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Be very afraid Any one of us could be named an enemy combatant. All our fair-minded president has to do is say you are one, and you are one. I always wanted to visit Cuba. The "material support" part troubles me When I first heard that the law also covers people providing material support to groups deemed enemy combatants, it gave me a chill and made me think of the McCarthy hearings and their crazy way of assigning guilt by association. Never very confident of myself or my own analysis, I went looking for a lawyer's view and found this testimony, given in 2004, related to the issue. Presumably, the new law strengthen the statutes David Cole talks about. The Georgetown University law professor says "In a case I am handling, the government has invoked these Patriot Act provisions recently to seek the deportation of two long-time lawful permanent residents, Khader Hamide and Michel Shehadeh, for allegedly having provided “material support” to a “terrorist organization” by distributing PLO magazines in the 1980s, when it was fully lawful to do so. (The magazines were then and are still available in libraries across the nation). The government has never alleged that Hamide or Shehadeh sought to further any illegal activities of the PLO group they are alleged to have supported." I can tell you first-hand the intelligence community used to worry a lot about magazines. I found out several years ago that the CIA was looking for my college records, and the only reason I can imagine that I might have been of interest was my subscription to a Chinese magazine in the early 70s. These days, I have to believe the enemy hunters must be just as interested in blogs. Whaddya want to bet this post is going into some file in the next day or two. Makes you shudder, doesn't it? |
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