{"id":403,"date":"2003-08-06T17:05:50","date_gmt":"2003-08-06T21:05:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/benadida\/2003\/08\/06\/owning-up-to-what-i-said-mike-hawash"},"modified":"2003-08-06T17:05:50","modified_gmt":"2003-08-06T21:05:50","slug":"owning-up-to-what-i-said-mike-hawash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ben\/2003\/08\/06\/owning-up-to-what-i-said-mike-hawash\/","title":{"rendered":"Owning Up to What I Said: Mike Hawash"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name='a24'><\/a><\/p>\n<p>\nHopefully I won&#8217;t have to link to Fox News too often, but it appears that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/story\/0,2933,93944,00.html\">Mike Hawash just pled guilty<\/a> to charges of attempted terrorism.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nMike is an Intel employee, originally from Lebanon but since naturalized and perfectly integrated into American society. He was said to be a material witness, a cause which allows law enforcement to detain him without proof or even specific charges, though, supposedly, he is entitled to a speedy trial. He initially pled innocent to all charges. I believe his arrest and treatment do not reflect a fair justice system. But now that the truth about his actual involvement in terrorist affairs is coming to light, it makes one think.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nI&#8217;m a bit stunned. I followed the <a href=\"http:\/\/freemikehawash.org\">Free Mike Hawash<\/a> site, emailed friends and senators about this situation, expressed my outrage, and truly believed we were witnessing a horrible abuse of power. And yet, in the end, it&#8217;s probably a good thing that Mike Hawash is off the streets.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nAs a close friend just noted, this government seems to be accomplishing a number of pretty good things, but in the worst possible way. I firmly believe that the ends can never justify the means in a free society, and thus I remain firmly opposed to what this administration is doing. That said, I cannot stick my head in the sand, a-la Ostrich Politics, and claim that my arguments from 5 months ago are just as strong now.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nYes, of course, process is paramount because, without due process, there can be no true freedom. But let&#8217;s be honest: this news makes arguing against the PATRIOT Act and other similarly far-from-patriotic laws that much more difficult. In strategizing to defend our civil liberties,, we&#8217;re going to have to find stronger, more definitive arguments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hopefully I won&#8217;t have to link to Fox News too often, but it appears that Mike Hawash just pled guilty to charges of attempted terrorism. Mike is an Intel employee, originally from Lebanon but since naturalized and perfectly integrated into American society. He was said to be a material witness, a cause which allows law [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":93,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[116],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-policy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ben\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ben\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ben\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ben\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/93"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ben\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=403"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ben\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ben\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ben\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ben\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}