Al-Qaeda’s Law Firm

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Much has already been written of the U.S. Supreme Court's lawless, nonsensical decision in Boumediene v. Bush that gives America's terrorist enemies unprecedented access to our civilian court system, but little has been written about the aggressively anti-American public interest law firm that helped to make it happen.*

The nonprofit Center for Constitutional Rights, which acted as co-counsel in the case, is deeply enmeshed in the politics of terrorism (take one guess on whose side) and has even taken money from groups linked to terrorism. CCR donors include the Ohio branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Safa Trust Inc., and the International Institute of Islamic Thought, all of which have been accused of connections to Islamist terror groups.

CCR is now jumping for joy, absurdly hailing the June 12 decision as a great triumph for the Constitution. (I profiled CCR two years ago, noting that the disturbingly effective group was at the forefront of the legal left's push to give due process rights to America's terrorist enemies.)

And yet the media doesn’t care to investigate CCR and its terrorist money trail, treating the fifth column law firm as a legitimate player in constitutional jurisprudence.

Media outlets’ descriptions of CCR are innocuous. Following the Boumediene decision, media described the Center as: “a public interest law firm that represented 37 detainees before the Supreme Court”(Baltimore Sun, no link); the firm that “has represented Guantanamo Bay detainees since 2002” (Washington Post); the firm that has “filed the first lawsuits challenging the detentions” (Houston Chronicle); and, as a firm that "supports habeas corpus cases" (Philadelphia Daily News).

The Center, founded by radical attorney William Kunstler in 1966, has spent more than four decades trying to obstruct U.S. foreign policy and is anything but innocuous.

The Center scored a major legal victory in 2004 when the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Rasul v. Bush that its 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.

CCR is now using the courts to pick the deep pockets of corporations in order to undermine national security and advance its foreign policy agenda. In one transparently vexatious lawsuit, the Center sued heavy-machinery maker Caterpillar, Inc., after an American protester was run over by an Israeli military Caterpillar D9 bulldozer on a mission in the “no man’s land” near the Egyptian border in 2003. CCR has also sued private contractors CACI International Inc. and Titan International for their alleged connection to prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib prison.

The Center for Constitutional Rights is headed by Michael Ratner, a wealthy communist who wrote a book praising mass murderer Che Guevara. Ratner, who is brother of New Jersey Nets owner/eminent domain abuser Bruce Ratner and journalist Ellen Ratner, recruited hundreds of pro bono lawyers to represent those held at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay. He favors putting the U.S. on trial for war crimes but opposed doing the same to Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. “If you want any kind of sense of legitimacy or fairness, you can’t just go after Saddam Hussein,” he told “Democracy Now” in 2003.

Ratner has said Cuba’s “accomplishments” under Castro have been “great,” and has denounced the U.S. “onslaught against the Cuban Revolution,” and the prosecution of the Cuban Five, spies convicted in Miami in 2001. He calls the late President Ronald Reagan a murderer.

Ratner addressed an exercise in extremist political theater, the “International Commission of Inquiry On Crimes Against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration,” at which he compared the president to Adolf Hitler and accused him of formulating a “plan for what has to be called a coup-d’etat in America.”

CCR also employs the granddaughter of the executed spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. The Rosenbergs, under the direction of the KGB, helped pass U.S. atomic bomb secrets to the Soviet Union. CCR publicly embraced radical human rights lawyer Lynne Stewart, a vocal supporter of Islamic fundamentalism who was convicted of providing material support for Islamic terrorists.

CCR is funded by liberals, socialists, air-headed utopian idealists, communists, America haters, and traitors. The firm has received donations from George Soros's Open Society Institute, Progressive Insurance’s Peter B. Lewis, intellectual Noam Chomsky, actors Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon, “Stalin’s songbird” folk singer Pete Seeger, and the late Isabel Johnson Hiss (second wife of the late Soviet spy Alger Hiss).

Surely such an interesting law firm deserves a critical examination by the media.

*(John Yoo had an excellent op-ed entitled "The Supreme Court Goes to War" in the June 17 Wall Street Journal, and on the other side the Washington Post’s Dan Froomkin wrote a ridiculous, orgiastic, ahistorical ballad in which he grossly misrepresents the views of the Founding Fathers.)

—Matthew Vadum is Editor of Organization Trends and Foundation Watch at the Capital Research Center.


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It's called the adversary

It's called the adversary system. Innocent until proven guilty?? I am sure you have heard of it. Everyone is allowed an attorney in felony cases and everyone is protected from cruel and unusual treatment.

 

never heard of it

Nope sorry. Never heard of attorneys for prisoners of war during the war. I've heard of trials afterward. You're probably thinking of our criminal system for some strange reason. When we start sending lawyers to the front line your idea might be appropriate.

