How do you frame the episode where they sell defamation services in exchange for donations, a sort of extortion scheme?

If you're talking about the op-ed I don't even think that was Heard's idea. It really sounds like she wasn't involved in it at all. They sold her the ambassadorship title I guess, but after that they were just trying to cash in on me too. Heard was a useful figure because they already had a relationship with her and she had a public messy divorce.

Being wrong one time doesn't usually mean you should throw out an entire ideology.

This makes sense to me. They've basically bought into the idea of the Paradox of Tolerance.

That still doesn't explain why they are involved with the Heard/Depp case. Or why they were supporting Stacey Abrams' campaign or campaigning against Brett Kavanaugh.

I don't much care about the Heard/Depp case, it's a tabloid sideshow. The story the Atlantic author presents seems bad to me, maybe the ACLU made a mistake there.

Supporting Stacey Abrams makes absolute sense; she's done more work on the ground for voting rights than any politician at her level. As for Kavanaugh, the ACLU's explanation for their opposition satisfies me. https://www.aclu.org/blog/civil-liberties/executive-branch/w...

I think the argument in the Atlantic piece is roughly that these “one-off” exceptional blog posts justifying their decision is largely just-so stories with little principled reasoning. For example, this is their defense for why they opposed the justice nomination:

“Board members were clear that if the same concerns were raised about a Democratic Supreme Court nominee — inadequately investigated credible allegations of sexual assault supported by credible testimony and met by nominee testimony showing angry partisanship — we would similarly oppose that nominee.”

That’s a lot of qualifiers! Would they do the same for any potential crime? What about other crimes whose severity, from a social perspective, has changed in the other direction in the years since they were committed? For example, smoking weed was probably considered, contemporaneously, as less forgivable than making unwanted sexual advances. Should we try to dig into whether a nominee passed a blunt in college, since surely that’s a sign of poor past judgment?

By wading into these waters, the ACLU should have airtight argumentation, ideally proactive not reactive. It hasn’t offered much of that, which is why its integrity is being credibly questioned.

Their explanation you linked which says:

“Does this decision change ACLU policy?

No. ACLU policy is not to support or oppose any candidate for elected or appointed office, including Supreme Court justices.”

And supporting Stacey Abrams is in keeping with that…how?

Edit: typos

Well Kavanaugh has some evidence accusing him of rape and Abrams fights incredibly hard for voting rights, which seems like a civil liberty to me.