This is very disturbing. Read for yourself:. Taken from: The Free Expression Policy Project News Supreme Court To Consider Whether the Government Can Ban Political Speech in the Name of Fighting Terrorism (December 10. 2009) - An appeal that will be argued in February before the Supreme Court is shaping up to be the most significant case about government repression of political speech in recent memory. Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project is a First Amendment challenge to parts of a federal law that make it a crime to provide any organization designated by the Secretary of State as “terrorist†with assistance in any of its activities, even lawful and nonviolent ones. The plaintiffs in the case are the Humanitarian Law Project, a human rights organization with consultative status at the United Nations; Ralph Fertig, a retired administrative law judge who has worked to support the rights of Kurdish people in Turkey; Dr. Nagalingam Jeyalingam, an American physician who has worked on behalf of Tamil people in Sri Lanka; and several nonprofit groups that focus on helping Tamils. Fertig and the Humanitarian Law Project have in the past assisted the Kurdistan Workers' Party (the PKK) with training in the use of humanitarian and international law on behalf of Kurds living in Turkey. The PKK is the principal political organization representing the Kurds, who as an ethnic minority in Turkey have suffered severe discrimination and human rights violations. Similarly, Dr. Jeyalingam and the Tamil-aid groups have worked with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or Tamil Tigers (the LTTE) on humanitarian activities; the LTTE is the principal political organization representing Tamil people in Sri Lanka, another ethnic minority that has suffered human rights abuse and discrimination. But these aid activities stopped more than a decade ago, after Congress passed the "Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act." This law authorized the State Department to create a list of “foreign terrorist organizationsâ€; then made it a crime to provide “material support†to any listed group. “Material support†was defined to include “training†and other forms of assistance, even if it was solely for peaceful purposes unrelated to terrorism. Terrorism was also defined broadly, to include virtually any actual or threatened use of a weapon against people or property. In making designations, the Secretary of State was directed to consider the "national defense, foreign relations, or economic interests of the United States.†Congress has amended the law several times, largely in response to court decisions striking down parts of the ban on “material support.†(See Federal Court Strikes Down Part of the "USA PATRIOT Act" for background on this long litigation.) The current version of the law specifies four types of “material support†that the Humanitarian Law Project and the other plaintiffs in the case have argued are vague, overbroad, and otherwise in violation of the First Amendment. These four provisions, whose validity the Supreme Court will now decide, make it a crime to provide: “training,†which the law defines as “instruction or teaching designed to impart a specific skill, as opposed to general knowledgeâ€; “expert advice or assistance,†defined as “advice or assistance derived from scientific, technical or other specialized knowledgeâ€; “service,†a term left undefined in the law, but according to the government's attorneys, any “act done for the benefit of†a designated group; and “personnel,†which includes anybody who works under an organization's “direction or control,†but excludes people acting “entirely independently.†In 2007, the U.S Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit found the first three of these four provisions to be unconstitutionally vague. The court explained, with respect to the ban on training, for example, that it “implicates, and potentially chills ... protected expressive activities and imposes criminal sanctions of up to fifteen years imprisonment without sufficiently defining the prohibited conduct for ordinary people to understand.â€1 The government in its appeal to the Supreme Court argued that all parts of the "material support" ban are necessary for our national security. But its justifications for the broad restrictions go beyond impeding terrorism; some of them are frankly political. As an attorney for the State Department told the court of appeals at oral argument, advising a designated organization on how to argue its case before the United Nations is a crime under the law because â€we do not want U.S. persons to be assisting terrorist organizations in making presentations to the U.N., to television, to a newspaper, we do not want U.S. persons assisting these organizations except as Congress specifically has provided.†Similarly, when asked whether filing a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of the LTTE in this case would be a crime, the government's lawyer replied, “Yes because Congress wants these organizations to be radioactive. … We don't want U.S. lawyers, other U.S. persons, to be saying, ‘Yeah, I want to help them in a good way,' because that adds to the goodwill and the standing of the organization.â€2 Although no U.S. lawyer could file a friend-of-the-court brief for LTTE, five such briefs have been filed so far by other groups. Four support the plaintiffs: their signatories include the Carter Center (set up by former President Jimmy Carter to support international human rights), Christian Peacemaker Teams, Human Rights Watch, a coalition of sociologists, anthropologists, and other scholars concerned with human rights, and the Media Law Project. The Anti-Defamation League has filed in support of the government. The most interesting of the briefs, historically speaking, comes from 32 "Victims of the McCarthy Era," individuals or their family members or close friends who were blacklisted or otherwise lost their jobs, and in some cases served prison terms, during the late 1940s and 1950s, because of suspected associations with the Communist Party. The government alleged, and the courts agreed, that one of the CP's goals was the violent overthrow of the U.S. government; but