Second installment of a five-part series on Silverglate’s book, Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent.
Sami Omar al-Hussayen was a doctoral candidate at the University of Idaho when he was arrested in February 2003. Federal prosecutors alleged that al-Hussayen, a Saudi citizen studying computer science in the United States, provided “material support” and rendered “expert advice or assistance” to terrorists. News reports, on the word of anonymous “federal criminal justice” sources, linked him to Osama bin Laden.
What was his crime? Al-Hussayen used his computer skills to run a number of websites for a Muslim charity dedicated to traditional religious teaching. But if a web-surfer burrowed into links from al-Hussayen’s site, he or she would eventually come across links containing violent anti-American messages. This, prosecutors charged (PDF), was how al-Hussayen aided global terrorism.
District Judge Edward J. Lodge, for one, played the case right down the middle. In his jury instructions, Lodge explained to twelve stalwart Idahoans that the First Amendment protects advocacy, even advocacy to break the law, “unless the speech is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.” (Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444, 1969) Of course, it was doubtful that al-Hussayen was even advocating lawlessness, much less violence, but for the sake of argument, let’s assume that there was such a subtext to his website maintenance. Even then, the prosecution was highly dubious.
With Judge Lodge’s clear line separating lawful political speech from unlawful incitement to imminent violence, the jury took little time in acquitting the grad student of the terrorism-related charges. Liberty, which seemed to matter less and less at Main Justice in Washington, remained alive and well in Idaho. (This was due not only to a law-abiding judge presiding over the trial, but also to the fact that the defendant was able to hire and pay competent defense counsel.)
Nonetheless, this case, reportedly the first prosecution brought under the USA Patriot Act’s expanded material support provision, did little to clarify the “expert advice or assistance” aspect of the federal terrorism laws. There are, in fact, three separate federal statutes that criminalize such material support, and Georgetown Law Professor David Cole provides an interesting analysis of these overlapping provisions, here. For present purposes, material support will refer to 18 U.S.C. 2339B.
Yet the mere fact that there are three separate provisions for essentially the same violation—and all are characterized by vague and dangerously subjective wording—illustrates the general opacity of the federal criminal code. (And, rest assured, incitement to violence could likely be squeezed into yet another statute by a creative federal prosecutor). With similarly vague statutes criminalizing a wide array of seemingly benign activity, the average citizen, even without touching the apparently volatile arena of Muslim charities, can commit several arguable felonies in the course of a day. Thus, the thesis and title of my book, Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent. (I provided an introduction to the topic on Monday.)
To be sure, there are countless federal crimes that an average citizen can inadvertently violate. But I’d like to focus today on the vague laws governing terrorism and terrorist organizations. These laws, and those prosecuted under them, provide a timely window into how loosely-worded statutes enable the government to prosecute virtually anyone.
Consider, first, the semantic power of “terrorism.”
The Animal Enterprise Protection Act, passed by Congress in 1992, outlawed the “physical disruption” of an animal farm or testing facility. But with animal-rights activists continually ramping up their protests, medical facilities and some researchers looked to toughen criminal sanctions. In November 2006, Congress responded with the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, which expanded the scope of criminal sanctions for any activist who “intentionally damages or causes the loss of any real or personal property…used by an animal enterprise.”
How does one define “real or personal property?” Is it limited to monetary losses, or can this include the loss of future profits? The statutory language is unclear, and case law indicates that loss of profits and business goodwill can be considered property damage (See, e.g., Radiation Sterilizers v. United States, E.D. Wash., 1994).
It’s an important distinction for animal-rights activists; after all, threatening future profit is arguably the point of lawful protest (expose alleged wrongdoing and, in turn, encourage a boycott by others). Nonetheless, the law threatens to impede such political expression, not only through actual prosecution, but also through the “chilling effect” of those who severely restrain themselves in order to avoid a possible federal criminal indictment—because they don’t know their legal obligations until it’s too late.
A similar legal ambiguity led to the court challenge of the aforesaid “material support” language. In a case that will be argued before the Supreme Court this coming term (Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project), six groups and two individuals are seeking clarity on whether they are permitted to assist in the nonviolent, legal activities of groups classified by the U.S. government as terrorist.
