Commie Lawyer Gets Her Due

Lynne Stewart's conviction of aiding and abetting a terrorist is well deserved. Our streets will be safer when she goes behind bars because she shares bin Laden's, Castro's and the Black Panthers' view of America: That it is evil and needs to be extinguished.

I found a good backgrounder by Michael Tremoglie at Front Page magazine.com. The last few paragraphs are the best:

It was Ramsey Clark who urged Lynne Stewart to become the blind sheik's defense attorney. Clark's two previous choices, Center for Constitutional Rights attorneys and noted defenders of criminals and terrorists — including the Palestinian assassin of Meyer Kahane — William Kuntsler and Ron Kuby, had recused themselves.

Stewart is also well known for her representation of "revolutionaries" and murderers. Most recently, she represented several cop-killers (whom she no doubt considered revolutionaries) and Sammy "the Bull" Gravano, a Mafioso (whom she no doubt considered just rebellious). Stewart shares the Communist beliefs of the WWP and IAC [World Workers Party and International Action Committee] and the Center for Constitutional Rights. She is anti-capitalist and believes the USA is an imperialistic nation, and that anti-capitalist violence is justified. In a 1995 New York Times interview she said, "I don't believe in anarchistic violence, but in directed violence. That would be violence directed at the institutions which perpetuate capitalism, racism, and sexism, and at the people who are the appointed guardians of those institutions, and accompanied by popular support." Obviously, Stewart's worldview meshes seamlessly with that of Saddam Hussein, Yassir Arafat, the blind sheik and Osama Bin Laden. And with that of Deirdre Griswold Brian, Becker, Ramsey Clark and the Workers World Party.

Stewart and Clark's legal defense of the blind Seik resulted in a conviction. They placed America on trial as a repressive, imperialist and terrorist state, and portrayed the Sheik as nothing more than an innocent holy man and political activist. It did not work. Now Stewart's lawyer, Michael Tigar, is attempting the same legal strategy for her. This strategy has been formula of the anti-American legal left since the 1960s when Charles Garry, himself a member of the Communist Party, first devised it in the defense of Black Panther leader Huey Newton who was accused of murdering a California Highway Patrol Officer named John Frey. Garry put the United States on trial for racism, in a effort to distract the jury from the facts in the case (Newton was observed shooting the officer by a black bus driver who was only ten feet away.) The indict America defense was then developed by William Kuntsler and his disciples at the Center for Constitutional Rights, including Ron Kuby who represented Kahane's Arab assassin. Johnnie Cochran made the strategy world famous in his defense of O.J. Simpson. This was not merely coincidence, since Cochran began his criminal law career as a Black Panther attorney, defending Geronimo Pratt in the early 1970s. Lynne Stewart's counsel Michael Tigar was active in Communist Party groups while a student at Berkeley in the 1960s. One of Tigar's many accomplishments was to organize a U.S. delegation to the World Communist Youth Festival. Another was to defend Oklahoma City bomber Terry Nichols.

There are many legitimate defense attorneys who provide legal defenses for clients with whom they do not themselves sympathize. Lynne Stewart, Ramsey Clark, Ron Kuby and Michael Tigar are not among them.