Quote:
Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
As I understand the law, you can end up on a watch list for giving money to a charitable group which is suspected of misusing funds, even if the government can't prove it and/or you had no idea. So the better analogy is one where Cobourn gives money to an apparently legitimate anti-abortion group which is suspected of giving other aid on the side to Eric Rudolph (e.g.).* As applied to citizens, the First Amendment implications ought to be clear enough (freedom to associate, anyone?). If Stevens (or whatever his name is) is anti-violence in his public statement, and gave money to one of these groups, it seems at least as likely to me that he was defrauded by the group (or, more innocuously, that they used his money for whatever they said they would use it for and used other money for something else) than that he was saying one thing publicly and doing another thing with his money.
Stevens isn't a citizen anymore, and when you're dealing with foreigners it makes a certain amount of sense to err on the side of caution. But don't pretend that Stevens necessarily brought it on himself. It's the collateral damage of the way this crowd is fighting the war on terror. They've made it much harder for foreigners to come to that country, which is often not a good thing.
* We've had very, very little luck in getting to the bottom of the finances behind the terrorists and 9/11, so it would be a mistake to assume that the government has really good dirt on the terrorists involved.
|
Ty, if you are going to lecture me then you ought to at least firm up the point that you made, and on which we disagreed. I didn't say the FBI had finally established some brilliant method of determining who was funding terrorists. I said that Cat was deported, I believed, because of his donations to charities that support (yes, I should have said "are believed to support") terrorists, and not because of his position on Rushdie, as you suggested.
Nothing you say suggests that he was barred because of what he said about the fatwa against Rushdie. You agree that it was because of donations. You (appropriately) question whether that is too broad a net, but that's different than saying it was because of what he said about Rushdie.
Plus, he did bring it on himself. Anyone who could walk away from that kind of talent should be beaten with sticks. I bet he's not even allowed to watch Harold & Maude, for god's sake.