The Kurdistan Workers’ Party and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam are considered terrorist organizations by the U.S. government, although plaintiffs insist that both groups engage in a broad range of lawful activity. Due to the vague terminology in Patriot Act provisions (“service,” “training,” or “expert advice or assistance,” to name a few), plaintiffs claim that even innocuous conduct such as “teach[ing] such an organization human rights advocacy or English” could be considered material support. With indictments like al-Hussayen’s showing the elasticity of “expert advice” in the government’s lexicon, there’s little wonder that these groups are seeking guidance.
The intensity of the friend-of-the-court (amicus) briefs is an indication, perhaps, of the far-reaching fear instilled by such statutory language. Wrote the ACLU (PDF):
Amici, like plaintiffs, are left hopelessly guessing – at the risk of grave penalty – whether their advocacy for peace or human rights, their engagement in or facilitation of peace-making dialogue, or the expressive components of their humanitarian aid work crosses the line from constitutionally protected to criminally proscribed.
The bi-partisan nature of the problem—demonstrated by the fact that what is now the “Holder” case began as Humanitarian Law Project v. Reno and then was re-named through every administration to the present day—explains the need for a non-partisan response. Starting with Clinton Attorney General Janet Reno, this case has been litigated through the Ashcroft/Gonzales/Mukasey years of the Bush administration, and it continues with current AG Eric Holder. Plus ça change, as the French say, plus c’est la même chose.
When these lines are left vague, the feds are given strong tools to target extremists. But they’re also free to target any other victim of their choosing, which they seem to do with disturbing regularity. And while the current political climate has put the issue of laws related to terrorism in the spotlight, similarly vague statutes exist throughout the federal criminal code, exposing all of civil society. It’s time to recognize that the bell tolls for us all.
Anderson says:
But if a web-surfer burrowed into links from al-Hussayen’s site, he or she would eventually come across links containing violent anti-American messages. This, prosecutors charged (PDF), was how al-Hussayen aided global terrorism.
Wow, that’s nuts. Every blogger is six degrees of separation away from materially supporting global terrorism, it seems.
December 15, 2009, 9:34 amSoronel Haetir says:
I thought at least part of the case foundation against al-Hussayen was his having downloaded the entire contents of websites he maintained and performing routine reformatting operations on the entire set, which included jihadi materials. I also found the charge that such volunteering somehow violated the work ban for those on student visas to be quite odd.
Even that is pretty lame. I was living in Idaho at the time and was glad the jury was willing to be skeptical of the government claims. I imagine it at least helped some that people remembered what happened at Ruby Ridge.
December 15, 2009, 10:55 amSparky says:
“This was due . . .to the fact that the defendant was able to hire and pay competent defense counsel.”
Do you have any particular evidentiary basis for implicitly slamming public defenders? In my experience, MOST public defenders are better than MOST retained counsel (though obviously there are rare outliers in both groups).
December 15, 2009, 11:01 amOrin Kerr says:
While I oppose vague criminal laws as much as anyone else — see, for example, my pro bono work for Lori Drew — the “intensity” of ACLU’s amicus brief seems to me more indicative of the style of the ACLU than about the law at issue.
December 15, 2009, 11:07 amChris Travers says:
IANAL…
I always thought the proper interpretation of “material support” in a speech case would be that of offering “expert assistance” of a sort that would be directly applicable to terrorist activities. In other words, teaching Al Qaeda operatives how to make bombs would be clearly banned but running a web site with political thoughts about how all Muslims should consider killing Americans would be clearly protected, even if links were provided to sites like those of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. (At least that is my reading of Brandenburg and Yates.)
So I have to wonder whether the problem is in the vagueness of the law or in the fact that some prosecutors apparently lack appropriate discretion. Certainly the clarity of the law could be improved, for example to further define “expert assistance” in line with current first amendment jurisprudence.
But human communication is inherently inexact. I have to wonder whether a prosecutor with sufficient ambition and low enough moral standards could abuse even the clearest law to target the innocent and bludgeon out a plea bargain. (Actually, I have seen this happen wrt Medicare fraud statutes which are really pretty clear but were greatly abused by DHHS prosecutors under Reagan.)
Maybe it is time that we revisit the question of when prosecutors should be subject to civil and/or criminal sanctions. If we can’t allow lawsuits against prosecutors, maybe we can make it a CRIME to engage in these sorts of prosecutions and set up a branch of the DoJ and state equivalents to handle these complaints?
