By Chris Daly
Is Tarek Mehanna a miserable loser who does not appreciate the blessings of America?
Maybe.
Is Tarek Mehanna a terrorist?
Almost certainly not.
Today, a federal jury in Boston found otherwise. But no matter how hard I try in looking at the reports of the prosecution’s case, I could not find convincing evidence of any actions taken by Mehanna that come close to terrorism.
I certainly don’t find anything he did that should prompt the rest of us to set aside the Constitution and say this man is so dangerous that we need to suspend our precious rights of freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and freedom of the press.
Mehanna had a first-rate defense, provided by attorney Jay Carney, whom I have covered in other high-profile cases and whom I admire. The problem here is not that Mehanna couldn’t find a good lawyer. The problem is that a dozen of our neighbors appear to have chosen some definition of safety over almost any definition of freedom.
This feels like a bad day for the Constitution.
[Apologies: I would normally post a photo here, and I would make a decent effort to caption and credit it. But I am writing this post on the desktop in my BU office, which is owned by the university. The i.t. folks at BU have apparently put some filter on here that makes it impossible to upload jpeg files. And, of course, they don’t tell us that they have done so, or why. Arrgghh.]
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