Tonight I was listening to Fresh Air, and as Terry Gross interviewed James Thurber about the possibilities of congressional reform on lobbying, he reaffirmed that lobbying was part of our political rights. He went on to say that it is legal for anyone to organize to represent any interest in the United States, as long as he or she wasn't lobbying for "al Qaeda, the Communist Party, or Hamas."
"You can organize around anything in America as long as it's not a terrorist organization like al Qaeda or the Communist Party or Hamas..."
Based on the context, it sounded like he implied that lobbying for the Communist party is illegal. Maybe he just meant "it's looked down upon," but when he said "a terrorist organization like al Qaeda or the Communist Party," that was a fairly clear statement of comparison.
Seriously, though, I'm wondering about the legality issue. Because when I do a web search for "can terrorists have lobbyists al qaeda united states" all I get is Juan Cole on jack Abramoff.
Posted by binky at March 8, 2006 09:49 PM | TrackBack | Posted to LibertyOK, this is MUCH more Moon's territory than mine, but I'll throw out a couple of thoughts.
1) Maybe this is an example of asking old white guys who think they know a lot about everything a question - and old white guy responding b/c at some point in high school or something he heard about the Dennis decision.
2) Maybe he's just wording things poorly - certainly happens to us all at times.
3) Of course you can be a member of the Communist Party (Yates v. United States), and tied to that I presume you can lobby on its behalf. HOWEVER - can you explicitly lobby for terrorist actions, even if they are condoned by your party? I imagine there are laws on the books saying you can't. As to whether the Supremes have ever considered 'em, I don't know. Though even if they have, what would the Roberts Court think about such things?
Care to help us out Moon?
Posted by: Armand at March 9, 2006 09:25 AM | PERMALINKoh goodness beyond general principles i think this has me out of my depth, not to mention i'm fairly week on lobbying law.
my general thought is that this is a boneheaded statement reflecting a revanchist ideological orientation that he would retract or qualify were anyone to care enough to call him on it in a public forum.
first, any political party, or subparty, or really any individual with the money or access (too often synonymous) ought to be able to lobby any legislator he wants. effectiveness will vary based on the viewpoint advanced, the legislator approached, and the degree of pull the lobbyist has with the legislator or people close to him or her.
that said, it would be at the very least imprudent, and quite possibly illegal, to advocate any action commonly understood as terrorist to a legislator. it would also be pointless; at least with respect to violent crime, most legislators are the wrong people before whom to advance such an agenda even if one might legally do so (and in that sense the whole issue is sort of moot).
but insofar as a given organization has a legitimate political wing (e.g., sinn fein), one would think it would be fine to lobby on behalf of its interests and positions.
all of that said, i imagine lobbying can be restricted by regulation (though i'm not entirely sure who would administer such regulations unless it is congress itself). it shouldn't be permissible to discriminate strictly based on viewpoint, so only content-neutral regulations will fly. thus, i would think, any regulation endeavoring to bar communist sympathizers from lobbying congress would not pass constitutional muster because there is an established non-violent tradition within that ideology (indeed, one could probably argue colorably that it's less violent than our own; bolshevism itself seems to me pretty much dead, at least as a goal of american communists, and so much of the violence in, e.g., latin america that tends to get trucked out was at least partly a consequence of our own meddling). whether the same would be true of hamas is a closer call, and it's pretty obvious that the same is not true of al qaeda.
because there is a compelling state interest in denying substantial legislative access to fundamentally violent organizations, any ban of lobbying on behalf of the organizations would probably survive constitutional scrutiny.
(also, where such a ban applied to a foreign organization, it's likely the Court would decline to rule on a challenge, since that would probably be construed as a diplomatic matter of state and thus not properly the province of the Court.)
none of which speaks to whether any organization is presently banned from lobbying by regulation or law; about that i have no idea.
Posted by: moon at March 9, 2006 10:23 AM | PERMALINK