The New York Times Supports Constitutional Rights for Terrorists, but not for Conservatives

Normally, this blog will deal with factual distortions at the NYT. That is, our main concerns are the times when the NYT alters reality in order to support its political bias.

However, two recent articles in the NYT is so galling that I am making an exception.

An article in the June 12 NYT was originally entitled "Out of Step with Allies, US Defends Freedom to Offend." So they were saying that the First Amendment makes us "out of step"?

Apparently this was too much even for the NYT, as the online version of the article is now entitled "Unlike Others, U.S. Defends Freedom to Offend in Speech".

In paragraph 7 of the article, we learn what draws the NYT's ire:

Under the First Amendment, newspapers and magazines can say what they like about minorities and religions — even false, provocative or hateful things — without legal consequence.

The Times then goes on to discuss Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan -- Mark Steyn.

To be sure, the article for which Steyn is on trial in Canada is provocative stuff, and some will find it hateful. But what about the Times' own article? Might Steyn find it to be provocative and hateful to be one of three major examples in an article, when the other two are Nazis and the KKK? Should the Times be prosecuted for doing such a thing?

And what about the Times' false, provocative, and hateful coverage of the Duke Lacrosse Case? Or the Times' false and provocative assertion that Saddam was not training terrorists? Should they be prosecuted for that?

Or is provocative speech unacceptable only when it is directed at minorities? Leaving Duke Lacrosse players, Mark Steyn, and George W. Bush [the implicit target of the Saddam assertion] all as fair game?

While the Times does quote from both sides of the dispute, it is clear enough that they want the reader to be on the side of regulation -- why else would they pick, as their other two examples, the KKK and the Nazis?

To go along with its assault on the First Amendment, the Times has an editorial celebrating the extension of habeus corpus rights to Guantanamo detainees, up to and including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. This Supreme Court did this in the Boumediene case, by a 5-4 vote, on purely Constitutional grounds, as Congress had passed, and President Bush had signed, a law explicitly denying that right.

As far as legal precedent is concerned, during all of the nation's past wars, the military has had the power to keep POWs locked up until the conflict was over. The present conflict is different from others, both in terms of the nature of the enemy, and in the conflict's likely duration. But does that justify forcing the military to fight at a tremendous disadvantage?

To make matters perfectly clear, here is a passage from Justice Scalia's dissent, describing the activities of certain released Guantanamo detainees:

In one case, a detainee released from Guantanamo Bay masterminded the kidnapping of two Chinese dam workers, one of whom was later shot to death when used as a human shield against Pakistani commandoes. See Khan & Lancaster, Pakistanis Rescue Hostage; 2nd Dies, Washington Post, Oct. 15, 2004, p. A18. Another former detainee promptly resumed his post as a senior Taliban commander and murdered a United Nations engineer and three Afghan soldiers. Mintz, supra. Still another murdered an Afghan judge. See Minority Report 13. It was reported only last month that a released detainee carried out a suicide bombing against Iraqi soldiers in Mosul, Iraq. See White, Ex-Guantanamo Detainee Joined Iraq Suicide Attack, Washington Post, May 8, 2008, p. A18.

These are the people whom the Court gave habeus rights in its decision. And the NYT lauds that. Meanwhile, it publishes a news article which is thinly disguised criticism of Mark Steyn's First Amendment protection. Go figure.

Hat tip: CounterColumn