NORMAL -- Civil Libertarians may be happy that President Barack Obama is now in office. But they're not taking him for granted.

"We cannot count on President Obama to restore the tattered fabric of our Constitution without our advocacy," the director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Washington DC Legislative office, Caroline Fredrickson, told an ACLU audience on March 28.

She spoke at the Illinois ACLU's annual Member Action Summit held this year at Illinois State University's Bone Student Center. "There is so much that needs to be fixed and improved," she said.

The ACLU has meet more than 100 times with the Obama transition team, she said, to review every federal agency and its policies. "Now we're getting our phone calls returned. We've had meetings. We went to a signing ceremony."

But "access is not enough," Fredrickson said. She offered a list: "Close Guantanamo." Ban torture and secret overseas prisons, lift the global gag rule, restore the Freedom of Information Act's presumption for disclosure, as examples of what the ACLU has asked Obama's administration to do.

There have been setbacks," she said. Obama has continued to pursue the 'state secrets doctrine' of the Bush administration, to prevent trials for detainees. "We will work to prevent detention without charges."

The Obama administration is also dragging its heels on investigating what may be illegal acts during the Bush administration, she said. The US House and Senate are interested in investigating. The ACLU wants a select committee with subpoena power or a special prosecutor to look into who ordered torture, illegal surveillence, and other such activities. "Understanding what has gone wrong is the only way to assure it will end," to assure "nobody is above the law," she said.

"We can not depend on the kindness of presidents" in the future, she said. "We need binding legislation."

The Patriot Act is up for revision this year, she said. "Patriot Act reform is the issue of the year." Also on the front burner: The FISA Amendment, the Military Commission Act that "stripped habeus corpus from people at Gitmo and allowed Bush to determine enemy combatants and define war crimes, and a limit on the state secrets documents, so we'll have disclosure on wrong doing."

The ACLU wants to kill the Real-ID Act, which would require uniform identification cards for everyone and could be misused by business and government. "The struggles will continue," she said.

Democrats control Congress but have been reluctant to act on some of these initiatives, she said. "Some were briefed" on torture, "and might have approved," she said. They fear being blamed if terrorism occurs again in the US. "We say you'll be blamed anyway."

The government is now investigating who destroyed videotapes of torture, she said, without investigating the torture itself. "That's absurd," she said.

Memos that supposedly legalized torture may be a legal defense, but will not immunize someone from prosecution, Frederickson, an attorney, said.

In Illinois, ACLU activists are hoping to pass a civil unions bill, expanding rights to domestic partners, and the Reproductive Health and Access Act, which would allow health care providers to opt out of procedures that violate their religion or conscience, but also requires them to refer the patients elsewhere. It's being fought by the Catholic Church, which has misrepresented the proposal, said Colleen Connell, ACLU Illinois executive director.

The Catholics fear that their hospitals will lose business, she said, when patients learn what services they will not provide and go elsewhere.

Polling has found 70 percent of Illinois residents in favor of the bill. It "protects the rights of people to make their own decisions" about health care.

Gov. Pat Quinn is constantly lobbied by the religious right, said John Peller, director of government relations for the AIDS Foundation of Chicago. Quinn included $1 million in his budget for abstinence education, he said, while others are trying to get that dropped.

"Why is Quinn saying that it's God's will that he's in office?" Peller asked.

On the other hand, with a deficit of up to $13 billion, Quinn is also trying to protect funding that benefits low income people, he said.

Illinois legislators "get away with what they couldn't in Chicago" when they're in Springfield, he said, citing some discussion and debate he described as "disgusting."

About 150 people attended the event.

-- Elaine Hopkins