It looks like terrorist lawyer – and you may parse that as you wish – Lynne Stewart may spend more time as an involuntary guest of the government than she first thought:
NEW YORK (Reuters) – A U.S. appeals court upheld on Tuesday a disbarred New York lawyer’s conviction on charges of supporting terrorism by helping an imprisoned blind Egyptian cleric smuggle messages to militant followers, ordered her to prison and told a judge to consider a longer sentence.
The three-judge panel described the 28-month prison sentence given by the trial judge to civil rights lawyer Lynne Stewart, 70, following her 2005 conviction as “strikingly low” and not matching “the seriousness of her criminal conduct.”
The appeals court ordered the trial judge to think about lengthening the sentence, noting that the judge had declined to consider whether Stewart committed perjury when she testified at her trial.
Two thoughts on this:
- There’s something… pure… in this hysterical (again, parse as you choose) title found on Indymedia: ‘Fascist Obama Jails Framed Ill People’s Lawyer Lynne Stewart.’ And here I thought that wanting to bomb the United Nations was a nutball-far-extremist-right-fringe fantasy. Live and learn.
- This comment by Stewart? “This is a case that is bigger than just me, personally. I am no criminal.” – I actually agree with that; she isn’t, except in the narrowest of senses. Stewart gave aid and comfort to an enemy of the United States, adhering to him, and helping him wage war against my country.
And that last sentence shouldn’t need to be parsed at all.
Moe Lane
Crossposted to RedState.