By Debbie Schlussel
As reported in today’s Washington Post, the ACLU (the American Terrorists and Child Molesters Lobby) is in a snit over FBI monitoring of protests at the 2004 Democratic and Republican Conventions in Boston and New York, respectively. The ACLU decries the FBI’s monitoring of these exercises of the First Amendment, claiming they have nothing to do with the War on Terror.
But here’s a tip: The London Bombers reportedly participated in protests against the War in Iraq in Britain. Attention, ACLU: Exercise of the First Amendment and terrorism are not mutually exclusive activities.
***UPDATE (7/20/05): One of the commenters to this post apparently does not think I am enough of a critic of the FBI, and that because I, once–in this post, defended the FBI for monitoring anti-war protestors, I am apparently not enough of an FBI critic.
Anyone familiar with my work knows that I am a vocal and continuing critic of the FBI. I stopped an outrageous that the FBI was set to give, wrote about the agency’s with that terrorist, and wrote about the agency’s outrageous for the “crime” of doing a thorough investigation of Al-Qaeda and HAMAS funding. (Shorter versions of all three columns appeared in the New York Post.)
The FBI still doesn’t have a clue. But I wanted to point out that they did something right–ONCE. We will see what they do with the intelligence they gathered. Probably nothing, as they generally do (see 9/11), as experienced by heroic ICE official Joe Webber, about whom I will write at a later date.