Muslims and Reporters Under Attack in the US

The NYPD’s clandestine spying on daily life in Muslim communities in the region — with no probable cause, and nothing to show for it — was exposed in a Pulitzer-Prize winning series of stories by the AP. The stories described infiltration and surveillance of at least 20 mosques, 14 restaurants, 11 retail stores, two grade schools, and two Muslim student associations in New Jersey alone.

[...]

In his ruling Thursday, U.S. District Court Judge William J. Martini simultaneously demonstrated the willingness of the judiciary to give law enforcement alarming latitude in the name of fighting terror, greenlighted the targeting of Muslims based solely on their religious beliefs, and blamed the media for upsetting people by telling them what their government was doing.

[...]

“In addition to willfully ignoring the harm that our innocent clients suffered from the NYPD’s illegal spying program, by upholding the NYPD’s blunderbuss Muslim surveillance practices, the court’s decision gives legal sanction to the targeted discrimination of Muslims anywhere and everywhere in this country, without limitation, for no other reason than their religion,” Center for Constitutional Rights legal director Baher Azmy said in a statement. “It is a troubling and dangerous decision.”

“The fight is not over by any means. The surveillance program violates the Constitution, and we are confident that this decision will not hold up to review upon appeal,” Glenn Katon, legal director of Muslim Advocates, said in a statement.

  The Intercept

It’s shameful they even have to go as far as an appeal. Hopefully, they will win at that level. But maybe it would be best to take this all the way to the Supreme Court. On the other hand, even they are questionable these days.

The article gives a little information about Judge Martini in this case:

Martini, a one-term Republican congressman from New Jersey, was appointed to the federal bench by George W. Bush in 2002. Previous critiques of his judicial conduct have been unusually blunt and public, including repeated rebukes at the appellate level and the local U.S. attorney’s describing him in court filings as “misguided” and “irrational.”

Nevertheless, Martini is still on the bench (it’s very hard to unseat a federal judge). And his ruling was perhaps the most extreme example yet of what is becoming the nearly standard reaction by the modern American political and law-enforcement elite’s reaction to exposure of secret conduct that merits public scrutiny: trying to shoot the messenger.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.