Is it treason for American lawyers to represent accused al Qaida terrorists in court? In the world of Liz Cheney, it sure is, said Brad Knickerbocker in The Christian Science Monitor Online. The 43-year-old daughter of the former vice president has been “hammering away” at lawyers who represented Guantánamo detainees before joining the Obama administration’s Justice Department. In a Web ad launched by Cheney’s national security group, Keep America Safe, “creepy background music” accompanies silhouettes of the “al Qaida Seven,” alongside a photo of Osama bin Laden. The implication couldn’t be clearer: The lawyers (there are actually nine of them) at Obama’s “Department of Jihad” are terrorist sympathizers who should be exposed and driven out of the government.
Perhaps they should be, said William Kristol, a board member of Cheney’s Keep America Safe, in TheWeeklyStandard.com. But we won’t know until the Obama administration explains what exactly these people are doing in the Justice Department. It’s certainly legitimate to question whether “former pro bono lawyers for terrorists should be working on detainee policy.” The key term is pro bono, said Byron York in the WashingtonExaminer.com. Those lawyers volunteered “to represent people who are making war on the United States.” Mafia dons have a right to counsel, too. But that doesn’t mean the Justice Department should hire them “to staff the department’s organized-crime section.”
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