the Party also had many peaceful aims - among them labor organizing and racial equality. People who joined the CP or signed petitions, who went to meetings or otherwise shared only the Party's lawful goals, nevertheless were condemned as a matter of "guilt by association." It was not until 1961, in the case of Scales v. United States, that the Supreme Court fully rejected the concept of guilt by association and ruled that a person must have purposefully shared a group's illegal aims before he can be convicted of a crime. "Americans paid a heavy price for McCarthy era penalties on speech and association," the Victims of the McCarthy Era say in their brief. They "have a strong interest in ensuring that these excesses are not repeated, that political speech is not quashed, and that dissenting individual views and associations are protected."3 Both the brief of the McCarthy Era victims and the brief for the plaintiffs in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project argue that the Supreme Court can avoid deciding the constitutional issues in the case simply by following the precedent of Scales v. United States and interpreting the "material support" ban to make criminals only of those people who specifically intend to support a group's illegal activities. David Cole, the lead lawyer for the plaintiffs, has commented: "This statute is so sweeping that it treats human rights advocates as criminal terrorists, and threatens them with 15 years in prison for advocating nonviolent means to resolve disputes. In our view, the First Amendment does not permit the government to make advocating human rights or other lawful, peaceable activity a crime simply because it is done for the benefit of, or in conjunction with, a group the Secretary of State has blacklisted."4 The Supreme Court will hear oral argument on February 23, 2010. For copies of all the briefs, go to Merit Briefs for February Supreme Court Cases, Term 2009-2010 (ABA Division for Public Education). Notes 1. Humanitarian Law Project v. Mukasey, 509 F.3d 1122, 1134-35 (9th Cir. 2007), amended, 552 F.3d 916, 929 (9th Cir. 2009). 2. Quoted in Brief for the Humanitarian Law Project et al. in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project (S.Ct. Nos. 08-1498 and 09-89, Nov. 16, 2009), pp. 13, 49. 3. Brief of Amici Curiae Victims of the McCarthy Era in Support of Humanitarian Law Project et al , in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, pp. i, 1. 4. Scotusblog: Brief: Pare down Patriot Act | SCOTUSblog
It would be an interesting article if the opposing Amicus briefs were discussed and the State's arguments were explored. This article is about as one sided as an article can be. As for the issue of filing briefs on behalf of groups like LITE, since LITE has no standing in US courts and has issues before the courts, it would be impossible to file briefs on their behalf. The 9th circuit court is the most overturned of the circuit courts, and for good reason. Scales is irrelevant here. This is not an issue of a domestic political organization, but an international terrorism organization. By virtue of it being a terrorist organization, in participation in any aims or goals of the organization aid the whole of the organization. Those organizations are forbidden from operating within the US by law. And the US congress has full authority to regulate and control what citizens may or may not do outside the country when interacting with foreign governments and NGOs. If the activity of assisting takes place within the US, the crime is committed by interacting with a banned organization and thus participating in their criminal conspiracy. If the activity of assisting takes place outside the US, then it is a violation of a law which Congress clearly has the authority to enact. Slam dunk for the State. More wackiness out of the 9th circuit.
Of course I do. A terrorist organization, when properly and publicly declared, is an enemy of the United States. The State Department, on behalf of the President and with the authority of Congress, has publicly listed these enemies of the United States. Let's be clear, the list isn't private. Everyone knows what this list consists of (in that the information is accessible by all who wish to access it). It is clear public record. These organizations are enemies of the United States by virtue of being terrorist organizations. It is illegal for a US citizen to provide any aid to an enemy of the United States. Just as it would have been illegal or a US citizen to support Nazi Germany during WW2. Even if it's just "medical supplies and training their doctors", it's still supporting an enemy. Domestic support would be participation in their criminal conspiracy (since the Congress and the Executive has banned their operation within the Sovereign Borders), and supporting them abroad would violate valid laws put forth by Congress and signed by the Executive. Domestically it's a non issue. The only issue is, "Does the Congress have the authority to regulate what US citizens may do abroad" and the answer is obviously "yes." As I said, this is a slam dunk case for the State. So far the only argument that seems to be in favor of the plantiff is "BUT MY EMOTIONS! I feel that it's really okay to help these people!!!" If these people want help, they can cease their terrorist activities and lobby the US state department to be removed from the list. Until then, any support given to these organizations is a criminal activity supporting an enemy of the United State.
To be clear, your title is tremendously misleading. It's not about the government "banning speech", no speech is being banned here. The idea that somehow filing an Amicus brief is banned under this law is absurd for a multitude of reasons, the chief reason because that LITE has no standing in the US courts and no cases before the courts so it would be impossible to file an Amicus brief on behalf of an organization that has no issues before the courts on a case that does not exist. What is being banned is the direct activity of providing aid and comfort to an enemy of the United States. An activity that is forbidden by the Constitution. No speech is being banned. Activities are being banned.