Cause Celebre

Until yesterday, the cause celebre flavor of the month was convicted mass murderer Stanley Tookie Williams, who was executed last nite by the State of California after 25 years on Death Row. Tookie murdered four people in cold blood (Albert Owens, Tsai-Shai Yang, Yen-I Yang, and Ye-Chen Lin). The media beat down doors to the Hollywood types who for reasons that defy logic and reasoning made him the poster child for all that is wrong with the death penalty. They claimed that he should receive clemency because he had changed his life around behind bars. Of course, the fact that he was in the most secure part of San Quentin prison because he was continually making trouble for inmates and corrections officers ever since he got to prison was overlooked by the Hollywood types.

The usual suspects lined up to get their 15 minutes, including Jesse Jackson, who couldn't even recall the names of any of the four victims who Tookie murdered. That was an enlightening moment of course. Honoring and assisting a mass murderer while ignoring the victims. Where have we seen that before?

Now, we have a report today that Clara Barton HS in NYC sought to invite convicted terrorist supporter Lynne Stewart to talk at an after-school program at the school. Why would an invitation even be extended by the student government in the first place? Do they not know what Stewart did or who she represented in the process of breaking federal law?

The decision to cancel a high-school lecture in Brooklyn by a civil-rights lawyer convicted of aiding terrorists has sparked a debate over free speech between the students who invited her and the administrators who said the invitation was inappropriate.

The issue arose at Clara Barton HS in Crown Heights last month, when the school's principal canceled the after-school lecture by Lynne Stewart two days before it was supposed to occur at the school's auditorium.

Stewart, 66, was convicted earlier this year of providing material support to terrorists by relaying messages to militant followers of Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, a blind cleric serving a life prison sentence for his role in a 1993 plot to blow up five city landmarks.

The public school's student government president, Gardith Edouard, 17, said her classmates were outraged that administrators canceled the lecture.

"The students wanted to hear what she had to say," Edouard said.

Is it possible that the outrage is just slightly misdirected? The school is supposed to be a learning environment, and inviting a convicted terrorist supporter to speak doesn't exactly teach students anything. It gives a convicted felon a forum that they should otherwise not have. Stewart is unrepentant over her providing material support for terrorists by passing information to terrorist groups in Egypt. Terrorists whose sole goal is to attack US interests around the world.

In fact, I suspect that it was the parents of some students who sought to have Stewart speak, not the students themselves, who probably have never heard of Stewart in the first place.

If the students want to see outrage, how about talking to the families of the six people who were murdered by Rahman's followers in the 1993 WTC bombing? The six who were murdered: John DiGiovanni, Robert Kirkpatrick, Steven Knapp, William Macko, Wilfredo Mercado and Monica Rodriguez Smith, who was pregnant. More than 1,000 others were injured in the harrowing escape from the towers that quickly filled with choking smoke.

UPDATE:
Pamela at Atlas Shrugs has more.