The law can handle terrorists

By GottaLaff

Dear Republicans:

One of the most inexplicable things about the Bush/Cheney clique's utter disregard of those values was that we have our own examples of the legal system's competency to deal with jihadi criminality right here in the United States. Since 1996, another jihadi preacher, the "blind sheik," Omar Abdel Rahman, has been serving a life sentence after he and nine of his associates were convicted of seditious conspiracy for plotting attacks in New York and for their role in the first World Trade Center bombing. The mastermind of that attack, Ramzi Ahmed Yousef -- who happens to be Khalid Shaikh Mohammed's nephew -- was arrested in Pakistan, extradited to New York and sentenced in 1998 to life in prison without parole. (According to some media reports, he's since converted to Christianity.)

Our federal legal system was up to dealing with those conspirators and criminals, as it's up to dealing with Al Qaeda now. When the Bush/Cheney people panicked and forgot that, they granted the jihadis an outsized malevolence, turning them into Islamist superheroes. One of the great things about the bar of justice is that when all are made to stand honestly before it, everyone is cut down to size.

Yours very sincerely,

Tim Rutten (and GottaLaff)