Thread: Terror Funding Bill Upheld

kinda 50/50 on this one :/, curious what others think

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100621/...nti_terror_law

The Supreme Court upheld the government's authority Monday to ban aid to designated terrorist groups, even when that support is intended to steer the groups toward peaceful and legal activities.

The court left intact a federal law that the Obama administration considers an important tool against terrorism. But human rights organizations say the law's ban on providing training and advice to nearly four dozen organizations on a State Department list squanders a chance to persuade people to renounce extremism.

But Chief Justice John Roberts said in his opinion for the court that material support intended even for benign purposes can help a terrorist group in other ways.

"Such support frees up other resources within the organization that may be put to violent ends," Roberts said in an opinion joined by four other conservative justices, but also the liberal Justice John Paul Stevens.

But Roberts said there is good reason in this case to defer to Congress and the president, "uniquely positioned to make principled distinctions between activities that will further terrorist conduct and undermine United States foreign policy, and those that will not."

Justice Stephen Breyer took the unusual step of reading his dissent aloud in the courtroom. "Not even the 'serious and deadly problem' of international terrorism can require automatic forfeiture of First Amendment rights," he said. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor joined the dissent.

David Cole, a Georgetown law professor who represented the aid groups at the Supreme Court, said the court essentially ruled that "the First Amendment permits the government to make human rights advocacy and peacemaking a crime."

The aid groups involved had trained the Kurdistan Workers' Party in Turkey on how to bring human rights complaints to the United Nations and assisted them in peace negotiations, but suspended the activities when the U.S. designated the Kurdish organization, known as the PKK, a terrorist group in 1997. They also wanted to give similar help to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka, but they, too, were designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. in 1997.

I would imagine the same reasoning was applied to Israels blockade of Gaza.

"Such support frees up other resources within the organization that may be put to violent ends," Roberts said in an opinion joined by four other conservative justices, but also the liberal Justice John Paul Stevens.