You're intolerant because you don't accept that someone else can disagree with your characterization of the case and still be a leftist. I don't even support Stewart's prosecution and have multiple times said she has strong grounds for appeal. What I have said is that her case and the issues are more complicated than your simplistic characterization and there are much better symbols of authoritarian actions by our government. Such as the following case where an American citizen was likely tortured with the approval of the US and charged with terrorism for even discussing a conspiracy to kill Bush.
The Left in its typical way wants to rally around the least sympathetic possible case, attack as many of its potential allies in fighting Bush's authoritarian policies, and stew in their isolated righteousness. You'd rather excommunicate me for voicing even mild dissent from left orthodoxy on the Stewart case than find common ground with me and other folks who oppose the whole gamut of Bush's other attacks on civil liberties.
-------------------------------- American Accused in a Plot to Assassinate Bush By ERIC LICHTBLAU
Published: February 23, 2005
ASHINGTON, Feb. 22 - An American student who was imprisoned in Saudi Arabia for the last 20 months was returned to the United States and accused by the Justice Department on Tuesday of plotting with members of Al Qaeda in 2003 to assassinate President Bush.
In an indictment unsealed in federal court in Alexandria, Va., the student, a 23-year-old American citizen named Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, is charged with providing material support for terrorism. Mr. Abu Ali is accused of training with Al Qaeda overseas and wanting to "become a planner of terrorist operations" like Mohammed Atta or Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, two Qaeda leaders central to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The indictment's accusations rely mainly on the testimony of several unnamed co-conspirators.
While American officials said they took the threat seriously, the indictment suggests that any plot to assassinate Mr. Bush did not move beyond the discussion stages among extremists in Saudi Arabia, and Mr. Abu Ali was not charged under the federal statute on assassinations.
Friends of Mr. Abu Ali and defense lawyers denied that he was part of any terrorist plot and accused the Justice Department of an overzealous prosecution. They said that Mr. Abu Ali, a valedictorian at an Islamic high school in suburban Washington, was the victim of torture at the hands of the Saudis after his arrest there in June 2003, an assertion that a federal judge in Washington appeared to validate in a recent ruling in a lawsuit brought by Mr. Abu Ali's family to force his release.
Mr. Abu Ali was returned to the United States this week to face charges of providing material support to terrorists. At a brief hearing on Tuesday in Federal District Court in Alexandria, he did not enter a plea but offered through his lawyers to provide evidence of Saudi torture in the form of markings on his back.
The judge declined, putting off the torture issue until a later hearing. Edward B. MacMahon, a defense lawyer for Mr. Abu Ali, said in an interview after the hearing that the judge "would have seen evidence of torture, scars."
"He looks like someone who's been whipped," Mr. MacMahon said, "and it's a very disturbing event for this country when our government is willing to use evidence obtained by torture in another country."
"It's lies. It's all lies," said Omar Abu Ali, Mr. Abu Ali's father, after the hearing, according to The Associated Press. "The government lied from the very first day."
Mr. Abu Ali has been at the center of a prolonged international conflict over his detention by the Saudis, as the defendant's family in the United States has said the United States effectively orchestrated his detention and interrogation in Saudi Arabia.
The family sued to force Mr. Abu Ali's release from Saudi custody, saying American officials threatened to declare him an enemy combatant and send him to a detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, if he did not cooperate. Judge John D. Bates has not issued a ruling on Mr. Abu Ali's detention, but he has expressed support for many of the family's central contentions and skepticism toward those of the government.
In an opinion in December, Judge Bates wrote, "There has been at least some circumstantial evidence that Abu Ali has been tortured during interrogations with the knowledge of the United States." He added that agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who were present for Saudi interrogations, "have despaired at his continued detention, and more than one United States official has stated that Abu Ali is no longer a threat to the United States and there is no active interrogation."
Saudi and American officials denied on Tuesday that Mr. Abu Ali had been tortured. "We have seen no evidence that Abu Ali was tortured or mistreated while in Saudi custody," said a senior Justice Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case.
Justice Department officials declined to discuss why they had decided to bring terrorism charges against Mr. Abu Ali now, after past indications that some F.B.I. investigators did not consider him a threat.
===========
----- Original Message ----- From: "andie nachgeborenen" <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com>
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
>
> ___________________________________
>
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