Do you think they’d be prosecuting them without Bush’s approval? I know how the DOJ works…[/quote]
Yes, I absolutely do. I know some - more than I really want to, actually, but since so many here object to “anecdotal” comments I won’t go iinto it - about the DOJ and how it works. Nobody called Bush up and asked if he wanted to do this, IMO.
While Greenpeace is composed of some real looneys, and they hurt their credibility with a lot of their inaccurate statements, I actually support some of the underlying causes - you can harvest lumbar in a responsible manner, but from what I’ve read some companies really are doing some disasterous deeds in countries in which there are no regulations to stop them. But if you’re going to do things like board ships illegally, you have to bear the consequences - in this case, perhaps a $10,000 fine.
That doesn’t mean he isn’t to be held accountable for it. He’s appointed these people, and not only that, he controls them. They report to him. If he didn’t know about it happening, he’s just as accountable as if he gave the order, since he is letting it go forward. If he still doesn’t know about it, well then his head is up his ass. It’s his responsibility as a leader to keep himself informed.
This isn’t some run of the mill kidnapping across state lines case, this is an attempt by his underlings to subvert an archaic law to go after an entire organization with diametric views to Bush policy. Whether he told them to do it or it’s just the sort of culture he’s fostered as a leader, it’s his responsibility. That’s the job.
Given that Greenpeace is not a law enforcement agency, I think the best way would be to notify authorities that would be in a position to board the vessel and prosecute the offenders. I mean, there’s no Whitepeace organization that boards ships smuggling in cocaine, is there?
The illegality of the boarding is part of the risk of being an activist. The protestors are free to fight the charges in court, but Martin Luther King didn’t wuss out of a jail sentence. If the publicization of illegal logging requires a few Greenpeace people to risk jail or fines, then they have to get their priorities straight and decide if the sacrifice is worth the cause.
Whatever happened to protestors being happy to get arrested?
I’m not objecting to individual prosecutions of Greenpeace activists; getting nailed for trespassing or whatever is their risk.
What I’m objecting to is them using this bizarre, 100 year old charge to try to go after the parent organization. Remember all those lawsuits against the NAACP back in the 1960s trying to shut them down?
The point of Greenpeace boarding the ship themselves is that the cops aren’t enforcing the law.
And I’ve got to wonder why so many people think they’ll be popular support for this. The number of Americans who call themselves environmentalists is like 75%.
I have to agree with Matthew. I think it’s exceedingly unlikely that Bush had any knowledge or was consulted about these prosecutions. I’m not even sure that Ashcroft was. But even assuming none of those people gave orders or even knew what was going on, they’re still accountable. Bush (and particularly his appointee, Ashcroft) has definitely set a tone in the DOJ: we’re going after everyone we don’t like, we’re going after them hard, we’re going after them a little dirty if that’s what we have to do. They’ve been moving in new folks to run the criminal sections in the local offices (LA got a new Chief of Criminal last year, for example), and the marching orders make their way down to the supervisors and the line prosecutors. There’s a new sherriff in town, and his guns are usually smokin’.
That all makes sense, Ryan. It’s frustrating because I can’t be sure what sailor mongering is. Unlike your example of drivers license laws, here is a law that rarely sees the light of day. There ought to be a way to say this particualar use of the law is not what the people who wrote the law intended. I suppose the intent of the people who write the laws only comes into play when it’s something like Constitutional law?
It comes into play whenever a law is ambiguous on its face. That’s often the case with Constitutional law, because the Constitution was (deliberately) written in a vague, sweeping way. But if a law has a plain meaning when you read it, the courts will not get into the legislature’s intent when interpreting it. They will just enforce the law as written (as long as it’s constitutional), and the legislature can amend the law if it isn’t working out the way they intended (which happens–not all the time, but often enough that it’s not big news when it does).
Edit: As to your other point, though, there may or may not be a way to get at Congress’ intent when they passed the law. Nowadays, and for all modern history, Congress keeps detailed records of what is said during debates, and all the changes and amendments that are made to a law before it gets passed. Usually the person introducing a law will also write something about what the law is intended to do and so on. They do all that precisely so that, if the courts unexpectedly find some term in the law ambiguous, there’s a record they can go to that will help them interpret it (example: if the law said “unlawful to board a ship close to its destination,” which Congress thought was clear, but then the courts start going, “Well, what does close mean? A hundred feet? A hundred miles? Ten percent of the total distance the ship traveled?”). I don’t know whether anything like that exists for a law passed in the 19th century, though. And again, courts would not go to it unless there was something in the text of the law that was ambiguous.
When an organization actively promotes illegal activities it is not uncommon for the organization to be charged. I hardly think a $10,000 fine is going to shut down Greenpeace. In fact, they’re probably pleased as punch that this is happening - they’re getting a lot more publicity than they would if a few of their members had simply spent the weekend in jail for illegally boarding the ship.
