ACLU nostalgic for human rights abuses of George W. Bush era

WASHINGTON, D.C.—During a break in Wednesday night's anxiety-and-caffeine-fuelled all-nighter prepping a lawsuit against US President Trump's ban on transgender people serving in the military, the American Civil Liberties Union grew nostalgic as it recalled the "simpler days" fighting the human rights abuses of the George W. Bush era.

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"I guess we didn't know how good we had it back then, huh," said ACLU Executive Director Michelle L. Ramirez, raising a mug of burnt coffee to her lips with a sweaty, trembling hand.

"I mean, challenging the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program sounds pretty good right about now, am I right?" Ramirez continued, chuckling as she fondly remembered when the 6th Circuit overturned a district court's earlier decision declaring the program unconstitutional.

The exhausted and bleary-eyed civil rights lawyers, who've been working 80-hour weeks since Trump's inauguration in a desperate attempt to curtail the president's authoritarian impulses, became wistful as they reminisced about a time in their lives when waterboarding, mass surveillance, and secret CIA black sites actually seemed like a big deal.

"Do you guys remember how worked up we got over the Patriot Act?" Ramirez said, shaking her head in disbelief. "We were just so innocent back then."

At press time, the lawyers were overcome with a new wave of nostalgia as they recalled the "carefree Obama years," a period of relative blissful quiet when all they had to worry about was a "measly 2.5 million deportations" and a "pitiful little drone-led targeted killing program."

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