December 15, 2009, 12:13 pmTatil says:
I believe we should be banning any training, service or donations to the lawful arms of the terrorist groups. First of all, it is very difficult to monitor whether the lawful arms will actually keep the “evil” parts of their organizations away from the donated money, expertise or equipment. Besides, even if that sort of monitoring was possible, why should we hand terrorist organizations big PR opportunities to show themselves as such noble people while massacring their presumed enemies? Sure, many terrorist groups do not allow any aid to get into the areas under their control unless NGOs cooperate with them, but that means they are holding their own people hostage. If they value ideology and power over their own people, that is their decision. I am pretty sure we can find people in desperate need of help in other parts of the world.
December 15, 2009, 12:27 pmChris Travers says:
Re: Holder v. HLP:
Wouldn’t there also be a freedom of association issue as well? For example, the government can’t declare the KKK or the Communist Party to be a terrorist organization and punish all members for mere membership in the organization, right? So how would it be different with a group like Hamas?
Or does the first amendment only protect the rights of US persons to associate with other US persons?
December 15, 2009, 12:28 pmChris Travers says:
Tatil:
Do you include the KKK in your analysis? What makes the KKK different from Hamas?
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December 15, 2009, 12:34 pmChris Travers says:
Also, without doing more than reading pages 1-2 of the brief and the table of authorities (since the brief itself is book-length), it looks like the Humanitarian Law Project is raising First Amendment as well as vagueness issues.
December 15, 2009, 12:40 pmRyan Waxx says:
So we, reading an article on a law blog, are apparently to take seriously the prospect that the poster is at a loss on how to define “real property” or how to define “personal property”?
I realize that to stick to your story of incredibly vague definitions making every American potentially guilty, you do have to exaggerate the ability to apply anti-terrorist laws to hammer unrelated people, but exactly how would a second-semester law student who professed not to be able to give a reasonable definition of these terms be graded on an exam?
The first step in demagoguery is disingenuousness.
December 15, 2009, 2:38 pmDilan Esper says:
While I oppose vague criminal laws as much as anyone else — see, for example, my pro bono work for Lori Drew — the “intensity” of ACLU’s amicus brief seems to me more indicative of the style of the ACLU than about the law at issue.
I did some work with the ACLU on the HLP case a few years ago when it was before the District Court, and I can tell you that the real animating fear of the ACLU lawyers is that this sort of a law is so similar to the dragnet anti-Communist laws of the 1950′s that prohibited various sorts of vaguely defined “support” for Communist causes.
It isn’t just the “style of the ACLU”– there is a real fear that if you don’t hammer down exactly what it means to “support” an illegal cause, it’s going to create a vehicle for stifling dissent.
December 15, 2009, 3:13 pmChris Travers says:
Ryan Waxx:
Hypothetical:
Suppose I publish an “Open Letter to Hamas” which advocates a major non-violent and propaganda campaign instead of attacks against human life and argues that this would bring about an end to occupation faster than anything else.
A felony? How do I know?
(My reading of past precedents is that it would not be, but the opinion of the government seems to be that it would be.)
December 15, 2009, 4:12 pmBob from Ohio says:
I think these groups are not merely “classified by the U.S. government as terrorist” but in fact terrorists.
Take the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (from Wikipedia):
“The Tigers, who during the height of their power possessed a well-developed militia, were notorious for recruiting child soldiers, for carrying out civilian massacres, suicide bombings and various other high profile attacks, including the assassinations of several high-ranking Sri Lankan and Indian politicians like Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa in 1993, and former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991.[11] They invented the suicide belt and pioneered the use of suicide bombing as a tactic.[12][13] They also pioneered the use of women in suicide attacks,[14] and used light aircraft in some of their attacks”
Anyone who wants to assist these monsters in any way needs to be prosecuted.
December 15, 2009, 4:38 pmSuperSkeptic says:
Mr. al-Hussayen’s case reminds me of the pro bono case Professor Volokh argued in Nebraska recently. The internet defies the Brandenburg “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action” exception to the First Amendment. Assuming he really isn’t a terrorist trying to kill us all, I’m glad he made out okay – despite his nasty and different-from-me muslimness.
December 15, 2009, 4:48 pmChris Travers says:
One more note on the ADF’s brief….
