Redstate

Posted at 11:15am on Apr. 21, 2008 To alleviate a dilemma.

By Paul J Cella

An article in the Washington Post details the difficulties faced by prosecutors in achieving guilty verdicts in federal terrorism cases. The dilemma, from the prosecutor’s perspective, is simple enough: You have a cell of conspirators plotting murder and mayhem; should you intervene early, with arrests and formal charges before the plot matures, or wait until its maturity virtually insures guilty verdicts? If you choose the former, you indemnify against the possibility that the plot will be carried out under your very nose, that, in fine, the intervention will come to late; but in so doing you may find yourself with a weaker case. If you choose the latter, interdicting the plot in its later stages, your prosecution will be far easier, but you magnify that risk that it will succeed despite your best efforts. Patience may issue in disaster; swift intervention in a failed prosecution.

It seems to me that a possible alleviation of this dilemma lies in new legislation: Let us make the plot itself a more serious offense, one that is easier to prosecute and carries a more onerous penalty. That is to say, let us proscribe the mere preaching or advocacy of jihad against America.

Read on.

Posted in American political tradition | sedition | the Jihad | War — Comments (12)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 10:20pm on Feb. 7, 2008 A Challenge.

NO, this has nothing to do with the presidential campaign.

By Paul J Cella

When Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn delivered a brief address to a town hall meeting in Cavendish, Vermont, where he had lived for eighteen years with his family, in exile from Communist Russia, he paid poignant homage to “the sensible and sure process of grassroots democracy, in which the local population solves most of its problems on its own, not waiting for the decisions of higher authorities.” He declared also that, while “exile is always difficult,” he “could not imagine a better place to live, and wait, and wait for my return home,” than that little town. He expressed his gratitude for its respect for his privacy, and spoke warmly of its neighborliness. For his children, “Vermont is home,” for they have grown up “alongside your children.”

With a “God bless you all,” the great Russian finished — to a hearty ovation from those snowbound New Englanders.

Calm down and Read on.

Posted in abstractions | American political tradition | Conservatives | Culture | Solzhenitsyn — Comments (17)/ Email this page » / Read More »