Judge Sweet,How Crazy Are You ?

Judge Sweet, how crazy are you?
New York Daily News ^| July 20, 2004

The federal judge who barred the New York Police Department from peeking into the bags of demonstrators outside and around the Republican convention next month deserves one response - and it's the only sane response in this era of suicide bombings and worse: defiance. Mayor Bloomberg, Commissioner Ray Kelly, please, go ahead and open every backpack, pocketbook and picnic cooler that gets within shrapnel distance of a crowd when the GOP comes to town in late August. Do what you must to protect the public safety regardless of Judge Robert Sweet's cavalier and dangerous edict.

Sweet is plainly nuts. U.S. intelligence is warning that Al Qaeda is hellbent on disrupting the presidential election. New York City and Boston, where the Democrats will gather next week, are on high alert. The cops are planning to turn a huge area around Madison Square Garden into a frozen zone while searching every train that approaches Penn Station. And what is Sweet worried about? Not about bloodshed. No, he's concerned instead that a few picketers might be discomfited by having to show they're not carrying explosive devices packed with nails.

On second thought, "nuts" is an understatement. Sweet works in a courthouse where visitors are gone over with a fine-tooth comb, and security officers guard him and every other judge. Yet, somehow, he fails to grasp the lessons of 9/11, or to understand how radically the world changed that day. So, blissfully secure himself, he told the cops yesterday that inspecting packages the way they're checked everywhere these days is forbidden at street protests.

The ruling was received gleefully by the New York Civil Liberties Union, which insisted on perilously handcuffing the cops before the convention. Sweet also granted two lesser points to the NYCLU that are of no concern. They boil down to directing police to make it as easy as possible for demonstrators to get in and out of protest sites, which everyone agrees is a good idea, the NYPD included.

In asking Sweet to bar bag searches, the NYCLU relied on the longstanding legal proposition that cops may search an individual only if there's reasonable suspicion that person is up to no good. Which makes no sense when terrorists are determined to wreak havoc by blending into a crowd. Perhaps recognizing the insanity of such a position, Sweet ruled the cops could search bags at a protest if they had information indicating that an attack could happen there. Which is only slightly less insane, because it requires the police to have a good idea that a bomb likely will go off at a particular place and time.

In the real world, what the NYPD - and everyone in the city - knows is that an attack can come anytime and anyplace. And that's why Bloomberg and Kelly must tell Sweet to shove it.

Iraq's new strongman

Though more enlightened now than it was in the bad old days, Iraq is not likely to soon become a shining beacon of "democracy" as America understands the word, and it can be anticipated that Prime Minister Iyad Allawi - certified tough customer and certainly no girlie man - is going to do things his way in a land whose people are accultured to expecting a stern master. Well, they've got one.

We don't know if the reports now circulating that Allawi personally shot six terrorists dead in a Baghdad police station are true or not. We don't know whether he actually chopped off one guy's hand with an ax. Apparently, there may be some reason to suspect that Allawi might have planted these bloodcurdling tales himself purely to shore up his no-nonsense image. Well, fine. He understands public relations, anyway. Which can't hurt a bit when one is dealing with the murderous likes of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

If al-Zarqawi's bad guys have put a price on Allawi's head, that would attest to some nervousness on their part that he is going to, in his own word, "annihilate" them. Meanwhile, he's giving everyday Iraqis less and less reason to doubt his political independence. He has reopened a newspaper that the Americans shut down. And he has informed his people that last weekend's blasting of a Fallujah terror stronghold was his own sovereign operation, not some runaway job pulled by trigger-happy multinational forces without his say-so. Such a declaration does himself as well as the multinationals a huge favor. He's the boss. He's the homegrown Iraqi running the show. Might we find in Allawi occasional touches of ruthlessness as time goes by? Could be. That's Iraq for you, after all. But everybody's better off doing business with this man than the last guy.

I don't know why they even bother with security at the Dim's convention..the terrorists ain't gonna attack their own party of choice.

I can see were the repos would be scared of being blown up. They live off fear, and have quite a few enemy's out there to feed that fear, that they have created for themselves. Demonrats have been creating enemy's also.

Toker