Two-thirds of Americans disagree with the Obama administration’s decision to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed in a civilian court rather than a military court, according to a new national poll.

But, you know what? All you folks who oppose Obama and Holder’s idea are raaaaacists. And mean. And hate our Constitution. Or something like that.

But six in 10 people questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Monday say that the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks should be tried in the United States, as the administration plans to do, rather than at a U.S. facility in another country.

I have to wonder how that would have changed had the question said Guantanamo Bay rather than at a U.S. facility in another country.

“The decision to bring Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in front of a civilian court is universally unpopular – even a majority of Democrats and liberals say that he should be tried by military authorities,” says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. “Despite that, most Americans say that he will get a fair trial in the U.S.”

So, in private, where the Obamazombies do not have to push their talking points, a majority think the Obama/Holder idea is dumb as a bag of rocks. Figures.

“Nearly eight in 10 favor the death penalty if that happens – including one in five who say they normally oppose the death penalty, but would support it in this case,” adds Holland.

Notice how Democrats tend to drop their beliefs in a heartbeat, depending on which way the wind blows?

Shockingly, the only left leaning site that seems to be sort of kind of covering this is TPM. No, wait, they are only pointing out the NY Gov. Paterson is against the plan. I’m waiting with bated breath for some of the bigger supports, who went down the insult people road when the plan was announced Friday morning, such as The Moderate Voice (snicker) and Alan Colmes, to post the survey.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove

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Conservatives and Liberals agree that Sonia Sotomayor hid her liberality while testifying before Congress about her views, and how those views will influence her decisions if she is confirmed for the U.S. Supreme Court. Ignoring Sotomayor’s La Raza membership, an extremist organization known as the “Latino answer to the KKK,” and many other controversial opinions, papers and speeches, some Conservatives will cast a vote for her. Liberals will all vote for her, but activists are grousing that she has let down the cause, abandoned her judicial capital, and betrayed minorities by donning her Conservative hat and keeping her cool. Conservatives and Liberals agree that the “real Sonia Sotomayor” has not yet stood up.

Sonia Sotomayor

Conservatives are flummoxed that the Sonia Sotomayor witnessing under oath, is a completely different Sonia Sotomayor known by her previous court rulings, her speeches and her mammoth pile of writings.

Liberals are flummoxed that this week’s testimony is not the Sonia they know and love,

…the same Sonia that will deny a White man his right to have a reverse discrimination case heard, the Sonia that holds membership in La Raza,

La Raza was condemned in 2007 by former U.S. Rep. Charles Norwood, R-Ga., as a radical “pro-illegal immigration lobbying organization that supports racist groups calling for the secession of the western United States as a Hispanic-only homeland.”

Norwood urged La Raza to renounce its support of the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan – which sees “the Race” as part of an ethnic group that one day will reclaim Aztlan, the mythical birthplace of the Aztecs. In Chicano folklore, Aztlan includes California, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico and parts of Colorado and Texas.

…the same Sonia that, speaking as a member of La Raza, said “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion as a judge than a white male who hasn’t lived that life,” and then repeated it another 6 times, the same Sonia that supports “the Latino answer to KKK,” :

Miguel Perez, a La Raza spokesman at Cal State-Northridge, has been quoted as saying: “The ultimate ideology is the liberation of Aztlan. Communism would be closest [to it]. Once Aztlan is established, ethnic cleansing would commence: Non-Chicanos would have to be expelled — opposition groups would be quashed because you have to keep power.”

…the same Sonia who has had 60% of her rulings overturned by the Supreme Court,

…the same Sonia who in January 2009 ruled that States do not have to abide by the Second Amendment. In other words, if a State decides that residents do not have the right to keep and bear arms, then Sonia thinks that decision is Constitutional. In Maloney v. Cuomo, she signed the opinion stating a that the Second Amendment does not protect individuals from having Second Amendment rights.

…the same Sonia who holds for abortions at any stage of pregnancy even if the mother’s life is not endangered, the same Sonia who ruled in favor of a Muslim inmate’s right to have a “holiday feast” (which had been denied him because the particular holiday was not a mandatory holiday in Islam) on the grounds that it was “subjectively” important to him, regardless that it was not important to Islam.

…the same Sonia who opined in a dissenting opinion that minority felons should have the right to vote, based on past discriminations,

…the same Sonia who voted for the courts of other Nations to have a say when one parent removes a child from the country without the other parent’s consent – in other words, you, the parent, might be subject to the opinion of a court in another land where your spouse absconded with your child without your permission.