The ADF only seems to address the question of whether MONEY and donations to terrorist organizations should be regulated. It doesn’t seem to address the broader issue here, i.e. whether opinions regarding international humanitarian law could be provided to such organizations or whether coordinated advocacy of the sort the HLP says it wants to do would run into Constitutional problems. The government only talks about “independant advocacy” but this would likely fall short of coordinated public relations.
It seems to me there are some very substantial first amendment issues at stake here.
December 15, 2009, 4:58 pmDiogenes says:
There is clearly a problem in the US school system if your reading comprehension is as stilted as your objection makes out.
The obvious point being made (‘obvious’ to anyone reading at a 9th grade level in a developed country) is that it is entirely possible for damage to future profits to be included in a – shall we say – ‘plaintiff-friendly’ reading of the term ‘property’ (the case cited IMMEDIATELY thereafter makes clear that there is case law that explicitly includes lost profits as ‘property’).
Now – moving to a syncretism requiring maybe Grade 10 comprehension (again, I’m talking about a developed country here, so perhaps 1st yr college in the US)…
There is a WORLD of difference between setting fire to a building and doing a thing that affects a future profit stream. I participate in a boycott of Israel – seeking EXPLICITLY to do damage to firms that are domiciled there: if as-yet-unbooked revenue and ‘goodwill’ are ‘real property’ then I am specifically doing and advocating things that would have the same reading as if I broke into a plant and set fire to it.
Likewise, I am opposed to factory farming, and would like to see every factory farm go tits-up… so I advocate refusing to buy factory-farmed meat, eggs and dairy foods: thereby SPECIFICALLY seeking to undermine future profits, of ‘animal enterprises’ (Death Camps).
I’m not throwing bombs, starting fires or even painting graffiti – but as the author points out, under a wider reading of the definition of property, my actions could be construed as terrrrrrrism.
It’s not rocket science – basic high-school level comprehension (caveats about development apply).
Cheerio
GT
PS – I can’t resist taking a dig at Yanks who cant’ ‘do’ English… it’s really not hard. You should spend less on raping brown countries and more on education – less Sparta and more Athens. Sparta was SO gay.
December 15, 2009, 6:06 pmChris Travers says:
Bob from Ohio:
I think the question boils down to: Does the US Constitution provide a protected right for Americans to associate and affiliate with terrorists?
If not, then shouldn’t membership in, say, the KKK be similarly open to prosecution if Congress or a state were to decide to enact such legislation? What about terrorist-supporting speech given to KKK members at a KKK rally (as in Brandenburg)? Or was Brandenburg (a free terrorist-supporting speech case) wrongly decided?
If association is protected, then how can these provisions survive scrutiny?
December 15, 2009, 6:08 pmChris Travers says:
BTW, another example of vagueness in action: Anti-boycott laws.
If I refuse to do business with any Israeli firm employing settlers, that is my right as an American, but if I coordinate with a partner business in, say, Canada, at what point does that become criminal?
What if I have near-market-power and I am asking foreign firms to go along with me?
(I asked the BIS about this and they gave me an answer which seemed plausible but the vagueness of the statutes at issue are very concerning.)
December 15, 2009, 6:14 pmWilliam L. Anderson says:
The important point about this post is that it exposes how prosecutors use terrorism laws to prosecute people who clearly are not terrorists and are not giving any real or material support to people who carry out terrorist acts. What we are seeing is the criminal prosecution of speech, pure and simple. Harvey Silverglate is perhaps one of the most important spokespersons for free speech in the country, if not the world, and we fail to heed his prophetic voice at our own peril.
Don’t kid yourselves, folks. Federal prosecutors will continue working down the ladder, and ultimately will begin prosecuting people who simply say critical things about the government, whether it be on blogs or elsewhere. If we don’t stand up and tell these people to stop, it will be our friends and family who next will be in the dock. Understand that Americans ARE capable of this kind of oppressive behavior, and there are a lot of people working for the U.S. Department of Justice who despise our historical legacy of free speech and are itching to throw people in jail for…nothing.
December 15, 2009, 7:11 pmRyan Waxx says:
Diogenes, Chris Travers:
Maybe you would do better to address my actual comment instead of some make-believe version you carry around in your head.
