Cordoba House, Ground Zero, mosque

NYPD investigates non-crime, puts ‘the fear of God’ into opponent of Ground Zero mosque

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NYPD officers, while knowing no crime had been committed, “put the fear of God” into a man who voiced his opposition to the Cordoba House mosque being built at Ground Zero by telephoning Community Board 1 members. DNAinfo has the story:

“The guy used four-letter words and said I should die a horrible death,” the board member said. “He just launched into an attack, screaming at me.”

The board member called the police, and they tracked down the harassing caller, who had used a cell phone with a 347 area code.

Since the caller had said, “You should die,” not, “I will kill you,” he was protected by the First Amendment, officers told the board member. So instead of arresting him, the officers talked to the man and “put the fear of God in him,” the board member said. The calls stopped.

The same caller also harassed Dr. Lewis Gross, a TriBeCa dentist and former CB1 member.

The caller first told Gross, 58, that he’d been selected as a New Yorker of the week and asked whether he was a community board member. The caller then asked what Gross thought of the mosque.

When Gross said he had mixed feelings, the man “started screaming and cursing and going off the wall,” Gross said. “I said it’s a free country. He didn’t like that.”

NYPD officers are not Saudi Arabia’s religious police or Barney Fife of Mayberry.

The officers involved had no legal authority and they damn well knew better. If the board member felt harassed, the officers should have suggested they ask a judge for a protective order.

People should not tell someone “you should die” anymore than Muslims in Queens should burn the American flag yet that is only my opinion.

But NYPD officers taking sides in a 1st Amendment protected debate or putting the fear of God (or Allah) into a non-criminal when some muckety muck complains is not their job.

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly is not going to be happy.

One final point: DNAinfo got their headline wrong; non-threatening calls are not “Threatening Phone Calls.” [quotation marks mine]

9/11, al Qaeda, Barack Obama, Debra Burlingame, detainees, DOJ, Gitmo, James Cole

James Cole DAG nominee ‘aggressive demilitarizing of the war’: Debra Burlingame

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Debra Burlingame spoke with talk radio host Steve Malzberg yesterday after the Senate Judiciary Committee nomination hearing of James Cole to become the Deputy Attorney General of the United States:

“[James Cole’s] client was Naif Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, the Foreign Minister who ran the Al Haramain charity, this huge Saudi “charity” was shut down by the Treasury Department in 2004 — and we haven’t been able to confirm that it was shut down. … They gave millions of dollars to terrorists; they supported al Qaeda before 9/11 and after 9/11 … This is a huge, huge conflict of interest because how is this man going to be investigating, prosecuting, detaining, and interrogating the people who in fact are his former clients?”

Here is the full audio of the interview:

To be fair to both Malzberg and the “feckless Republicans” he spoke of, Senator Jeff Sessions made a noble effort within the too few minutes available to him, the nomination was only announced the day before, and committee Democrats consumed two-thirds of the 2-hour hearing with glowing adoration for James Cole, potshots at the previous administration, and posturing on other matters. (Senators Patrick Leahy and Sheldon Whitehouse would willingly submit to months of continuous waterboarding before asking even one probing question of a Democrat President’s nominee.) There was a lot of ground to cover with Cole and not nearly enough time to cover it all. Still, Senator Lindsay Graham came to the hearing with a rubber stamp “yea” vote for Cole and his C-SPAN “thoughtful” face set to further his own agenda: horse trading the closing of Gitmo for passage into law of his vision of the legal war against terror.

You can watch the replay of the hearing here.