Sometimes disparate news items all come into focus as parts of a larger story.
“Material Support” for terrorists expanded to include Free Speech
This week the Supreme Court rejected a challenge to a ban on providing “material support” to terrorist groups. The particular “material support” in a case brought by the government against the Humanitarian Law Project referred to the Project’s efforts to advise the Kurdistan Worker’s Party on non-violent means to resolve conflicts with the Turkish government. In its 6-3 ruling the Supreme Court essentially scrapped the First Amendment by declaring that, in the interests of fighting terror, the government had the right to determine who Americans can talk to and what kind of speech is permitted.
“Not even the ‘serious and deadly problem’ of international terrorism can require automatic forfeiture of First Amendment rights,” Justice Stephen Breyer wrote. “There is no obvious way in which undertaking advocacy for political change through peaceful means or teaching the PKK and LTTE, say, how to petition the United Nations for political change is fungible with other resources that might be put to more sinister ends in the way that donations of money, food, or computer training are fungible.”
“The decision sends a clear message that the First Amendment does not protect even the most benign forms of advocacy on behalf of groups designated as ‘foreign terrorist organizations’ by the Secretary of State,” said Stephen I. Vladeck of the American University Washington College of Law.
Even conservative Justice Roberts wrote that Kagan’s positions had gone too far. “The government is wrong,” he wrote, “that the only thing actually at issue in this litigation is conduct” and not speech protected by the First Amendment. But he nevertheless concluded that combating terrorism trumped protection of free expression.
Justice Sotomayor, in dissenting, said that “under the government’s definition, teaching these members to play the harmonica would be unlawful.”
Demonstrating the high caliber of arguments for the majority position, Justice Scalia replied, “Well, Mohamed Atta and his harmonica quartet might tour the country and make a lot of money.”
Elena Kagan’s nomination to the Supreme Court
The ruling highlighted President Obama’s nomination of Elena Kagan, who appears to on her way to be the Court’s newest conservative justice.
It was Kagan who argued the government’s case as Solicitor General. Kagan has also defended indefinite detention without trial.
When liberal Justice John Paul Stevens retires, he will most likely be replaced by Kagan. To the many other disappointments with the Obama administration this can be added.
Freedom of Speech will now be regulated by lobbyists
Although the Secretary of State maintains the official lists of whom Americans can talk to or visit, this list is subject to tinkering, political posturing and lobbying by foreign governments and their friends.
A case in point is the recent call by AIPAC, an Israeli lobbying group, to redefine the Turkish charity, IHH, as a terrorist group. The call was enthusiastically endorsed by a majority of Congressmen from both parties.
Based on documents supplied by AIPAC, echoing Israel’s claims that the charity “has well documented ties to Hamas and has been linked to other Islamic terrorist organizations, including al‐Qaeda,” Congress will likely add it and additional politicized (but hardly terrorist) organizations to the State Department’s watch lists – even though the State Department itself has never established such “documented ties.”
Oh, well, with a bit more lobbying and a few more PAC contributions I’m sure such ties will be “established.”
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