Month: June 2016

Anwar Al-Awlaki is generally regarded as the most effective recruiter of Jihadist terrorists the west has ever seen.

Awlaki, a United States citizen born in New Mexico, was responsible for radicalizing and recruiting the Fort Hood shooter, Nadal Malik Hasan, the 2009 Christmas Day “underwear bomber,” Umar Farook Abdulmutallab and preached to three of the 9/11 hijackers at his Mosque in Falls Church, Virginia and was a spiritual advisor to another at his Mosque in San Diego. He is believed to have been the inspirational leader for numerous other terrorist plots in Britain, Canada and the United States.

In 2010 Awlaki was placed on a list of terrorists targeted for killing by the Obama Administration.

Awlaki’s father sued the Administration and sought an injunction preventing them from carrying out the killing on the ground that it denied Awlaki his right to “due process of law.”

The lawsuit was dismissed by the United States District Court Judge because Awlaki’s father lacked standing to contest the Obama Administration decision.

On September 30, 2011, Awlaki was killed by a drone missile. Samir Khan, another American and the Editor of Al-Qaeda’s English language web magazine was killed with him.

Since the mass murder at the Pulse night club in Orland, Florida, the Congress has refused to enact any gun control measures including prohibiting the sale of guns to people on the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE) commonly known as the “watch” list.

The ostensible reason for opposing this measure is that it could deprive citizens of their Second Amendment right to purchase a firearm without “due process of law.”

Never mind that someone on the “No Fly List,” a subset of the TIDE List, can’t get on an airplane.

It is hard to see how prohibiting the purchase of a firearm by those on the lists is a significant burden or deprivation outweighing public safety when only 15,000 of the 1.5 million people on the TIDE List are Americans and only 1,000 of the 81,000 people on the No Fly List are U.S. Citizens.

Republican Senator John Cornyn of Texas offered a tepid solution, proposing that if the Justice Department was notified that someone on either list was trying to purchase a weapon, it would have 72 hours to go to court and try and block the sale. How that could be accomplished in 72 hours, especially if a weekend were involved is, at best, puzzling.

This too was opposed by the National Rifle Association and rejected by the United States Senate.

Frankly, if I were on either list, my priority would be trying to get off the list rather than buying a gun but that apparently hasn’t occurred to the Congress or the NRA which staunchly defends this position.

It’s heartening to know that if Anwar Al-Awlaki hadn’t been killed by a drone, the Republican led Congress and the NRA would protect his right to purchase a firearm, indeed, even an assault rifle where purchases are legal.

I can’t think of any reason why he shouldn’t be able to purchase one.

Can you?

Last weekend a gunman entered a night club with an assault rifle in Orlando, Florida and killed 49 people and injured 54 more.

On December 2, 2015 a couple in San Bernardino, California killed 14 people and injured 70 others with an assault weapon.

On July 16, 2015 a gunman in Chattanooga, Tennessee killed five people and injured 3 with an AK 47 assault rifle.

On July 20, 2012 a gunman entered a movie theatre in Aurora, Colorado with an assault rifle and killed 12 people and injured 47.

On December 14, 2012 a gunman entered an elementary school in Sandy Hook, Connecticut and killed 20 children who were 5 or 7 years old and 6 adults with an assault rifle.

On January 8, 2011 Jared Loughery killed six people and injured 11 including Congresswoman Gabrielle Gifford.

On November 5, 2009 a gunman at Ford Hood, Texas killed 12 people and wounded 30 more with a semi-automatic pistol. In the few weeks before the shooting he bought 3,000 rounds of ammunition.

After the murder of the children in Sandy Hook, Wayne LA Pierre of the NRA offered this pithy comment; “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”

So, I have a question. Where was the “good guy with a gun” to stop the murders in all of these shootings? It certainly wasn’t Wayne LA Pierre who is paid almost a million dollars a year and provided his own private security so that he can shill for the gun manufacturers. The same Wayne LA Pierre who criticized the President for providing Secret Service protection for his daughters.

In 1994 the Public Safety and Recreational Use Protection Act was enacted which made it unlawful to manufacture for civilian use semi-automatic assault weapons and large capacity magazines. Regrettably, it had a ten year sunset provision and it expired in 2004. In the wake of the Sandy Hook murder of children, Wayne LA Pierre and the NRA renewed its vigorous opposition to renewing the ban on civilian use of assault weapons and large magazines. This speaks volumes about the NRA’s priorities and its allegiance to the gun manufacturers rather than the safety of the public.

Both Jared Loughery of the Tucson shooting and Adam Lanza the Sandy Hook Elementary School killer had history of mental illness. James Holmes, the Aurora, Colorado shooter pled not guilty by reason of insanity. Yet, Wayne LA Pierre and the NRA also oppose expanded background checks.

Last year, as I was leaving my position as a County Court Judge who had presided over thousands of criminal cases, I wrote an op-ed piece setting forth what I believed were some common sense proposals involving gun regulations. It produced an outpouring of vitriol from commenters whose courage in expressing their opinions was enhanced by their anonymity. Nevertheless, I will propose them again.

No one needs to own an assault rifle or high capacity magazines.

No one needs to have access to “cop-killer” bullets.

