Oakland California has begun putting images of "Johns" on billboards, as punishment for using prostitutes.

The city of 400,000 across the bay from San Francisco started putting up billboards on Wednesday showing men arrested for soliciting sex. Other signs invite prostitutes to quit by calling a help line.

"This idea came out of just thinking about new ideas, doing something to deal with this increasing problem, especially with the exploitation of underage women," said Oakland City Council President Ignacio De La Fuente, who champions the approach.

Of course, the ACLU moans. They always moan when criminals get their just desserts.

"It doesn't seem to us to be appropriate for Oakland to be using shaming as an additional and extrajudicial punishment to single out this group of offenders," said Alan Schlosser, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union for Northern California. "We don't think this is good public policy."

Why not? Normally the ACLU would complain that prostitutes shouldn't be treated as criminals because they are just trying to make a living, they are being exploited, blame the Johns, blah, blah. So now the Johns are getting blamed, and the ACLU has to pipe up in order to get their name in the paper just one more time this week. I swear that's their mission statement: To Get Our Name In The News Every Day of Every Year! We work harder in leap years!