I gave a specific example of the OP pretending that no one could possibly know the definitions of two legal terms that in reality are actually pretty well understood in the legal industry. You can not respond to that specific criticism by making up some totally unrelated (indeed to unrelated so as not to involve those two terms at all) scenario and demand I give you a legal opinion on it. The two have nothing to do with one another.
Of course, if you had half the reading comprehension you claim to have, you wouldn’t have made that kind of mistake in the first place.
December 15, 2009, 7:44 pmChris Travers says:
Ryan Waxx:
I think the OP’s original point is that the case law can lead people to wonder whether a Constitutionally protected activity is, in fact, a felony, and that these can be stretched by prosecutors looking for a feather in their hats.
Now, I am NOT entirely sure that vagueness in the law is the primary problem here. I have watched federal prosecutors extract plea bargains from people engaging in lawful activities before for the sole purpose of adding convictions to their scorebook. For example, a common tactic during the Reagan years was to prosecute innocent billing code (not necessarily overcharges or wrong amount) errors as Medicare fraud. Usually this would be done by threatening trial, negative publicity, etc. to a physician’s partners in order to pressure the physician to go along with the plea deal. The DHHS abuses were well documented despite the fact that this isn’t necessarily a case where the activity in question (a billing classification mistake) is even close to the line, since fraud requires bad faith.
I don’t know how you fix that. But if reducing the chance for misinterpretation by overzealous prosecutors helps reduce the problem, I am all for it.
December 15, 2009, 8:15 pmJames L Burns says:
On the question of “lost profits” as “personal property”
This is a very very weak argument for claiming the statute is overbroad. The sole basis for this is the District Court decision sentence “[i]t is long established in contract and tort law that a business’s property includes intangibles such as loss of profits and goodwill. See, e.g., Backus v. Ft. Street Union Depot Co., 169 U.S. 557, 580, 42 L. Ed. 853, 18 S. Ct. 445 (1898).” Yet, from a quick skim, the case cited is addressing whether “profits” that may be derived from real property should be considered in establishing the value of the property for takings purposes. At the same time, the District Court decision acknowledges that for insurance purposes lost profits are not treated as personal property. In fact, nobody treats lost profits as personal property. What you will find with a Lexis search is hundreds, probably thousands of decisions that talk about “property damage and lost profits” or some variation thereon as separate types of damages. You will never find a decision talking about “property damage, including lost profits.”
One poorly reasoned district court decision does not make a statute unconstitutional.
December 15, 2009, 9:29 pmBob from Ohio says:
There is only one rational answer to that. You are suggesting a constitutional right to engage in a conspiracy to commit violent crimes.
Thanks for commenting Mrs. Silverglate.
You are simply being paranoid.
This is not 1933 Germany and Silverglate is not Martin Niemöller.
December 15, 2009, 10:17 pmChris Travers says:
Bob from Ohio:
Not necessarily any more than was rejected in both Yates and Brandenburg.
The respondent’s brief in the Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project is rather interesting in this regard. The HLP wants to advocate for Kurdish human rights in coordination with the PKK, and help LTTE-arms apply for humanitarian aid for tsunami victims. Neither of these suggest a direct conspiracy to engage in the sorts of terrorist activities either organization engages in and seem to me to be no more a matter of entering into a conspiracy to commit a violent crime (and indeed are less such) than was at issue in Yates.
Do you disagree? Or were those cases wrongly decided?
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December 15, 2009, 10:54 pmTatil says:
I have no idea. Politics and familiarity I suppose. People can tell letting a small group of KKK supporters march down the street is not going to make it a more menacing organization. There are hate crime laws that they can use for the ones who engage in violence. In any case, the public does not perceive it as an imminent threat. If KKK was leading a frequent public bombing campaign in the US, I am fairly sure prosecutors would find ways to convict its supporters, even those whose support has only an indirect link to the actual violence.
December 16, 2009, 11:33 amChris Travers says:
Tatil:
I would submit to you that the KKK has historically been a much more successful terrorist organization both in terms of fear generated and number of American deaths at the time the AEDPA was passed than any Islamic terrorist organization was. In fact, they are still second to Al Qaeda in number of Americans killed on US soil in acts of terrorism and, if you exclude 9/11, would still be the first.
Certainly they are a larger threat than Kehane Chaim (which is on the State Dept. list of foreign terrorist organizations).
