First Amendment? We don't need no stinking First Amendment.
One of the key...er...rocks in the bedrock of Constitutional law lo these past several decades has been the right in this country to speak freely, no matter how despicable that speech is. Apparently, John Ashcroft and his DoJ are unaware (as they are unaware of so many things) of that because tomorrow, in a courtroom in Iowa, the First Amendment goes on trial [subscription required].
MOSCOW, IDAHO -- One of the Bush administration's favorite legal weapons in the domestic war on terrorism faces a critical test at a trial set to begin tomorrow in Boise, Idaho.
The weapon is a law aimed not at masterminds or bombers but at secondary players who provide terrorists with "material support and resources." The phrase provides a flexible net, and prosecutors have used it to charge 57 people in Detroit; Lackawanna, N.Y.; Portland, Ore.; Seattle; Tampa and other cities since Sept. 11, 2001. But some federal judges, uneasy about the provision's vagueness and its potential to squelch free speech, have begun to poke holes in it.
Now, the case of Saudi graduate student Sami Omar al-Hussayen could help determine how aggressively the government will be able to pursue alleged promoters of terrorism: people who raise money, offer advice or amplify calls to violence.
Hussayen, a "a loving husband, a gentle father of three young boys and an esteemed leader of the Muslim community in this small town," has been held in jail on immigration charges for more than a year.
In the Hussayen case, the government seeks for the first time to apply the material-support statute to someone whose primary alleged crime is promoting militant Islam online. Mr. Hussayen, whose partially completed Ph.D. thesis addresses computer-network security, is accused of offering expert advice, among other forms of aid, to the Islamic Assembly of North America by helping set up and edit Web sites such as www.alasr.ws, an online Arabic magazine. In court papers, the FBI says that in June 2001, the site carried an article by a Saudi-trained Kuwaiti cleric titled, "Provision of Suicide Operations." An excerpt in English translation says in part, "This can be accomplished with the modern means of bombing or bringing down an airplane on an important location that will cause the enemy great losses."
The government alleges that another IANA site Mr. Hussayen helped create and maintain, www.islamway.com, exhorted viewers to donate money to Hamas, a Palestinian group the U.S. considers a terrorist organization. (IANA, a nonprofit based in Ann Arbor, Mich., is under U.S. investigation but hasn't been charged. It has denied any wrongdoing.)
Islamway.com and another site Mr. Hussayen allegedly helped supervise invited visitors to join the separate 2,400-member e-mail group he helped moderate. The group's first posting, in February 2000, allegedly came from Mr. Hussayen himself: a "cry and call" to "fight the idolater with your money, your selves, your tongues and your prayers." Prosecutors have said they intend to call as witnesses defendants who have pleaded guilty in other material-support-of-terrorism cases and who will say they were drawn to militant causes at least in part by Mr. Hussayen's online activities.
Unfortunately for the DoJ, the Supreme Court, in a landmark 1969 decision reversing the conviction of a KKK leader in Ohio for advocating racial strife, said government can punish advocacy of illegal action, "only if it is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action."
Unfortunately for the rest of us, Ashcroft and his team are intent on making hash of the First Amendment (remember his congressional testimony in which he said that criticism of his tactics only helped the terrorists, or Ari Fleischer's "watch what you say, watch what you do" gem?).
Richard Clarke in "Against All Enemies" is critical of a number of Bushies, but Ashcroft gets special flaying. At a time when the DoJ should be doing all they can to ease citizen's fears that they're not tossing the Bill of Rights into the dustbin of history -- all in the name of fighting terrorism -- Ashcroft is doing the opposite. The result is that he's making even sane people paranoid about the administration's intent so that every privacy right is a fight to the death between law enforcement and civil libertarians.
And let's not even think about how successful Ashcroft's tactics are in the battlle to win the hearts and minds in the Muslim community.
MOSCOW, IDAHO -- One of the Bush administration's favorite legal weapons in the domestic war on terrorism faces a critical test at a trial set to begin tomorrow in Boise, Idaho.
The weapon is a law aimed not at masterminds or bombers but at secondary players who provide terrorists with "material support and resources." The phrase provides a flexible net, and prosecutors have used it to charge 57 people in Detroit; Lackawanna, N.Y.; Portland, Ore.; Seattle; Tampa and other cities since Sept. 11, 2001. But some federal judges, uneasy about the provision's vagueness and its potential to squelch free speech, have begun to poke holes in it.
Now, the case of Saudi graduate student Sami Omar al-Hussayen could help determine how aggressively the government will be able to pursue alleged promoters of terrorism: people who raise money, offer advice or amplify calls to violence.
Hussayen, a "a loving husband, a gentle father of three young boys and an esteemed leader of the Muslim community in this small town," has been held in jail on immigration charges for more than a year.
In the Hussayen case, the government seeks for the first time to apply the material-support statute to someone whose primary alleged crime is promoting militant Islam online. Mr. Hussayen, whose partially completed Ph.D. thesis addresses computer-network security, is accused of offering expert advice, among other forms of aid, to the Islamic Assembly of North America by helping set up and edit Web sites such as www.alasr.ws, an online Arabic magazine. In court papers, the FBI says that in June 2001, the site carried an article by a Saudi-trained Kuwaiti cleric titled, "Provision of Suicide Operations." An excerpt in English translation says in part, "This can be accomplished with the modern means of bombing or bringing down an airplane on an important location that will cause the enemy great losses."
The government alleges that another IANA site Mr. Hussayen helped create and maintain, www.islamway.com, exhorted viewers to donate money to Hamas, a Palestinian group the U.S. considers a terrorist organization. (IANA, a nonprofit based in Ann Arbor, Mich., is under U.S. investigation but hasn't been charged. It has denied any wrongdoing.)
Islamway.com and another site Mr. Hussayen allegedly helped supervise invited visitors to join the separate 2,400-member e-mail group he helped moderate. The group's first posting, in February 2000, allegedly came from Mr. Hussayen himself: a "cry and call" to "fight the idolater with your money, your selves, your tongues and your prayers." Prosecutors have said they intend to call as witnesses defendants who have pleaded guilty in other material-support-of-terrorism cases and who will say they were drawn to militant causes at least in part by Mr. Hussayen's online activities.
Unfortunately for the DoJ, the Supreme Court, in a landmark 1969 decision reversing the conviction of a KKK leader in Ohio for advocating racial strife, said government can punish advocacy of illegal action, "only if it is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action."
Unfortunately for the rest of us, Ashcroft and his team are intent on making hash of the First Amendment (remember his congressional testimony in which he said that criticism of his tactics only helped the terrorists, or Ari Fleischer's "watch what you say, watch what you do" gem?).
Richard Clarke in "Against All Enemies" is critical of a number of Bushies, but Ashcroft gets special flaying. At a time when the DoJ should be doing all they can to ease citizen's fears that they're not tossing the Bill of Rights into the dustbin of history -- all in the name of fighting terrorism -- Ashcroft is doing the opposite. The result is that he's making even sane people paranoid about the administration's intent so that every privacy right is a fight to the death between law enforcement and civil libertarians.
And let's not even think about how successful Ashcroft's tactics are in the battlle to win the hearts and minds in the Muslim community.
posted by John at 1:48 PM
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