Still yet, some Republican liberals plan to vote to confirm Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. The names are no surprise. We learned some time ago we cannot count on Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN), Senator Olympia Snow (R-MAINE) and now Senator Mel Martinez, a Republican Hispanic senator from Florida who is retiring in 2010.

Some more about La Raza and what it means for Judge Sotomayor to hold membership in this organization:
La Raza Facts: 15 things you should know
by Michelle Malkin writing for NationalReviewOnline:

Only in America could critics of a group called “The Race” be labeled racists. Such is the triumph of left-wing identity chauvinists, whose aggressive activists and supine abettors have succeeded in redefining all opposition as “hate.”

Both Barack Obama and John McCain will speak this week in San Diego at the annual conference of the National Council of La Raza, the Latino organization whose name is Spanish for, yes, “The Race.” Can you imagine Obama and McCain paying homage to a group of white people who called themselves that? No matter. The presidential candidates and the media have legitimized “The Race” as a mainstream ethnic lobbying group and marginalized its critics as intolerant bigots. The unvarnished truth is that the group is a radical ethnic nationalist outfit that abuses your tax dollars and milks PC politics to undermine our sovereignty.

Here are 15 things you should know about “The Race”:

15. “The Race” supports driver’s licenses for illegal aliens.

14.”The Race” demands in-state tuition discounts for illegal alien students that are not available to law-abiding U.S. citizens and law-abiding legal immigrants.

13. “The Race” vehemently opposes cooperative immigration enforcement efforts between local, state, and federal authorities.

12. “The Race” opposes a secure fence on the southern border.

11. “The Race” joined the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in a failed lawsuit attempt to prevent the feds from entering immigration information into a key national crime database — and to prevent local police officers from accessing the data.

10. “The Race” opposed the state of Oklahoma’s tough immigration-enforcement-first laws, which cut off welfare to illegal aliens, put teeth in employer sanctions, and strengthened local-federal cooperation and information sharing.

9. “The Race” joined other open-borders, anti-assimilationists and sued to prevent Proposition 227, California’s bilingual education reform ballot initiative, from becoming law.

8. “The Race” bitterly protested common-sense voter ID provisions as an “absolute disgrace.”

7. “The Race” has consistently opposed post-9/11 national security measures at every turn.

6. Former “Race” president Raul Yzaguirre, Hillary Clinton’s Hispanic outreach adviser, said this: “U.S. English is to Hispanics as the Ku Klux Klan is to blacks.” He was referring to U.S. English, the nation’s oldest, largest citizens’ action group dedicated to preserving the unifying role of the English language in the United States. “The Race” also pioneered Orwellian open-borders Newspeak and advised the Mexican government on how to lobby for illegal alien amnesty while avoiding the terms “illegal” and “amnesty.”

5. “The Race” gives mainstream cover to a poisonous subset of ideological satellites, led by Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan, or Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan (MEChA). The late GOP Rep. Charlie Norwood rightly characterized the organization as “a radical racist group . . . one of the most anti-American groups in the country, which has permeated U.S. campuses since the 1960s, and continues its push to carve a racist nation out of the American West.”

4. “The Race” is currently leading a smear campaign against staunch immigration-enforcement leaders and has called for TV and cable news networks to keep immigration enforcement proponents off the airwaves — in addition to pushing for Fairness Doctrine policies to shut up their foes. The New York Times reported that current “Race” president Janet Murguia believes “hate speech” should “not be tolerated, even if such censorship were a violation of First Amendment rights.”

3. “The Race” sponsors militant ethnic nationalist charter schools subsidized by your public tax dollars (at least $8 million in federal education grants). The schools include Aztlan Academy in Tucson, Ariz., the Mexicayotl Academy in Nogales, Ariz., Academia Cesar Chavez Charter School in St. Paul, Minn., and La Academia Semillas del Pueblo in Los Angeles, whose principal inveighed: “We don’t want to drink from a White water fountain, we have our own wells and our natural reservoirs and our way of collecting rain in our aqueducts. We don’t need a White water fountain . . . ultimately the White way, the American way, the neo liberal, capitalist way of life will eventually lead to our own destruction.”