So are you saying that if Jihadists were merely lynching and shooting Americans that wouldn’t warrant separating them out?
More likely the KKK is protected because their associative rights fall within the framework of the First Amendment. Does that mean the KKK’s rights to freely associate are more important than my right to freely associate with, say, Hamas or KCh (being equal opportunity and including both designated Israeli and Palestinian terrorist orgs)?
Moreover, attempts to single out the Communist Party and the KKK for reduced first amendment rights have failed for the last fifty years. Why should it be a felony to coordinate PR regarding atrocities committed by the Turkish gov’t against the Kurds with the PKK (associating with them only for lawful purposes, i.e. supporting their political goals) but be Constitutionally protected to join the KKK to support their political goals?
December 16, 2009, 1:51 pmTatil says:
I understand your point, but historical success does not matter politically as much as the present perceived threat. Besides, I am pretty sure back when KKK was a “more successful terrorist organization”, it had many sympathizers among the public at large. This makes politicians unlikely to go after it and judges may be ahead of public opinion a little bit, but not that much. As I said before, if KKK starts a bombing campaign in the US today, I doubt life would be as easy for its supporters. There would be an enormous public pressure for the government to do something about it. Prosecutors would find ways to convict them, politicians would applaud the convictions and judges would not stand in the way.
Besides, aren’t there organizations with which you can coordinate PR about any of these issues? Why does it have to be the one with an evil arm attached? Actually, wouldn’t that make any claims of atrocity more credible and support for these political aims more attractive for the public?
December 17, 2009, 12:46 pmChris Travers says:
I think, however, Yates and Brandenburg are both compelling in these areas. Remember that, in Yates, Yates was originally convicted of conspiracy to overthrow the government of the United States, and that the substance of this conspiracy was membership in the Communist Party and distributing Communist literature. This was at a time when Communism was viewed very much as a clear and present danger to the United States.
However, the court in Yates held that neither mere membership in the Communist Party, nor advocating the eventual overthrow of the lawful government was sufficient to convict Yates without running amok with First Amendment rights, and that for the Smith Statute to be violated, Yates had to do more than try to convince people that it was morally right and necessary to overthrow the government, he head to urge them to take concrete steps through their actions to do this. The court thus ruled that advocating the overthrow of the government was not the same thing as raising an army to do so and the Constitution required such a distinction.
In Brandenburg, a man convicted of violating criminal syndication statutes by speaking at a KKK rally (excerpts included “kill the niggers… we intend to do our part”) had acted within his first amendment rights and hence the conviction could not be sustained. This occurred at a time when tensions between races was high and desegregation was very much ongoing (and when racially motivated violent crimes were frequently committed against blacks).
Your analysis seems to boil down to a question of whether the organization would have sufficient advocacy to defend its first amendment rights. But Yates involved a McCarthy-era prosecution of an avowed Communist (not one a lot of people were rallying to defend), and Brandenburg reflected a very real and reasonable fear that a political comment urging people to “kill the niggers” would translate over into actual acts of terrorism. In fact, the act struck down in Brandenburg included the words “crime, sabotage, violence, or unlawful methods of terrorism as a means of accomplishing industrial or political reform.”
If membership in the KKK, as a domestic terrorist organization (as established most recently in 1969), or in the Communist Party, as an organization which teaches the necessity of violent overthrow of the government (as established most recently in 1957), is protected by the First Amendment, why would affiliation with Hamas or Hisbullah be different?
December 17, 2009, 2:05 pmHave You Committed Your Three Felonies Today? - Hit & Run : Reason Magazine says:
[...] Silverglate discussed vague anti-terrorism provisions such as the one that was use to prosecute University of Idaho [...]
December 17, 2009, 2:37 pmChris Travers says:
On the other hand, I suppose we COULD try to convince the court that loyalty tests are fine and 18 USC 2385 interpreted according to a simple and plain reading of the statute is both Constitutional and covers domestic terrorists……
(18 USC 2385 was hamstrung in court by Yates v. United States)
December 18, 2009, 3:27 pmKeeping the Nation Safe, or Making Citizens Vulnerable? The Dangers of Vagueness in Anti-terrorism Laws | Liberal Whoppers says:
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December 19, 2009, 12:53 am