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The Terrorists' Legal Team
Capital Research Center ^ | September 2006 | Matthew Vadum

Posted on 09/26/2006 3:38:04 PM PDT by vadum

Worse Than The ACLU

If you thought the left-wing American Civil Liberties Union was bad, wait till you read about the ultra-left "public interest" law firm called the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) in “The Terrorists’ Legal Team.”

The Center for Constitutional Rights is openly anti-American and pro-terrorist. Groups suspected of ties to terrorism give money to CCR. The granddaughter of the executed Communist spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg works there. The late (second) wife of the traitor Alger Hiss left money to CCR in her will. Actors Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon fund CCR, as does singer Natalie Merchant and 1940s Communist relic Pete Seeger (the folk singer from The Weavers). Insurance magnate Peter B. Lewis, a kingpin of George Soros’s “Democracy Alliance,” writes big checks to CCR, as does Soros’s Open Society Institute.

Although CCR is headquartered in New York City’s Greenwich Village, it’s not a bunch of latte-sipping do-nothing artsy dreamers who sit around comparing notes on Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Karl Marx. These are dedicated revolutionaries who, quite literally, want to overthrow the American system of government. Look on their website and you’ll see the same kind of revolutionary Communist catch-phrases that you’ll find in the works of Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, and Mao Zedong.

Its current president, Michael Ratner, is an adjunct law professor at Columbia University. He served as special counsel to Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a Marxist who was overthrown in 2004. Ratner is a classic limousine liberal, or more accurately, a Rolls Royce revolutionary. His family controls Forest City Enterprises, Inc., a nearly $8 billion real estate development company that has been accused of eminent domain abuse. His brother, Bruce, is the owner of the New Jersey Nets.

What’s the connection between Communism and Islamism? CCR hates America so it decided to align itself with terrorists who hate America. It seems CCR and its supporters believe that Islamic Fascist terrorists are freedom fighters and spokesmen for legitimate national liberation movements. After the Soviet Union collapsed around 1991 under the weight of 70 years of failed socialist policies, CCR “made a seamless transition from an alliance with Communism to an alliance with Islamofascism in the name of the United States Constitution,” in the words last year of the Power Line blog.

CCR has enjoyed much success in its legal fight against the U.S. government’s War on Terror, most notably in Rasul v. Bush in which the firm was counsel. (It filed “amicus curiae” briefs in other WOT cases as well.) Rasul is the infamous 2004 case in which the Supreme Court ruled (6 to 3) that CCR’s clients, 16 foreign nationals captured during U.S. hostilities with the Taliban in Afghanistan, had the legal right to challenge their detentions in U.S. civilian courts.

Some people might ask ‘well, what’s the big deal?’ Why can’t we try terrorists in civilian courts?’ Well, there are some problems with that.

Despite some recent back-pedaling, the Bush administration takes the position, which is well-established in U.S. law and international law, that terrorist fighters –such as al-Qaeda operatives— are not entitled to protection under the law of war. Terrorists are what the law calls “unlawful combatants.” Fighting a war by doing things like not wearing a uniform is a serious war crime. Such deception has long been considered immoral and illegal is because it allows unlawful combatants to hide in a society, endangering the civilian population by making it difficult to distinguish civilians from enemy soldiers. Traditionally, the position of the law has been that such conduct is so dangerous and morally reprehensible that when these people are captured they should not be elevated to prisoner of war (or “lawful combatant”) status. America’s terrorist enemies should not be able to waste U.S. resources by weighing down the civilian legal system in endless litigation. Wars are supposed to be waged on battlefields, not in U.S. courtrooms.

But what is most galling to me is CCR’s continuing defense of the convicted terrorist conspirator Lynne Stewart. Stewart was the lawyer for the blink sheik, Omar Abdel Rahman (now a permanent guest in a U.S. Supermax facility), head of an Egyptian Islamist terrorist group called al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya. Members of that group killed 62 people in Luxor, Egypt in 1997, in an effort to put pressure on the U.S. to free the sheik. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was assassinated after the sheik issued a fatwa calling on Muslims to kill him.

