| Leading conservatives call for Obama to back terrorist group
Maybe it's just criminal if it's someone besides "prominent" Republicans are doing it?
A group of prominent Republicans may have actually committed a crime last month when they traveled to Paris to speak to an Iranian opposition group that the US has deemed to be terrorists.
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, former national security adviser Fran Townsend and former Attorney General Michael Mukasey all attended a forum organized by supporters of Mujaheddin-e Khalq (MEK).
The MEK is a communist group that helped Saddam Hussein carry out attacks against Iraq's Shiite population in the 1990s. The group attacked Americans in Iran in the 1980s and helped with the 1979 takeover of the US embassy in Tehran.
Holy shit! Muslims AND communists!
Yup... sounds like a pretty savory group to me. What could these fine upstanding Republicans possibly be doing wrong by meeting with and encouraging an MuslimoCommie and obviously terrorist group?
Not a terrorist group? Bullshit!
The US designated the MEK a foreign terrorist organization in January 2009.
Sounds pretty fricking cut and dried to me but if you need more cutting and drying....
Georgetown University law professor and attorney David Cole believes that under US law, the group of conservatives may have gone too far.
"The problem is that the United States government has labeled the Mujahedeen Khalq a 'foreign terrorist organization,' making it a crime to provide it, directly or indirectly, with any material support," he wrote in Monday's edition of the New York Times. " It is therefore a felony, the government has argued, to file an amicus brief on behalf of a 'terrorist' group, to engage in public advocacy to challenge a group's 'terrorist' designation or even to encourage peaceful avenues for redress of grievances ."
One of those laws we just had to have so the government and its various leash holders could continue to f**k with us in the name of security. OK... let's see if we're even going to try to maintain the pretense of "equal under the law" on this one.
The Supreme Court has ruled that any "advocacy performed in coordination with, or at the direction of, a foreign terrorist organization" is a crime.
So no going that route this time.
"Congress should reform the laws governing material support of terrorism. It should make clear that speech advocating only lawful, nonviolent activities - as Michael Mukasey and Rudolph Giuliani did in Paris - is not a crime," he wrote.
Giuliani, Townsend and company "probably just want to bring the group out into the open and help it pursue the end to Iranian tyranny through peaceable, lawful conduct," noted Gawker. "And any law that criminalizes that sort of support is a stupid and bad law."
Then you work to change the law... you don't let a bunch of effing elites get away with violating it... especially after you've already prosecuted someone else under it's provisions and had your tame supreme court interpret it for you.
But that's not how the Supreme Court sees it.
"Material support meant to 'promot[e] peaceable, lawful conduct' can further terrorism by foreign groups in multiple ways," wrote Chief Justice John Roberts. "Such support frees up other resources within the organization that may be put to violent ends. It also importantly helps lend legitimacy to foreign terrorist groups-legitimacy that makes it easier for those groups to persist, to recruit members, and to raise funds-all of which facilitate more terrorist attacks."
Only weeks after Mukasey was sworn in a President George W. Bush's attorney general, leaders of what was once the largest Muslim charity in the United States were found guilty on a similar principle: they were providing material support for Hamas.
"Prosecutors did not accuse the [Holy Land Foundation] of directly financing or being involved in terrorist activity," Raw Story noted. "Instead, they said humanitarian aid was used to promote Hamas and allow it to divert existing funds to militant activities."
This whole damned "different laws for thee than me" is one of the major things that is wrong in this country today.
These people need to be indicted and we don't need to take two fricking years to make up our minds, hoping it will fade from public view.
These are some of the same people demanding that Julian Assange be arrested and tried by the United States when they can't even tell us what crimes he's supposed to have committed against the US and it's my humble opinion that their actions do more to undermine the US in the eyes of the world than those 1800 redacted diplomatic files that have been released so far.
So Mr. Holder... do we keep "looking forward" and let them get away with it or do we finally say enough is enough and start applying the law(s) of the land equally to everyone?
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