Flaying the Judge

Andrew McCarthy excoriates Fox senior judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano who opined in a NY times op-ed about the injustice of the Lynne Stewart conviction. Some snippets:

As Napolitano puts it:

Just after 9/11, Attorney General John Ashcroft gave himself the power to bypass the lawyer-client privilege, which every court in the United States has upheld, and eavesdrop on conversations between prisoners and their lawyers if he had reason to believe they were being used to "further facilitate acts of violence or terrorism." The regulation became effective immediately.

Of course, had Napolitano taken the few minutes necessary to read the indictment (which is freely available online), he might have learned that all of the conversations and actions that resulted in Stewart's conviction took place about two years or more before the post-9/11 regulation (which the, er, Judge, in any event, mischaracterizes). That is: before George W. Bush was president, before John Ashcroft was attorney general, and before 9/11 ever happened. This investigation was very ably conducted by, and took place under the auspices of incontestably proper regulations imposed by, the Clinton Justice Department.

And it gets worse. Click the link to read it all.