Big Lizards:Blog:Entry “Don't Harsh My Jihad, Dude”

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January 17, 2006

Don't Harsh My Jihad, Dude

Hatched by Dafydd

I think I've written ad nauseum about the obsession the American Left has with the National Security Agency intercept program (i.e., "if al-Qaeda is calling you, we want to know why," as John Hinderaker of Power Line put it):

How they have convinced themselves it's a political winner ("the Republicans will do anything it takes to protect America, so vote Democratic!");

How they dismisss as irrelevant trivia whether the president may actually have the constitutional authority, apart from any act passed by Congress, to order intercepts of foreign terrorists communicating with their American agents;

How they bray like donkeys at the very idea that a law authorizing the use of military force might likewise authorize such intercepts of foreign intelligence;

How they dismiss out of hand the difficulties of trying to run a war with a federal court (however friendly) having to sign off on every military decision...

And of course, the biggie: the fact that no major Democrat who screams and complains about the NSA electronically peeking at e-mails and phone calls from al-Qaeda is actually calling for it to stop: they want so very much to have their peek and beat on it, too.

But at the risk of inducing seasickness, I want to note that someone, at least, is finally doing something to stop this terrible depradation of our most fundamental civil liberty, the right to clandestinely communicate with terrorist groups abroad: the ACLU, CAIR, Greenpeace, and the Center For Constitutional Rights (plus some individual plaintiffs, including one celebrity, of a sort) have gone to federal court to shut down the NSA intercept program:

Federal lawsuits were filed Tuesday seeking to halt President Bush's domestic eavesdropping program, calling it an "illegal and unconstitutional program" of electronic eavesdropping on American citizens.

The lawsuits accusing Bush of exceeding his constitutional powers were filed in federal court in New York by the Center for Constitutional Rights and in Detroit by the American Civil Liberties Union.

The New York suit, filed on behalf of the center and individuals, names Bush, the head of the National Security Agency, and the heads of the other major security agencies, challenging the NSA's surveillance of persons within the United States without judicial approval or statutory authorization.

(Not that the Associated Press would ever pre-judge a case, of course.)

One surprising side point is the identity of one of the plaintiffs:

At a news conference, Center for Constitutional Rights Legal Director Bill Goodman portrayed the president as a man on an unprecedented power grab at the expense of basic democratic principles.

He said the public was starting to understand the assertion that the erosion of individual rights is a slippery slope that lets the government "brand anyone a terrorist with no right to counsel, no right to be brought before a judge and no right to privacy in communications...."

Plaintiff Rachel Meeropol, an attorney at the center, said she believes she has been targeted. "I'm personally outraged that my confidential communication with my clients may have been listened to by the U.S. government," she said.

And who is Rachel Meeropol? Well, Law.com mentions only that she's "at the forefront of national civil rights litigation," mentions some of her lawsuits against America, and notes that:

In addition, Meeropol is the co-vice president of the New York City chapter of the National Lawyers Guild; a co-editor and primary author of the Jailhouse Lawyers Handbook, a reference guide for prisoners without an attorney to learn their rights; and the editor of America's Disappeared: Secret Imprisonment, Detainees, and the "War on Terror."

Her profile from Equal Justice Works adds one tantalizing hint to the above:

Rachel's interest in prisoners' rights work stems from her family's firsthand experience with the destructive impact of the criminal "justice" system on communities and individuals.

But you only find out Rachel Meeropol's actual claim to fame by turning to the ultra-leftist groups that have no interest in dissembling such a fine pedigree as hers. For example, a broadcast by Democracy Now:

The Rosenberg Execution 50 Years Later

A Democracy Now! special with Julius and Ethel Rosenberg's sons Robert and Michael Meeropol, granddaughter Rachel Meeropol and co-defendant Morton Sobell.

(Hat tip to the blog Sweetness and Light, and to my friend Lee Porter for calling it to my attention.)

