The Far-Left “Civil Rights Group” Suing Over NSA Spying

     Friday’s off-lead comes from the NSA spy scoop tag-team of James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, “Legal Rationale By Justice Dept. On Spying Report,” on the Bush administration’s defense of surveillance of suspected terrorists without prior court approval.

     Right from the start, the Times continues to insist on misleadingly referring to the surveillance of communication between people in the United States and Al Qaeda suspects outside the U.S. as a “domestic surveillance program,” as if the phone calls of the average citizen are at risk of being tapped by the NSA.

     At the end they write, “Two leading civil rights groups brought lawsuits this week aimed at ending the N.S.A. program, and several lawyers representing defendants in terrorism cases are also seeking to challenge the program on the grounds that it may have been improperly used in criminal prosecutions.”

     The two groups are the ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights.

     Lichtblau used the same description (“civil rights groups”) on Tuesday, opening a story on the groups behind the lawsuit: “Two leading civil rights groups plan to file lawsuits Tuesday against the Bush administration over its domestic spying program to determine whether the operation was used to monitor 10 defense lawyers, journalists, scholars, political activists and other Americans with ties to the Middle East.”

     But MRC’s Brent Baker discovered the CCR is hardly a nonpolitical “civil rights group,” but has its roots as a far-left organization: “The network reporters avoided labeling the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), which was founded by the radical-left William Kunstler, and whose president, Michael Ratner, declared last month: ‘Every American should be in political rebellion against the criminals now running this country.’”

     FrontPage Magazine has more in an article from John Perazzo, who also quotes an earlier Ratner comment: "If the US government truly wants its people to be safer and wants terrorist threats to diminish, it must make fundamental changes in its foreign policies...particularly its unqualified support for Israel, and its embargo of Iraq, its bombing of Afghanistan, and its actions in Saudi Arabia. [These] continue to anger people throughout the region, and to fertilize the ground where terrorists of the future will take root."

For more of Risen and Lichtblau’s latest spy-related story, click here.

Bomber “Also Blew a Large Hole in his Circle of Family and Friends"

     Israel-based Steven Erlanger gets page 3 play Friday for his interview with the family of a Palestinian suicide bomber in Nablus (“Into the West Bank Abyss: From Student to Suicide Bomber”).

     Erlanger explains: “Sami Antar, 21, in his second year of physical education studies at An Najah University here, left the apartment at 8 a.m. Thursday. In the afternoon, he blew himself up on behalf of the militant group Islamic Jihad in Tel Aviv, in a zone of shops and restaurants, but killed only himself. About 20 Israelis, ordinary people going about their daily business, were wounded, one of them seriously.”

     Next comes Erlanger’s entry for bad metaphor of the year: “Sami Antar also blew a large hole in his circle of family and friends, who did not see this coming.” Yes, they are kind of the same thing, aren’t they?

     The pro-Palestinian Erlanger dwells on the family’s plight: “Sami's brother Samer came out, his eyes red, to tell journalists that the family would not speak of what had happened, and said, ‘This is an honor, not just to the family of Antar, but to the whole neighborhood.’ Israel, the West and the Palestinian Authority will condemn Sami Antar's act as terrorism, the effort to kill innocent civilians. His neighbors and family call it a tragedy, but also resistance, struggle and martyrdom. The abyss here is as steep as the hills above Nablus.”

     There are no comments or perspective from the Israeli victims of the blast.

For more of Erlanger with the family of a suicide bomber, click here.