2. “The Race” has perfected the art of the PC shakedown at taxpayer expense, pushing relentlessly to lower home-loan standards for Hispanic borrowers, reaping millions in federal “mortgage counseling” grants, seeking special multimillion-dollar earmarks, and partnering with banks that do business with illegal aliens.

1. “The Race” thrives on ethnic supremacy — and the elite sheeple’s unwillingness to call it what it is. As historian Victor Davis Hanson observes: “[The] organization’s very nomenclature ‘The National Council of La Raza’ is hate speech to the core. Despite all the contortions of the group, Raza (as its Latin cognate suggests) reflects the meaning of ‘race’ in Spanish, not ‘the people’ — and that’s precisely why we don’t hear of something like ‘The National Council of the People,’ which would not confer the buzz notion of ethnic, racial and tribal chauvinism.”

The fringe is the center. The center is the fringe. Viva La Raza.

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TEHRAN, Iran – Two men convicted of adultery were stoned to death in northeastern Iran last month but a third convicted man managed to escape, Iran’s judiciary spokesman said Tuesday.

Ali Reza Jamshidi said the stoning took place in the city of Mashhad in late December but did not provide the names of the convicted men.

Under Iran’s Islamic law, adultery is punishable by stoning, but such sentences are rare. International human rights groups have long criticized stoning in Iran as a cruel form of punishment.

Under Islamic law, the third guy who escaped is free now. There is no comment from the other two. Maybe Obama could reconsider his “no preconditions” pledge now? Doubtful.

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All five of the Guantánamo detainees charged with planning and coordinating the Sept. 11 attacks have asked a military judge to accept their confessions in full.

The request appeared to be intended to cut short any effort to try them, and to challenge the United States government to put them to death. But the military judge in the case, Col. Steven Henley of the Army, indicated that he would not accept guilty pleas from the men right away, and that formal proceedings to do so may be a while off.

At the start of what had been expected to be routine proceedings Monday, Judge Henley disclosed that he had received a written statement from the five men. The statement said the five planned to stop filing written motions and instead “to announce our confessions to plea in full.”

Allahpundit:

Here’s a useful rule of thumb to help you decide, in bien pensant fashion, what does and doesn’t constitute a jihadist propaganda victory as the process goes forward. Executing this pig as he so richly deserves is a jihadist propaganda victory because it grants him the martyrdom he seeks, even though we happily run that same risk every time we fire a Predator missile at a safe house in the Pakistani tribal areas. Giving this pig a forum as plum as a trial in which to rant, curse the United States, sing hosannas to Allah, and hold forth on Israel and whatever else is on his mind is not a jihadist propaganda victory because, well, that’s just justice.

Fine, give em the trial and soapbox, but it isn’t a victory for terror to grant their death wishes. I could give a rat’s patooti about the propaganda. It will happen regardless. You can chase your tail in circles on that catch 22. Give em what they deserve.

But before the anti-death penalty crowd gets too overconfident in their argument that killing the 9/11 planners would “just be giving them what they want: martyrdom” — which appears to be actually right on in this instance — let me point out that al Qaeda propaganda video after propaganda video have also extolled the virtues of Khalid Shiekh Mohammed while he was busy rotting in Guantanamo. ie, he’s already a “martyr” for the cause alive or dead.

Also I’ll note that among al Qaeda’s many “reasons” given by Osama bin Laden for the 9/11 attack was that we were holding Omar Abdul Rahman (”The Blind Sheikh”) in the federal pokey. The moral of the story is that whether we kill them or simply hold them prisoner those with the jihadi mindset will still hate us and find reason to blame us for an act of “injustice”.

So, why not give them their wish and kill them? Call it an act of national catharsis. Palette cleansing if you will.

But, wait! The ACLU cry injustice!

If the judge accepts guilty pleas, the ability of the Obama administration to transfer this case to federal court would be nearly impossible because the legal principle of jeopardy would attach, according to Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union. That could mean the new administration may have to oversee an execution resulting from a process that many Obama supporters and legal advisers regard as deeply flawed.

“It is absurd to accept a guilty plea from people who were tortured and waterboarded,” said Romero, who is at Guantanamo to observe the proceeding…

Whatever! Let em have their military trial then where the treasure trove of intelligence we got from the monsters will certainly do them in. Oh wait! The ACLU are against those too! The only thing that will make the ACLU happy is to set these killers free! That ain’t gonna happen, so they should just shut their yaps already. I know, wishful thinking. Absurd? The ACLU are absurd!

Michelle Malkin: What about the truthers?