Stewart did NOT, as CCR and her other supporters claim, merely do her job as a lawyer. After President Bill Clinton’s attorney general, Janet Reno, made Stewart sign an agreement in which she agreed not to pass on her dangerous terrorist client’s messages to the outside world, she ignored it. Stewart passed on the sheik’s message to reporters who wrote news stories indicating that the sheik wanted his group to call off a ceasefire it had with the government of Egypt. In other words, Lynne Stewart told al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya it’s OK to start killing people again, you have the sheik’s blessing, so get on with it. Lynne Stewart, whom the Washington Post has playfully labeled a “grandmotherly Marxist,” attempted to cause a terrorist attack and she deserves to be punished. Her sentencing, which was supposed to take place yesterday, September 25, was postponed. Now she is set to be sentenced October 16.

CCR gave Lynne Stewart a soapbox earlier this year, interviewing her on its radio show, “Law and Disorder.” (The two-part interview was broadcast on July 24 and July 31 and is archived at http://lawanddisorder.org.)

You can count on CCR to be on the wrong side of every issue.

(I wrote the hyperlinked article. I’m an analyst-editor at Capital Research Center, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C. I used to be a regular blogger too, and I still occasionally post at www.redstate.com and at The Shotgun.)


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Editorial; Government
KEYWORDS: aclu; ccr; communism; islam; islamofascism; lynnestewart; michaelratner; soros; terrorism; unholyalliance
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To: OldPossum
Why does it ALWAYS happen that when somebody brings up a serious subject, clowns like you just have bring in some idiotic pop culture crap to pollute the thread?

Slow down. Clowns? Idiotic pop culture crap? No need to get personal. Your first reply to me in five years and it's a flame. Hope the rest of your day was better than this. Have a nice life, see ya.


21 posted on 09/26/2006 7:32:04 PM PDT by GalaxieFiveHundred
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To: HKMk23

I agree with you about Ford Motor Company, but the Ford Foundation was gotten away from them by the lefties long ago, long before Ford Motor Companys moral dive.

In that regard, have you noticed the drag queen they are using currently in the Mercury ATM commercials? Look at all the usual indicators, including the way "she" walks. Thats a high-heeled boy with a low spark, LOL.


22 posted on 09/26/2006 8:03:11 PM PDT by Vn_survivor_67-68
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To: HKMk23

Mercury ATM

duh! I meant Mercury SUV commercials.


23 posted on 09/26/2006 8:10:26 PM PDT by Vn_survivor_67-68
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To: Free ThinkerNY

"Which is our worst enemy? The Left or the IslamiNazis?"

If you ask me, they both represent deranged loser death cults. One has members willing to blow themselves up if they can take us with them; the other is determined to abort, sterilize and sodomize itself out of existence.


24 posted on 09/27/2006 2:46:52 AM PDT by Berosus ("There is no beauty like Jerusalem, no wealth like Rome, no depravity like Arabia."--the Talmud)
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To: Enchante

Isn't Ellen Ratner, the leftie on Fox News (Saturday AM) Long and Short the sister of this guy?


25 posted on 09/27/2006 3:14:43 AM PDT by Beckwith (The dhimmicrats and liberal media have chosen sides and they've sided with the Jihadists.)
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To: Beckwith
"Isn't Ellen Ratner, the leftie on Fox News (Saturday AM) Long and Short the sister of this guy?"

Yes, I believe so....
26 posted on 09/27/2006 9:16:18 AM PDT by Enchante (There are 3 kinds of lies: Lies, Damned Lies, and the Drive-By Media)
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To: vadum

"Know your enemies" bump - thanks!


27 posted on 10/23/2006 9:57:23 AM PDT by talleyman (Kerry & the Surrender-Donkey Treasoncrats - trashing the troops for 40 years.)
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To: Jay777

FYI...


28 posted on 10/23/2006 9:59:16 AM PDT by EdReform (Support Free Republic - Become a Monthly Donor today! -- * NRA * -- * JPFO *)
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To: vadum

Michael RATner is the brother of Lesbian Ellen RATner on Fox. She is one of the reasons I don't watch Fox anymore.....LIBERAL AMERICAN CHRISTIAN HATING.


29 posted on 10/23/2006 1:07:39 PM PDT by Suzy Quzy
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To: Berosus
The Left knows the Islamist could probably bring something to pass that they could never do, bring about economic collapse caused by successful terrorist actions against the US. The condition of Wiemar Germany is where they would like to be. Produce a charismatic leader and off to Marxism we go.
30 posted on 10/23/2006 8:41:03 PM PDT by oyez (Why is it that egalitarians act like royalty?)
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