So "her family's firsthand experience with the destructive impact of the criminal 'justice' system on communities and individuals" consists of being tried for, convicted of, and executed for passing the secret of the atom bomb to the Soviet Union. Yes, I can definitely see how that might tend to have a "destructive impact."

Apart from such celebrity plaintiffs, the organizations behind these lawsuits make for some odd bedfellows (or perhaps not so odd, if one isn't obliged to accept at face value their descriptions of themselves): side by side with the American Civil Liberties Union is the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a radical Arabist group that has many members who have been suspected, indicted, and even convicted of abetting jihadi terrorism; Greenpeace, which in fact engages in aggressive "action directe," such as trying to ram Navy vessels attempting to test defensive anti-missile systems.

And of course, let's not forget the Center for Constitutional Rights, a group that is probably further to the left than Michael Moore, having been co-founded by Communist and radical lawyer William Kunstler; having defended in court terrorists such as El Sayyid Nosair, a member of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman's terrorist group which attacked the World Trade Centers in 1993; and supporting such other radical notables as Lynne Stewart, who was indicted and recently convicted of several terrorism-related charges:

On 10 February 2005, Stewart was convicted of providing material support, through a press conference and allowing access by her translator, to a terrorist conspiracy to kill persons outside of the United States and conspiring to defraud the U.S. government when acting as counsel to Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind Egyptian cleric who was convicted in 1996 of plotting terrorist attacks against various sites in the New York City area.

(An engaging but rather biased-to-the-right profile of the Center can be found on the Wikipedia, here.)

To be blunt, we have a number of radical, pro-terrorist, anti-American groups allying with what purports to be a civil-liberties group -- running to the courts to remake American military policy in the middle of a war.

I expect two things:

The original district court that hears this case will rule in favor of the radicals and will order the president to shut down the NSA program; I'm sure the plaintiff have shopped very carefully for exactly the right Clinton- or Carter-appointed judge to decide this case.

The appellate court will overturn the decision, and the Supreme Court will either deny certiorari or will take the case and affirm the appellate court... because the Court is going to be very reluctant to dive into a case that obviously infringes on the power of the executive -- excuse me, the dreaded unitary executive -- to function as commander in chief.

But we'll see. Perhaps they'll misjudge their first judge, and he'll actually dismiss the case outright, as he should... on standing (can any of these people show he was actually among those recorded?) or else on the basis of the earlier decisions cited by, e.g., John Hinderaker at Power Line.

In any event, this is definitely one case to watch!

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, January 17, 2006, at the time of 3:53 PM

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Comments

The following hissed in response by: stackja1945

McCarthy said that communists are a menace and now in a new movie Hollywood says that McCarthy was wrong. Communists help terrorists today what do we call them now?
While in Australia the agenda of communism:
Mark Aarons
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Aarons
Mark Aarons is a journalist and author from Australia.

Partial bibliography:

War Criminals Welcome: Australia, a Sanctuary for War Criminals Since 1945, Melbourne: Black Inc., 2001
The Secret War Against the Jews: How Western Espionage Betrayed the Jewish People, with John Loftus, St. Martin's Press, 1994, ISBN 0312156480
Ratlines: How the Vatican's Nazi Networks Betrayed Western Intelligence to the Soviets, with John Loftus, William Heinemann, 1991 (US edition: Unholy Trinity: How the Vatican's Nazi Networks Betrayed Western Intelligence to the Soviets, with John Loftus, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992). 372 pages.
He is the son of Laurie Aarons.
Laurie Aarons
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurie_Aarons
Laurence "Laurie" Aarons (19 August 1917 - 7 February 2005), Australian Communist leader, was National Secretary of the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) from 1965 to 1976. He was born in Sydney, son of Sam Aarons, a leading member of the Communist Party and a veteran of the Spanish Civil War.

The above hissed in response by: stackja1945 at January 17, 2006 4:57 PM