Well, there’s the P2 Masons, who’ve had members at high levels of the church, even though church law prohibits membership in the Masons. (In conspiracy theory circles, they’re rumored to have murdered JP 1.0.) Then there’s the whole Da Vinci Code nonsense, which some people actually believe.
Again, Evil, it does not appear that the FBI has been acting illegally* in these investigations, or conducting unwarranted searches in circumstances where warrants would be required. The issue is really a question of policy – whether the FBI should be spending its limited time and money on investigating persons and organizations which most of us would assume are substantially harmless.
*Whether the Bush Admin or the NSA has been acting illegally in the recently disclosed domestic surveillance program is a different question, for a different thread.
Um, we Catholics don’t all march to the same drummer politically. We vote Democrat and Republican in roughly the same proportion as the rest of America. There’s a right wing (Pope Benedict, Pat Buchanan, Rudy Giuliani, Opus Dei, Mel Gibson’s dad) and a left wing (Catholic Workers, CISPES, Liberation Theology, the Lesbian Nuns, Daniel Berrigan). “Catholic Workers” are not the Pope’s loyal, obedient foot soldiers.
Bear in mind that most American Christians are Protestants. “Social Justice,” a major part of Catholicism and the defining element of the Catholic Left, is widely seen as a buzzword for “redistribution of wealth.” (Most Protestant denominations, by contrast, focus on personal, individual salvation and believe that “social justice” is best left to non-church institutions.)
Hence, “Catholic Workers” = “Communistic” in many circles. Are the FBI’s attentions warranted? Maybe, maybe not. Are they a big surprise? No.
When I used the term “Catholic leadership” I mean the Pope and his buds. I understand that American Catholics are divided on many issues. And in a subsequent post I made specific reference to the fact that the Pope hates Liberation Theology.
Didn’t mean to look like I was singling you out, EC. My post was kind of a reply to all the references to Catholic Workers, of which yours looked like the broadest.
Yep, he seems to not be acknowledging the fact that the FBI wouldn’t seek warrants for stuff they don’t need warrants to do.
In general the idea of warrants arose to give government the power to take actions that, if committed by a private individual, would constitute a crime. Since we’ve always been wary of government being able to do those things, we require them to receive some form of judicial approval before doing it.
Of course it isn’t so simple in todays world. But, in general, if a private investigator could do it and it doesn’t equate a crime, a police officer could do it and it wouldn’t require a warrant.
There is some grey area, though. For example the government has long been unable to use stuff they get from bugging your house or some other location if they haven’t gotten proper authority/warrants in a criminal case. While, there are loopholes in the law that allowed video voyeurism and other such things to go on unpunished since the laws hadn’t been properly written to deal with them.
Note: the Center for Consumer Freedom is an advocacy organization run by essentially one guy who operates numerous astroturf organizations on behalf of the restaurant industry (cite). He’s an absolute sleazebag; among his other targets are MADD and the CDC. PETA is not a bunch of angels, but direct or indirect citations to Berman’s work are really unconvincing.
Daniel
Anyone who thinks arson is just a crime against property should talk to Martin Pang. About 10 years ago he set fire to one of his warehouses here in Seattle in an insurance fraud scam. Firefighters responded, and four of them died when the warehouse collapsed. Martin Pang was charged with felony murder and skipped the country to Brazil.
Arson is a crime that can easily–extremely easily–escalate to felony murder. You could be killing any number of people when you set fire to a building, setting a building on fire is not a predictable action. You cannot set a building on fire without recklessly taking the risk of killing people, maybe dozens of people. Anyone who commits arson for political reasons is a terrorist.
You’ll note that the way felony murder laws are written, you don’t get tried for murder for committing a crime that could escalate into deaths; you get tried for murder for committing a crime that actually does escalate into deaths.