I think you are sadly

I think you are sadly misinformed.  These terrorists were not picked up for shoplifting in some market in middle America.  They have been captured in foreign countries trying to kill Americans during a war.  Unfortunately, your argument against "cruel and unusual treatment" was dismissed by our Supreme Court as future prisoners will be held in countries that do not treat terrorists as well as we did in Gitmo.  I suspect many newly captured terrorists will be harshly interrogated and disposed of never to be seen again as an unintended consequence of the Supreme Court's outrageous decision.  That must make you feel good, huh?

You need a lesson in centuries of Anglo-American jurisprudence.

mrsimele:

The Boumediene ruling goes against centuries of Anglo-American jurisprudence and undermines, if not overturns outright, the time-honored legal thinking exemplified in Ex Parte Quirin. See http://en.wikipedia....

Unlawful enemy combatants, i.e. those who wage war against the United States without following the universally accepted rules of civilized warfare (including wearing a uniform or other identifying military insignia), are not entitled to be treated as prisoners of war. POW status is reserved to those who follow the laws of war, not to barbaric cowards who hide their combatant status.

The adversarial system is appropriate for bona fide criminal trials, not for military tribunals trying unlawful combatants. Unlawful combatants are entitled to minimal safeguards; in fact, the laws of war permit us to summarily execute them (i.e. without ANY TRIAL WHATSOEVER) on the battlefield. They are in roughly the same legal position as captured enemy spies.

The Boumediene decision thus incentivizes U.S. troops to carry out summary execution of unlawful combatants (i.e. terrorists) on the battlefield.

Isn't it ironic that the deciding vote in the decision was cast by the liberal Anthony Kennedy?

Matthew Vadum is Editor of Organization Trends and Foundation Watch, two monthly newsletters published by Capital Research Center

The Left never cares how dirty the money is

Thanks for bringing this up Matthew. It's so disgusting.

Communists and foreigners funded most of the large war protests too and the media and the Dems didn't care about that either.

 

Unbelievable!

Thank you for the wonderful post.  This is why I visit NB every day. 

I hadn't a clue before you posted this...but WOW!

Again, my thanks. 

David Gregory, do you know which damn network you lie for? ~ Uncle Jimbo, @Blackfive

 

Those Ratner's have been

Those Ratner's have been busy little bees for decades against this country...commies deluxe.

JMHO.

Msm/politically infiltrated long ago....

Thank you so much for the info. 

"Never murder your opponent when he is committing suicide." ~ W. Wilson

CCR is Funded By Liberals, et al

No surprise there.

The SCOTUS, of course, knew the firm's background before the reprehensible ruling was made, right?

Is it incumbent upon the SCOTUS to know the financial background of the opposition and its' arguments?

This is awful; not to mention the harbinger of what more is to expected by way of the terrorist-sympathtic groups within the United States.  This group has demonstrated their ability to reach to the high levels of government with ease and success.

This group will continue in other similar efforts and has opened the door for other such groups to find the success they, too, desire in bringing aid and comfort to the violent and murderous enemies of the United States with the goverment's approval, each future success a dismantling of our government (and people).

Little by little.  Slowly and methodically.

Good God.

duel

Alexander Hamilton probably would have had his seconds contact Dan Froomkin for misrepresenting his words. Unfortunately he was not be best shot.

"[T]he practice of arbitrary imprisonments, have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny.
Alexander Hamilton

Like we're just picking people at random to detain.

Misrepresenting the words of the Fore Fathers is a favorite instrument of despicable propagandists.
Me

 

Hamilton quotes?

The Founding Fathers were full of great quotes and we are fortunate that they were able to usually debate to settlements without relying on duels too often.

" Ah, this is the constitution," he said. "Now, mark my words. So long as we are a young and virtuous people, this instument will bind us together in mutual interests, mutual welfare, and mutual happiness. But when we become old and corrupt, it will bind no longer."

“Men often oppose a thing merely because they have had no agency in planning it, or because it may have been planned by those whom they dislike.”

“I have learned to hold popular opinion of no value”

“It's not tyranny we desire; it's a just, limited, federal government.”

No matter what the Supreme

No matter what the Supreme court passes the US Military is not going to allow it's soliders to be turned into the worlds Police officers.  After all we have the U.N. handling that role and they are doing such a good job of it.

America is so good at

America is so good at drawing a line between legality and religion that most do not understand that Islam is a Theocracy, not just a religion.

 

You trying to say Jesus Christ can't hit a curveball?

Shouldn't the U.S. Constitution

Shouldn't the U.S. Constitution be applicable only to Constituents of the U.S.? And not the Constituent's of other gonvernments? When in Afganistan should U.S. Citizens be held accoutable to Afgan law by the U.S. Government?

Find a lawyer

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To find
a lawyer, there are so many effective resources and services available
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attorneys, it’s quite difficult to choose the best among them so these
resources are big help for them.

 

http://www.lawyersindemand.com/