Worse Than The ACLU?

Worse Than The ACLU?

There are many other organizations out there that were cut from the same page as the ACLU. People should be aware of their dangerous missions as well.

If you thought the left-wing American Civil Liberties Union was bad, wait till you read about the ultra-left “public interest” law firm called the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) in “The Terrorists’ Legal Team.”

The Center for Constitutional Rights is openly anti-American and pro-terrorist. Groups suspected of ties to terrorism give money to CCR. The granddaughter of the executed Communist spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg works there. The late (second) wife of the traitor Alger Hiss left money to CCR in her will. Actors Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon fund CCR, as does singer Natalie Merchant and 1940s Communist relic Pete Seeger (the folk singer from The Weavers). Insurance magnate Peter B. Lewis, a kingpin of George Soros’s “Democracy Alliance,” writes big checks to CCR, as does Soros’s Open Society Institute.

Although CCR is headquartered in New York City’s Greenwich Village, it’s not a bunch of latte-sipping do-nothing artsy dreamers who sit around comparing notes on Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Karl Marx. These are dedicated revolutionaries who, quite literally, want to overthrow the American system of government. Look on their website and you’ll see the same kind of revolutionary Communist catch-phrases that you’ll find in the works of Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, and Mao Zedong.

Its current president, Michael Ratner, is an adjunct law professor at Columbia University. He served as special counsel to Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a Marxist who was overthrown in 2004. Ratner is a classic limousine liberal, or more accurately, a Rolls Royce revolutionary. His family controls Forest City Enterprises, Inc., a nearly $8 billion real estate development company that has been accused of eminent domain abuse. His brother, Bruce, is the owner of the New Jersey Nets.

What’s the connection between Communism and Islamism? CCR hates America so it decided to align itself with terrorists who hate America. It seems CCR and its supporters believe that Islamic Fascist terrorists are freedom fighters and spokesmen for legitimate national liberation movements. After the Soviet Union collapsed around 1991 under the weight of 70 years of failed socialist policies, CCR “made a seamless transition from an alliance with Communism to an alliance with Islamofascism in the name of the United States Constitution,” in the words last year of the Power Line blog.

CCR has enjoyed much success in its legal fight against the U.S. government’s War on Terror, most notably in Rasul v. Bush in which the firm was counsel. (It filed “amicus curiae” briefs in other WOT cases as well.) Rasul is the infamous 2004 case in which the Supreme Court ruled (6 to 3) that CCR’s 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.

Some people might ask ‘well, what’s the big deal?’ Why can’t we try terrorists in civilian courts?’ Well, there are some problems with that.

Read the whole thing.

Discover the Networks has much more info on this group:

The Center for Constitutional Rights was co-founded in November 1966 by the radical attorneys Morton Stavis, Ben Smith, Arthur Kinoy, and William Kunstler, longtime members of the Communist and radical left. Prior to forming the Center, Kinoy and Kuntsler circulated a lengthy memo calling for the creation of a “new Communist Party,” which did not materialize.

Among the most passionate crusades of Kinoy’s legal career was his bid to save the lives of the convicted spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in 1953. He took similar pride in his heralded 1972 victory when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the government was obliged to obtain a warrant for telephone tapping, even in cases where national security was at stake.

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At its 2004 annual convention, the CCR honored attorney Lynne Stewart, an open supporter of terrorism, indicted by the Justice Department for abetting the terrorist activities of her client, the “blind sheik,” Omar Abdel Rahman. In April 2002 Stewart was indicted on charges that she had illegally “facilitated and concealed communications” between the incarcerated Sheik and members of his Egyptian terrorist organization, the Islamic Group, which has ties to al Qaeda.