The law makes this crucial distinction, and so should we. When we’re discussing someone who commits arson for political reasons and who ends up killing someone, I’ll be okay with your calling them a terrorist, just as I’ll be okay with your calling them a murderer. When we’re discussing someone who commits arson for political reasons and who doesn’t end up killing somoene, I’ll not call them a terrorist or a murderer.
If you’d like to dilute the word “terrorist”, apply it to folks very broadly, with no recognition of the central element of terrorism as understood by virtually everyone: the intentional killing of civilians (or, in a few folks’ minds, the intentional killing of soldiers) in order to achieve a political end. Ask a thousand people to give a sample terrorist act, and if five of them describe an act in which no human suffers a bodily injury, I’ll eat my mouse.
Daniel
Arson is usually on the list of serious felonies that can justify the use of deadly force to prevent their commission.
I agree that one shouldn’t be called a murderer unless they actually kill someone. However, it’s still terrorism to commit arson as an attempt to influence the political process. Terrorism isn’t limited to acts which kill.
Don’t we try people for attempted murder, in this country?
I don’t get your distinction. If someone torches what they think is an empty warehouse, but accidentally burn some security guard alive, that guy’s a terrorist in your eyes. What if he sets a fire intending to kill someone, but they get out alive despite his efforts? Not a terrorist? I’ve always understood the term to have to do with intent; specifically, the intent to subdue political opposition through force or the threat of force. I’m not aware that murder is a necessary aspect of it.
Since we’re talking popular definitions, dictionary.com does not remotely agree with you.
I’ll eat my mouse if you get a five answers that are anything other than “9/11.” What’s that supposed to prove?
It’s the usual false equivalence shit of the right. Osama bin Laden = terrorist. Environmental activitists who set fire to abandoned buildings = terrorist (in their carefully constructed definitions). Therefore environmental activists = Osama bin Laden. They’re doing it for a reason, a politically sound one in partisan terms, but not a logically sound one in reality-based terms.
Okay, explain to me how setting fire to an abandoned building can be good for the environment, cause I’m not seeing it.
They do far more than setting fire to abandoned buildings. The list of crimes against people is long and getting longer. See http://www.naiaonline.org/body/articles/archives/arterror.htm.
Because it would be negligent for them not to pay attention to what is going on.
Except they don’t set fire to abandoned buildings, they set fire to working buildings, otherwise there would be no point. If you set fire to the Univeristy of Washington agricultural building, can’t you see that your actions could easily, very easily, lead to the death or dismemberment of actual human beings?
Arson isn’t equivalent to chaining yourself to the gates of Weyrhauser corporate headquarters.
Let me put it to you in terms you can understand. Suppose the US army drops a bomb on an abandoned building in Iraq, but it just so happens that the building wasn’t abandoned, that civilians were in the building. Are you gonna give the army a pass because “we thought the building was abandoned!”?
Hell no. Dropping a bomb on a building, setting a building on fire, is accepting a very large risk that somebody is gonna be killed by that bomb or that fire. You set fire to enough research labs and the easily forseeable consequence is that eventually some janitor or receptionist or security guard or fireman is going to be killed, or that the fire could spread to neighboring buildings. This isn’t some remote possibility, like the risk that you might run over some innocent person while driving to a peaceful non-violent protest, this is a very real, very forseeable danger.
When you set fire to “abandoned” buildings, you are explicitly deciding that the lives of a couple of janitors and firemen are small potatoes compared to the crimes committed in that lab or office.
See how this works? Arson=terrorism, because you’re gonna kill someone eventually, just like the Unabomber’s letter bombs. Chaining yourself to the gates? Not terrorism.
Investigating groups who chain themselves to the gates of Weyrhauser? Smart move, because those groups contain people like Evil Captor who don’t think setting fire to “abandoned” buildings is a big deal, and those people probably know people who know people who are the ones actually setting the fires. Which, even though no one YET has been killed by an environmentalist arson, you know that people eventually will, it is an inevitable conseqence of arson.