This is an election year. We will elect a new President, one –third of the Senate and the whole House of Representatives will also stand for election. If we are going to have some sanity restored to the use and possession of firearms it will have to come at the ballot box.

Yesterday, the President, commenting on this particular subject observed that “We have to decide if that is the kind of country we want to be. To actively do nothing is a decision as well.”

Richard Nixon campaigned on the slogan “This year vote like your whole world depended on it.” That is something to think about too because the way these events keep occurring, it could.

We met in 1984. I was thirty-five and Steve was twenty-eight. My cousin, Jack McAuliffe introduced us. I had been practicing law and my friend, Larry Kirwan, who would become the New York State Democratic party Chairman, had talked me into running Walter Mondale’s Presidential campaign in Central New York.

Steve was a native Syracusan, coming from a large family that lived in the Winkworth section of the City. He had graduated from Bishop Ludden High School, the University of Rochester and Syracuse University College of Law. He had been admitted to practice in New York and Florida where he’d spent a few years practicing law and involved in several statewide Democratic political campaigns. On election night 1984, Steve, Larry Hackett and I stood on the deck in the face of Mondale’s Titanic loss to Ronald Reagan and went down with the ship.

Out of that experience the three of us had formed a deep friendship. They would be with me throughout my two campaigns for Syracuse Board of Education, my unsuccessful 1993 Democratic Primary campaign for Mayor of Syracuse and my two campaigns for Onondaga County Court Judge. They were largely responsible for the successes and I was responsible for our one defeat.

During the 1980’s and 90’s we tried some criminal cases together. I learned that he had great courtroom poise and skills. He managed to be positive and upbeat no matter how dark the facts of the cases we were presented with and, indeed, some were pretty dark. He brought that same calm equanimity to all of his clients as his practice evolved into other areas and they confronted other kinds of life decisions such as buying homes, getting divorced and other kinds of life crisis.

Between campaigns we had a lot of fun. We spent a lot of time at my summer place on Wellesley Island and on Steve’s boat in Alexandria Bay. Nobody liked to have fun or was more fun to be with than Steve Snyder.

He was extraordinarily generous, providing whatever was needed to those who sought his help and never asked anything in return. If someone wronged or disappointed him, he was quick to forgive and forget without holding a grudge.

Women of all ages fell in love with him. When my two daughters were children, he showed up on Wellesley Island one summer day with his puppy “Wags” and asked them to play with the dog while we went off somewhere, a memory they carried with them this past week. When the romance ended in his various relationships he always remained close, loving and supportive of the other.

I don’t mean to suggest that he was perfect.

He wasn’t.

None of us are.

He was, however, one of the most good and decent people that God ever made.

As I learned of his passing I was reminded of a verse by the poet Sam Walter Foss;
“Let me live in a house by the side of the road
Where the race of men go by-
The men who are good and the men who are bad
As good and as bad as I
I would not sit in the scorner’s seat
Nor hurl the cynic’s ban-
Let me live in a house by the side of the road
And be a friend to man.”

That is the way he lived for an all too brief time.

We were blessed to know him and are much poorer for his passing.

Donald Trump and Immigrants.

He’s obsessed with them.

He’s going to build a wall across the southern border to keep Mexicans out because they are “criminals and rapists.” He’s going to ban all Muslims from entering the country. He’s going to deport eleven million undocumented aliens.

He led the “Birther” movement that wouldn’t rest until the President of the United States released his birth certificate proving that he was born in the United States. Of course, some of his followers believe it is a forgery. Some of them just can’t be convinced.

It’s no wonder that he has the support of Klan leader, David Duke, and the endorsement of the Sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, Joe Arpaio, who has been repeatedly held in contempt of court for illegally stopping and detaining Latino people whom he suspects might be illegally in the country based solely on the fact that they are Latinos.

It now appears that the Mexicans are responsible for more of his legal woes.

Trump’s scam called Trump University has been on the losing end of a series of court rulings in a case pending in in the United States District Court in San Diego, California in which it is a defendant. In his view the reason that he is losing in court, isn’t because his business is a scam, it is because the judge presiding over the case, Hon. Gonzalo Curiel, is Mexican.

Never mind that the Judge was born in Indiana. Who knows? That birth certificate could be a forgery too.

Never mind that the judge was a federal prosecutor who was on the Kill List of a Mexican drug cartel. He must be biased against Trump because he is a Mexican….even if he’s not.

This morning, he expanded the class of judges who couldn’t be fair to him to include Muslim judges too.

Trump, however, isn’t biased against all immigrants. He has been married to two. His first wife, Ivana, was born in the Czech Republic when it was still part of the Soviet bloc. His current wife, Melania, was born in Slovenia when it was part of Yugoslavia. This may explain Trump’s apparent crush on Vladimer Putin.

One would expect that being an immigrant herself, Melania Trump would have some sensitivity about where people were born. No so. In a recent interview with New Yorker Magazine, Mrs. Trump’s appearance on the Joy Behar Show in 2011 was recounted in which defended her husband’s ridiculous “Birther” campaign against the President and insisted that the President’s birth certificate was not real.

After observing and participating in politics for most of my life, I have one unwavering belief.

It is that there is nothing more entertaining in the political world than a 24 carat hypocrite.