone from the ACLU for a long time. Seems to me that they have been shirking their duty, pursuing namby-pamby issues like voter rights that appeal to the coffee-klatch hostesses in the Bos-Wash suburbs. What they should have been doing is tackling things like the Patriot Act and the incarceration of the mentally ill.
    When I asked the pollster about this, his response was that the ACLU deals with Civil Rights, which confused me. Does that mean they don't deal with criminal issues? Aren't most criminal cases predicated on civil rights?
    Anyway, seems I was wrong. Headline in today's Oregonian:

Judge rules no-fly list infringes on Constitution

Seems the ACLU has been working this case for the last four years. Case was heard in Federal Court in Portland, Oregon, a famously blue state.

P.S. If Democrats are liberals, and liberals are socialists, and socialists are blood-brothers of communists, how did the Democrats become associated with the color blue? I mean communists have been called Reds for forever, but in the modern USA, it is the Republicans, the staunch opponents of anything that even smells of cooperation, who are the Reds. Why is that?