A Bitter Farewell to Our Freedoms
Headlines today announced that a New York businessman and satellite television service provider has been arrested for offering the Hezbollah TV station al-Manar
(source).
I'll repeat: an American has been arrested for re-broadcasting a foreign news station.
Officials have attempted to justify the arrest by referring to al-Manar's recent designation as a "terrorist entity". However, the law under which he is being charged has an exemption for news broadcasts
(source).
This is an egregious violation of the protections of the First Amendment and yet another symptom of our current government's disregard for the law of the land.
______________UPDATE_________________
More recent reports have explained that the man, Iqbal, is being held on charges relating not directly to his re-broadcasting, but rather to the fact that he paid Al-Manar for the rights to the broadcasts. That, I will fully agree, is providing material support for terrorists and should be punished.
However, the civil rights issue raised is a valid one, made even more poignant by a story today about a
man in New York who was prevented from boarding a flight to California because he was wearing a t-shirt with Arabic writing on it. The t-shirt said (in both Arabic and English) "We Will Not be Silent". He was kept from boarding the plane until he agreed to change the shirt for one that gate security procured for him.
