Don’t Retired Democrat Senators Have Better Things To Do Than Incite Sympathizers of a Convicted Terror Abettor To Harrass the Prosecutor’s Children?

Evidently not.

Read this blood-boiling report from Mike Fechter at Steve Emerson’s Investigative Project on Terrorism.  Mike Gravel is a former two-term Democrat Senator from Alaska (and the hard Left) who lobbied unsuccessfully to be George McGovern’s Veep choice in 1972.  Sami al-Arian is a convicted abettor of the murderous terrorist organization Palestinian Islamic Jihad who has recently admitted past involvement in the Muslim Brotherhood (official motto:  “Allah is our objective.  The Prophet is our leader.  The Qur’an is our law.  Jihad is our way.  Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.”) 

Al-Arian is about to stand trial for criminal contempt because he refuses to testify in the grand jury — despite the facts that all people in the United States are obliged to do so when subpoenaed unless absolved by a legal privilege; that al-Arian has no privilege against self-incrimination because the United States has immunized him from prosecution; and that it is a commonplace for defendants, once their trials are over, to be summoned to the grand jury to provide the public with other information they have regarding potential criminal activity.

Al-Arian’s effort to avoid testifying has already been rejected by several federal courts.  Nevertheless, the usual suspects (advocates of “social justice”) are agitating that the government’s attempt to pry his lips open is, of course, an example of harassment, “Islamophobia,” “racism” (when, by the way, did Islam become a race?), and similar now-familiar blather.  They held a rally last Friday evening, during which the despicable Senator Gravel urged the following regarding the federal prosecutor on al-Arian’s case, Gordon Kromberg (italics are mine):

Find out where he lives. Find out where his office is. If you’ve got some chutzpah – which is a word that you don’t hear often – if you’ve really got it, find out where he lives, find out where his kids go to school, find out where his office is; picket him all the time. Call him a racist in signs if you see him. Call him an injustice. Call him whatever you want to call him, but in his face all the time. They can’t take the heat; deliver it to them. We have to stop laying down to these injustices.

Naturally, Gravel received an enthusiastic ovation when this rant was done. 

Gordon happens to be a good, tenacious, and scrupulously honest prosecutor.  So is his boss, U.S. Attorney Chuck Rosenberg.  I happen to know them both, but even if I didn’t, I can assure you that, like most federal prosecutors, they can and will take whatever heat these characters try to dish out. 

But it’s a shameful measure of where we are that they should have to.