What to do about the Muslim Brotherhood?

Rod, it's unclear from Myers whether this:

"Rod Dreher of the Dallas Morning News, who has been covering the Holy Land Foundation trial,"

refers solely to your editorial column or to more thorough knowledge of the trial proceedings you might have as a result of "covering the Holy Land Foundation trial" in some further manner as well we're not yet aware of. If the latter, what can you tell us about this claim?

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/localnews/crime/stories/DN-holyland_12met.ART0.State.Edition1.4225465.html

"• Former Dallas Democratic congressman-turned-lobbyist John Bryant, who represented Holy Land in the late 1990s after it was accused in the press of being tied to Hamas, testified that he got no help when he asked the FBI and State Department whether the foundation was under investigation, and for guidance on new federal anti-terrorism laws."

If what Bryant says is true, that is, the part about asking "for guidance on new federal anti-terrorism laws", this would seem to point to an area that might weaken the government's case in the eyes of a juror, to whit, that they requested guidance in pursuing a legal path and were ignored. If I ask you to specifically spell out the rules and you ignore me, then try to prosecute me for breaking the rules I asked you to spell out for me so I could follow them, you certainly attach the aroma of a Catch-22 entrapment to yourself. I can see an ornery juror acquiescing to reasonable doubt overall in the face of this, regardless of other evidence that might render this impression moot.

To launch a RICO proceeding, you have to begin with a successful criminal conviction that the money transfer in the HLF trial was criminal money laundering rather than a charitable transfer. Absent that, no RICO proceeding can go forward on the basis of any inflammatory MB rhetoric alone, no matter how badly anyone wants it to.

RICO simply provides compound greater penalties for multiple proven criminal acts, it doesn't provide for greater ease in producing an initial conviction to begin with, as your post here seems to suggest.

Brad wrote:

"...no RICO proceeding can go forward on the basis of any inflammatory MB rhetoric alone, no matter how badly anyone wants it to."

Well, there is the Smith Act, which I note is still on the books:

http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/g_l/jerome/smithact.htm

...Although I'm not sure how wise it would be to open that door.

We might also consider enacting something similar to the Internal Security Act of 1950 (including the emergency detention provisions), and amending the Alien Enemies Act to cover membership in terrorist organizations.

Considering a suspect's religious & ethnic background when allocating scarce law-enforcement resources is also a possibility.

And it doesn't seem very prudent to allocate scarce immigration slots to aliens from that part of the world whence the vast majority of Islamic terrorists have historically originated, unless we have some reliable way of determining the risk posed by such aliens to the United States.

Joe McCarthy went too far. But there really were communists in important positions. Just because the vainglorious drunk McCarthy screwed the pooch on the investigation doesn't mean that there never can be a conspiracy, ever. Invoking McCarthyism promiscuously doesn't make the threat, if there is a threat, go away, and it shouldn't silence criticism.

Dreher: "Let's bring the heads of organizations … and have them testify under oath in Congressional hearings about their connections to the Brotherhood and its "civilizational-jihadist" philosophy."

I'm sorry, Mr. Dreher, but it ain't gonna happen. Just look at your comboxes, for example: They're already yelling "McCarthyism!!!". Now just imagine that amplified a thousandfold in the news media. It'd be political suicide for any congressman to suggest doing such a thing.

While it sounds like the Smith Act that MI points out

http colon slashslash en dot wikipedia dot org backslash wiki backslash Smith_Act

is more what Rod is seeking in the way of a legal knight in shining armor than RICO, Yates

http colon slashslash en dot wikipedia dot org backslash wiki backslash Yates_v. _United_States

would seem to make it problematic unless there was evidence, for example, audio/video recordings and/or undercover witnesses that could substantiate a compelling case that the sort of jihad rhetorically advocated in the MB documents in the HLF trial was actually being promulgated to others as a practical planning strategy, say in a mosque or residence or elsewhere. Even then, it would seem likely a defense would be attempted on grounds of selective enforcement if MB members were prosecuted on the basis of advocating jihad while, for example, devotees of UTA Professor Jose Angel Gutierrez

http colon slashslash www dot youtube dot com backslash watch?v=aSmNEupHWjs

and others who advocate systematic reconquista, violently or non-violently, were not.

Ironically, while as DU says

We're not dealing with a mechanized army or or a nation-state per se, so using the military like we have been doing all over the world is the wrong tool for the job. Treating criminal rings for what they are and not as a wildly inflated "existential threats" sounds like a wise way to fight them.

which I agree with and have repeatedly tried to painstakingly differentiate hereabouts from incipient and actual religious bigotry toward Islam as a religion, of three randomly to-be-compared candidates for prosecution under RICO, while the Catholic Church might actually qualify legally (although an obvious non-starter for political reasons) for its sexual abuse cases to the extent that criminal convictions rather than civil actions for sexual abuse did or might still obtain; and while, say, MALDEF, many U.S. businesses, and even the U.S. government itself remain in flagrant multiple violation of 8 USC:

http colon slashslash www4 dot law dot cornell dot edu backslash uscode backslash html backslash uscode08 backslash usc_sec_08_00001324----000- dot html

the MB with all the potential problems ascribed to it doesn't yet rise to the RICO test.

In sum, we, having slacked on enforcing our own laws repeatedly, may have a contemporary backlog of legal precedent to lay down elsewhere before we have a solid enough legal footing to proceed against the MB in the way Rod advocates.

Rod, I'm still interested in what further light you might be able to shed on the Bryant complaint, from having fully or partially covered the trial as Myers suggested, or otherwise.

Vulgar, but the best strategy is kill them all