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The Army has set a date for its first execution in nearly 50 years.

The military said Thursday that former North Carolina soldier Ronald A. Gray is to be executed Dec. 10 at the federal prison complex in Terre Haute (TEHR’-uh HOHT), Ind. He was convicted of multiple rapes and murders.

Army Secretary Pete Geren ordered that the former cook die by lethal injection. President Bush approved the execution in July.

Imagine if Gray was a cop killer or guy who started one of the most violent gangs in America. Or a terrorist. There would be candlelite vigils, protests, web pages, petitions. The ACLU would be suing. But, no, he is a soldier, so, eh, not worth their time.

And, yes, he should get the death penalty, just like anyone who did what Gray did.

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How to Begin Repairing the Damage to Freedom in America After Bush

The next president will become chief executive of a nation that has been greatly weakened – in particular, our freedoms, our values, and our international reputation have been greatly undermined by the policies of the past eight years.

Part 1 – Day One

Day One: Stop Torture, Close Guantanamo, End Extraordinary Renditions

1. Stop Torture and Abuse

2. Close Guantanamo and Restore the Rule of Law for Detainees

3. End and Prohibit the Practice of Extraordinary Rendition

Part 2 – First 100 Days

1. Warrantless spying. Issue an executive order recognizing the president’s obligation to comply with FISA and other statutes, requiring the executive branch to do so, and prohibiting the NSA from collecting the communications, domestic or international, of U.S. citizens and residents.

2. Watch lists. Issue an executive order requiring watch lists to be completely reviewed within 3 months, with names limited to only those for whom there is credible evidence of terrorist ties or activities.

3. Freedom of Information – Ashcroft Doctrine. Direct the attorney general to rescind the “Ashcroft Doctrine” regarding Freedom of Information Act compliance, which instructs agencies to withhold information whenever there is a “sound legal basis” for doing so, and return to the compliance standard under Attorney General Janet Reno, which promoted an “overall presumption of disclosure” of government information through the FOIA unless it was “reasonably foreseeable that disclosure would be harmful.”

4. Monitoring of activists. Direct the attorney general and other relevant agency heads (eg, Defense and Homeland Security) to end government monitoring of political activists.

5. DOJ’s Civil Rights Division. Order renewed civil rights enforcement at Civil Rights Division, DOJ.

6. Real ID Act. Direct the Secretary of Homeland Security to suspend the regulations (73 Fed. Reg. 5272) for the Real ID Act pending congressional review.

7. Abortion gag rule. Rescind the Executive Memorandum of March 28, 2001, known as the “Mexico City policy” or “Global Gag Rule,” prohibiting foreign aid to organizations overseas that promote or perform abortions.

8. Ban all workplace discrimination against sexual minorities by the federal government and its contractors. Issue an executive order prohibiting sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination by federal contractors, and expand the existing order banning sexual orientation discrimination in federal employment to also protect against gender identity discrimination.

9. Death penalty. Implement a federal death penalty moratorium until racial disparities are addressed. The federal death penalty system suffers from obvious and extreme racial disparities.

10. “Faith-based initiatives.” Restore fundamental religious-liberty protections by halting Bush Administration efforts to permit direct funding of houses of worship, underwrite religious proselytism with taxpayer dollars, and allow government-funded religious discrimination.

This moonbat wishlist is much less likely to happen under McCain than Obama. I think we can read between the lines on who this “non-partisan” organization is rooting for. Make sure to get out and vote on Tuesday.

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Graphic credit: Chad Crow – Wall Street Journal

If Barack Obama wins the Oval Office, will America be so fed-up with Liberalism after four years of a Democrat President and Democrat-held Congress that we make a significant move back to Conservatism? Oh, if it were that simple.

Four years of Obama, Pelosi and Reid will entrench this country so deeply in Liberalism that it may take generations to turn the country around.

Within the first year of an Obama Presidency, three Supreme Court justices will likely retire, maybe four, and be replaced with Barack Obama’s vision of political, social and economic justice.

I’ve listened to Greta Van Susteran’s discussion of the replacement of Justices, and she believes two will retire, Obama will replace them with Liberal justices, and the current balance of Liberal judges will not change.

