Great. Just wonderful. You are the defender of dissent, who supports prosecuting lawyers for terrorism when they defend unpopular clients by means you don't deny are perfectly standard and normally barely punished. _I_ am intolerant of dissent because I think murderers and fanatics like the Sheik should be entitled to defense without having to worry that potential lawyers will face serious criminal prosecution. _You_ are a defender of dissent because you think that bad or unpopular clients should not be entitled to representation by lawyers who are more or less sympathetic to their views. (Should the govt now charge Michael Tigar with aiding and abetting terrorsiom because he defended Lynn,a nd he's closer to her than to you politically?)
That's beautiful. Somehow in your mind the classical liberal and civil libertarian view that I defend is identified with intolerance -- because I have contempt for people who reject it. Well, you seem to reeturn the favor, so you are intolerant too.
You dispprove of sedition prosecutions, but you'll make an exception for Lynne because her client was a bad guy? Who else will you make an exception for?
Too bad, Nathan, it was nice having you on our side for a long time. Sorry to see you've decided to line up with Bush, Ashcroft, and Gonzalez.
What's your view of torture, by the way? Is it a permitted weapon in the wara gfainst terrorism?
--- Nathan Newman <nathanne at nathannewman.org> wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "andie nachgeborenen"
> <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com>
> > <nathanne at nathannewman.org> wrote:
> > > And the whole line that Stewart just broke a
> minor
> > rule is completely
> > > batshit. Her client is possibly the most
> > notorious prisoner in this
> > > country-- a bomber of the World Trade Center who
> > is still alive
>
> -Stop right there, Stop right there. Nathan, you are
> -coming prety close to reading yourself out of the
> -left. You will end up with Sidney Hook and the
> HUAC
> -liberals.
>
> I actually don't really care if I'm "read out of the
> left." Folks have
> done that many times to me, just as liberals will
> eject me from reasonable
> company for my views. As they say, I don't need no
> fucking badge to have
> my opinion.
>
> -The wickedness of a client is totally fucking
> -irrelevant. My First Amendment teacher, David
> -Goldberger, who, btw, would never describe himself
> asa
> -leftist, made his legal bones defending the Nazis
> in
> -Skokie.
>
> And the Nazis and the Jews defending them were smart
> to have the
> combination, since it emphasized the distinction
> between the legal advocacy
> and the political advocacy. It is precisely because
> Stewart aligned her
> politics with her client that the issue of "material
> support" could arise.
> To the extent that lawyers take advantage of their
> legal position --
> including access to their client that would not be
> granted a non-lawyer --
> the more you have to deal with the issue that a
> lawyer is not engaged in
> merely legal tactics but is helping to further their
> client's illegal
> goals, the more the lawyer's privilege should be
> respected.
>
> This issue comes up in corporate cases quite often
> as well and I think
> lawyers who are on-payroll counsel should not be
> treated in the same way as
> lawyers hired solely for when an executive faces
> criminal trial. A lawyer
> on payroll is tied up with the goals of a
> corporation, so their acts are
> not merely as lawyers but as partisans of the firm,
> so their actions should
> be judged in those terms with their legal "advice"
> treated as part of the
> same illegal acts as those who act on that advice.
> Similarly, their
> actions and work produce should be given far less
> deference.
>
> -You KNOW that violating gag orders is small change
> -legally. You KNOW the trivial or nonexistent legal
> -penalties that attach in normal cases, sometimes
> -involving murderous scumbugs, Mafia leaders, etc.
> -What is your excuse for supporting traeting this as
> -seditiosu conspiracy and defrauding the government?
> -What the hell is a liberal, much less a leftist,
> doing
> -supporting the idea that ANYONE should be convicted
> of
> -seditious conspiracy? What is happening to you,
> Nathan?
>
> I don't like seditious conspiracy and have said so,
> but this was more than
> that. Stewart took advantage of her privileged
> access to the Shiek to help
> him convey messages to his followers. Speaking of
> Nazis, if the lawyers
> you talked about above were breaking gag orders to
> direct Nazi grunts to
> kill blacks in the South, I'd be pretty sympathetic
> to a jury convicting
> them.
>
> Conspiracy trials before violent acts have happened
> are illegitimate.
> After the violence has happened, helping the
> perpetrators of that violence
> is more than seditious conspiracy; it's furthering
> an ongoing criminal act.
>
> That's a pretty clear distinction in my mind. We
> can have a debate on how
> much Lynne Stewart did further that ongoing criminal
> act, which is no doubt
> what the jury debated, but the distinction is pretty
> clear for me.
>
> But as I said, if the Left wants to make this case a
> purity test, so be it.
> For too many people on the left, no debate is
> allowed, which just furthers
> the caricature that all leftists are intolerant of
> dissent.
>
> Nathan Newman
>
> ___________________________________
>
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Read only the mail you want - Yahoo! Mail SpamGuard. http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail