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| Chapman: AIG and our embarrassing Congress |
| 2009-03-23 |
| Congress is outraged. Really, really outraged. Unbelievably, incredibly outraged. And there are certainly grounds for anger. Not at the insurance company American International Group, which paid bonuses that are seen as intolerable, but at Congress, which blithely declined to prohibit them but is now shocked to find AIG doing what it was allowed to do. The Democrats who control Capitol Hill want revenge, as do many Republicans. So the House voted 328-93 to impose a 90 percent tax on the payments. In doing so, members resolutely avoided a couple of inconvenient realities. The first is that the fault, if any, lies with the same people who are now angry. The second is that the tax conflicts with the clear intent of the Constitution. The pending fees were not exactly classified information. "AIG's plans to pay hundreds of millions of dollars were publicized last fall, when Congress started asking questions about expensive junkets the company had sponsored," reports The Associated Press. "A November SEC [Securities and Exchange Commission] filing by the company details $469 million in 'retention payments' to keep prized employees." In January, two House members urged the Federal Reserve and the Treasury to block such bonuses. Last month, the Senate passed an amendment outlawing such payments by companies getting federal bailout fundsand then dropped it. The White House was also in the loop. Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) says that the administration asked him to attach a provision to the stimulus bill that authorized such bonuses. Dodd protests that he only agreed because he didn't understand what the measure would do. Maybe other people who voted for it in the Senate and House didn't either. Maybe Dodd and the rest ought to read legislation before they approve it. But if members had any pangs of remorse for their failure, they stifled them in favor of vilifying AIG and its personnel. House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) demanded the names of employees who "had to be bribed not to abandon the company." Rep. Michael Capuano (D-Mass.) urged that they be fired. Until these staffers can be publicly tarred and feathered, though, the House will settle for subjecting their bonuses to a 90 percent tax levyup from the normal maximum rate of 35 percent. Why not 100 percent? "State and local governments will take the extra 10 percent," said Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.). So the bill aims at sanctioning supposedly bad people by confiscating their earnings. As such, it sounds an awful lot like something the Constitution expressly forbidsa bill of attainder, which is a punishment of particular individuals imposed not by a court of law but by a legislative body. Many if not most legal scholars believe this furious retribution can be structured to pass judicial review. But not Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor. "I am not so confident that it would pass constitutional muster," he told me. "While courts give Congress great discretion in the tax area, this would require a case of willful blindness." Turley speaks with special authority on the subject because of a rare achievement: In 2003, he persuaded a federal appeals court that a law passed by Congress was a bill of attainder. That statute revoked a divorced father's visitation rights because his ex-wife claimed he had molested his daughtera charge that courts repeatedly rejected. But it was overturned because the court found the measure, though it didn't name him, was designed to place a severe burden on a specific person deemed to have done something terrible. Ditto for this legislation. It's aimed at AIG employees who accepted payments guaranteed them by a legal contract, and it's intended to inflict pain to express disapproval of their conduct. Rangel, in fact, had earlier opposed the tax because it would be "punitive." But after voting for it, he explained that "we had very few weapons" to use against the recipients. Taxation as a weaponif that's not punitive, what is? To uphold the tax, says Turley, "the courts would have to ignore the open statements of members of Congress. They have done everything short of burning the AIG executives in effigy on the House floor." Maybe the people in Congress are smart enough to figure out a way to sneak this act of targeted revenge past the courts. Maybe, in other words, they have more brains than scruples. But so far, they haven't shown much of either. |
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| Home Front: WoT |
| Terrorism Case Puts Words of Muslim Leader On Trial in Va. |
| 2005-04-05 |
| Islamic spiritual leader Ali Al-Timimi's pen is mightier than his sword, prosecutors contend. It's not so much his actions but his words that make him so dangerous, they say. Less than a week after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Timimi told a group of Northern Virginia Muslims that it should train for violent jihad abroad and wage war on the United States, prosecutors say. In 2003, he celebrated the crash of the space shuttle Columbia in a message that prosecutors say reflected his view that the United States itself should be destroyed._ The government says the statements of Timimi -- who goes on trial today in U.S. District Court in Alexandria -- constitute nothing short of treason. But some Muslims, who are rallying to Timimi's side through a Web site and other expressions of support, see a respected religious leader being prosecuted for his words. "He is not accused of anything except talking. It's all about him saying something," said Shaker Elsayed, a member of the executive committee of Dar Al Hijrah mosque in Falls Church. "If this isn't a First Amendment issue, I don't know what is." Although legal experts are as divided on the case as the two sides are, some said that the case reflects the power of words in the post-Sept. 11 climate -- and that it poses an important test of the free-speech rights Americans have come to expect since the First Amendment to the Constitution was ratified in 1791. "This is a troubling case with very significant First Amendment concerns," said Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor with experience in national security cases. If Timimi "encouraged people to go kill Americans, it comes very close to the criminal line, if not passing over it," Turley said. But historically, he said, "Courts have been uneasy with a criminal allegation based solely on words alone." Victoria Toensing, a Washington lawyer who created the Justice Department's terrorism unit during the Reagan administration, said Timimi's words could send him to prison. "If he said, 'I want you to go join the movement in Afghanistan and here is where you get the training,' that's no different from saying, 'Go join a murder club,' " Toensing said. Whether Timimi will go to prison probably will depend on whether he expected his listeners to act on what he told them, legal experts said. Although free-speech rights have been interpreted differently in different eras, the current standard derives from the 1969 U.S. Supreme Court opinion Brandenburg v. Ohio, they said. That opinion says the government cannot forbid "advocacy of the use of force" unless that advocacy is intended or likely to produce "imminent lawless action.'' "The key," said Rebecca Glenberg, legal director for the ACLU of Virginia, "is whether Timimi's speech was likely to cause others to act and whether he intended it to cause them to act.'' Timimi is charged with 10 counts, which include attempting to contribute services to the Taliban and soliciting or inducing others to commit a variety of crimes, such as conspiring to levy war on the United States, using firearms and carrying explosives. One charge involving war is drawn from a section of federal law headed "treason.'' If convicted on all counts, Timimi, 41, of Fairfax County, would face up to life in prison. Jury selection began last Monday, and opening statements are scheduled for today. The trial, before U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema, is expected to last as long as three weeks. |
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