Greta is discounting the tenaciousness of Liberalism. I predict the older justices will retire sooner, rather than later, to enable Obama to stack the court in his first four years, infecting the remainder of our lives with social and economic justice. With a Democrat Congress and Obama as President:

1) there goes property rights to eminent domain
2) there goes the death penalty
3) there goes the Second Amendment and our guns
4) there goes the rule of law
5) there goes any semblance of judicial restraint
6) there goes any hope of stopping voter fraud
1) HERE COMES a bias for the treatment of enemy combatants
2) HERE COMES Constitutional rights to same-sex marriage
3) HERE COMES a thumb-of-the-nose to long-held State’s rights
4) HERE COMES “redistributive changes.”

Barack Obama expressed his regret that the Supreme Court hadn’t been more ‘radical’ and described as a ‘tragedy’ the court’s refusal to take up ‘the issues of redistribution of wealth.’ No wonder he wants to appoint judges that legislate from the bench,” Holtz-Eakin continued [McCain spokesman].

In July 2007, Barack Obama speaking at a Planned Parenthood event said, speaking of the persona of a Supreme Court justice of his choosing:

We need somebody who’s got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom. The empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor, or African-American, or gay, or disabled, or old. And that’s the criteria by which I’m going to be selecting my judges.

Speaking of the ruling of Gonzales v. Carhart, which upheld the ruling on partial birth abortion, Obama said the decision was “a concerted effort” on behalf of the Court to deny access to abortions. He was particularly harsh on the majority opinion written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, saying:

He knows many things but my understanding is that he does not know how to be a doctor.

Last I noticed, Obama lacks a medical degree. This was dishonest and inflammatory rhetoric but nevertheless, it brought favorable reactions from the activists attending the meeting. Remember, this was a decision made on the merits of partial birth abortion, not abortion as protected by law.

Let us give serious thought to Senator Obama’s vision of a Supreme Court judge That judge will be empathetic to someone…to you? to me? because I’m young? I’m pregnant? I’m gay? I’m Black? I’m poor? I’m old?

“Our Constitution is colorblind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.”
John Marshall Harlan

Civil government cannot let any group ride roughshod over others simply because their consciences tell them to do so.”
Justice Robert H. Jackson

Let us give serious thought to Obama’s belief that our Constitution is a living, breathing document:

The layman’s constitutional view is that what he likes is constitutional and that which he doesn’t like is unconstitutional.
Justice Hugo L. Black

One’s right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.”
Justice Robert H. Jackson

It is my belief that there are ‘absolutes’ in our Bill of Rights, and that they were put there on purpose by men who knew what the words meant and meant their prohibitions to be ‘absolutes.’ “
Justice Hugo L. Black

The Constitution is not neutral. It was designed to take the government off the backs of people.
William O. Douglas

An Obama quote from his book, The Audacity of Hope, page 92-93 in my trade paperback:

What the framework of our Constitution can do is organize the way by which we argue about our future. All of its elaborate machinery – its separation of powers and checks and balances and federalist principles and Bill of Rights – are designed to force us into a conversation, a “deliberative democracy”…law in America compels us to entertain the possibility that we are not always right and to sometimes change our minds;…

Definition of “deliberative” from Dictionary.com: having to do with policy; dealing with the wisdom and expediency of a proposal.

Senator Obama wants America to have a discussion, and to deliberate, about the wisdom of The Constitution and the Bill of Right. Think about it – deliberate on it.

Others talking about an Obama Supreme Court:
Conservatives Slam Obama’s Misunderstanding of the U.S. Constitution

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Treason! The word is thrown about quite a lot lately. Unfortunately, it is almost always hyperbole.

Oh, Americans think they know what treason is, but when you get right down to it, few really do — at least in an American legal context, anyway.

Webster’s defines traitor as one who betrays another’s trust or is false to an obligation or duty, one who commits treason. Treason is defined as the betrayal of a trust, or the offense of attempting by overt acts to overthrow the government of the state to which the offender owes allegiance or to kill or personally injure the sovereign or the sovereign’s family.

That’s all well and good and on a purely definitional level, that certainly is treasonous behavior. But U.S. law does not work purely on Webster’s definition. In fact, U.S. law has quite a specific meaning to treason and it’s one that makes a true, legal charge of treason quite hard to prove and harder to prosecute.

Now, today, many want to use the word treason against politicians, the media, any person they feel is acting against perceived American interests. For instance, when Barack Obama works to defeat the First Amendment by sending various arms of the law after people conducting their right to free political speech, many want to call that treason. Certainly it is anti-American. Absolutely it is against everything the Founders stood for. But, it isn’t treason. Another charge of treason is often leveled against the New York Times when it prints details of American policy that might end up helping the enemies of this country. It is wrong, it is harmful, it is even prosecutable under the law, above all it is damned stupid, but… nope… not treason.

