One of the funny little games that organizations with agendas play is to give themselves names that sound good, wholesome, decent and appealing, only to promote ideas that are the very antithesis.

People For the American Way is a good example. The American Civil Liberties Union is another.

Less familiar to you may be the American Constitution Society. Still, the group is playing the same funny little name game.

You probably would assume the American Constitution Society upholds the tenets of the Constitution. But you would be wrong.

The group is holding its national convention in Washington in a couple of weeks. Here are a few of the featured speakers:

— Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

— Attorney Greg Craig.

— Jamie Gorelick, former deputy attorney general under Janet Reno.

— Walter Dellinger III, former solicitor general in the Clinton administration.

— Linda Greenhouse, an abortion rights activist who covered the Supreme Court for The New York Times for 28 years.

— Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, known as one of the most frequently overturned U.S. judges.

— Judge Marsha Berzon, a Clinton appointee to the 9th Circuit.

— Judge William Fletcher, another Clinton appointee to the 9th Circuit.

— Laurence Tribe, considered one of the foremost liberal law professors in America.

— Wade Henderson of the ACLU and NAACP.

— John Podesta, former chief of staff to President Clinton.

— Elena Kagan, former associate counsel to President Clinton.

— Cass Sunstein, whose 2004 book, "The Second Bill of Rights: FDR's Unfinished Revolution and Why We Need It More Than Ever," called for a "second bill of rights" that would include the right to an education, the right to a home, the right to health care, the right to protection against monopolies, and more.

— Jeffrey Rosen of The New Republic.

— Theodore Shaw of the NAACP.

— Dahlia Lithwick of Slate magazine.

Do you get the picture?

No one on the agenda believes in the Constitution as written by the Founding Fathers. They are all, more or less, subscribers to the notion that the Constitution is a "living document" — one that changes over time.

A constitution that changes over time permits judges to become the oligarchs of a society — the ultimate rulers, uninhibited by enumerated powers, the rule of law or the will of the people.

Nevertheless, the American Constitution Society likes to keep up the charade as much as possible — in hopes of duping the American people into thinking the organization is truly a scholarly outfit above the fray of politics.

A press release announcing the convention boasted it "will feature experts from across the ideological spectrum." From the looks of the lineup, the American Constitution Society recognizes a very narrow spectrum on the extreme left of the prism — from red to red.

In fact, that is exactly what the ACS is. It is an organization founded as an answer to the conservative-libertarian Federalist Society. It is a highly partisan political extremist organization with an agenda not to support the U.S. Constitution, but to undermine its most basic precepts.

It was at one of the first of these forums that Ruth Bader Ginsburg chose to make her plea for expanding U.S. court decisions to consider foreign law as well as our own.

According to an ACS document, the group is working:

— "To counter the dominant vision of American law today, a narrow conservative vision that lacks appropriate regard for the ways in which the law affects people's lives.

— "To restore the fundamental principles of respect for human dignity, protection of individual rights and liberties, genuine equality, and access to justice to their rightful, and traditionally central, place in American law.

— "To strengthen the intellectual foundations of — and the public case for — a more progressive vision of the law on such issues as: privacy; freedom of speech; federalism; antidiscrimination and affirmative action; gay rights; reproductive choice; disability rights; labor and consumer rights; protection of health, safety, and the environment; the death penalty; the criminal justice system; immigration; and international human rights."

A survey of the entire American Constitution Society Web site shows one thing conspicuously absent: a copy of the U.S. Constitution!

To find out more about Joseph Farah and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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