No, treason has quite a specific and narrow meaning in the U.S. Constitution. In fact, the reason the Founders so narrowly defined treason is because of the abuse of the charge of treason by the English Crown previous to our nation’s founding. It got so bad in England that hungry children caught stealing a slice of bread from a street vendor could be hanged by authorities as “traitors” to the Crown. Not to mention that political enemies of those in power at any given time could have charges of treason brought up against them to silence dissent. The Founders prudently wanted to quash the possibility of such abuse by government when they sat down to write the Constitution. So, treason was very specifically defined in Article III, Section III of the U.S. Constitution.

Section 3. Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court. The Congress shall have power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder* of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.

Since it is so hard to get a conviction on the charge, treason has not been leveled against all that many criminals in the over 200 year-old history of the U.S.A. And, even when charged, most have gotten off without conviction. Aaron Burr escaped conviction, even ex-president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, was not convicted on the charge.

Additionally, the full punishment, death, has never been inflicted at all, most convictions resulting in life sentences if any punishment was seen. Even the Rosenbergs, guilty of spying for Communist Russia, were executed in 1953 for espionage, not treason.

In any case, using the word “treason” may be emotionally satisfying, but rarely — in fact, almost never — is the charge the legally correct one to make. Throwing around charges of treason merely make the accuser look uninformed, sadly.

So, the next time you want to throw the “T” word around, remember this warning. You may have a perfectly legitimate reason to be against someone or some entity’s actions, but chances are, “treason” it ain’t.

(* Attainder means condemning the property of the accused to be remanded to the state or the action of a “stain” to be permanently placed on the convict’s relatives on into the future.)

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In New York, U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein has ordered the release of eight more grand jury transcripts from the famous 1951 spy case that led to the conviction of the husband and wife pro-Soviet spy team of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Reuters reports this story as if there is some cloud of doubt still hanging over the Rosenberg’s conviction despite that their guilt is no longer debatable. Yet here is Reuters giving cover to those who stubbornly wish to cast doubt on the U.S. prosecution of the Rosenbergs. It also gives Reuters and U.S. detractors the opportunity once again smear America by raising their favorite Cold War boogie man, Joe McCarthy.

Reuters sternly tells us that,

The Rosenbergs were convicted in 1951 of passing atomic secrets to the Soviet Union and executed in 1953. Rosenberg supporters describe the case as a frame-up amid anti-communist McCarthyism hysteria and Cold War fear.

It is amazing to see Reuters use every U.S. bash they could in one little paragraph. The Rosenbergs were victims of a “frame-up” because of “McCarthyism hysteria and Cold War fear.” Notice how Reuters seems to forget to mention that there is no longer any doubt that the Rosenbergs were guilty, though?

In the aftermath of the 1951 trial, the Rosenberg’s fellow traveling supporters always maintained that Julius and Ethel were innocent and that the era of McCarthyism railroaded these innocents to their execution in 1953. This conception casts the U.S. in the role of evil oppressor and the Soviet spies as victims. Granted, for many years the explicit guilt of the Rosenbergs was in some doubt as U.S. evidence was secreted in the grand jury testimony and other sources remained classified.

However, as time rolled on, the Rosenberg’s guilt became steadily more assured as sources began to emerge to convincingly prove that Julius passed nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union, his wife serving as a willing accomplice. By the 1980s information of the FBI’s project Venona emerged in which declassified coded messages from the Soviet Union from the Rosenberg’s era proved their guilt. Nikita Krushchev even admitted to their guilt in his posthumous 1990 autobiography.

And yet… Reuters seems to have forgotten this whole history. The fact that the Rosenbergs really were guilty seems to have been ignored in this Reuters story even as the specter of McCarthysim was used to its fullest.

So, why did Reuters leave the real, proven guilt of the Rosenbergs out of this story even as they found ample room to bring up “McCarthyism” and “Cold War fears”? Why else but to continue the myth that the Rosenbergs might have been innocent so that their prosecution and execution can continue to be used as manufactured proof that the U.S. is evil?

Instead of a proper news story, what we end up with here is Reuters once again adding its voice to continued anti-Americanism.

(Photo credit: Virginia Western Community College)

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