http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/11/1545229This is about bigger things than Lynne Stewart. First, the adminstration wants to scare off lawyers from defending so-called "terrorists" lest they get at the truth of government complicity in 9/11 and other events.
Second, it's about keeping the ongoing war crimes under cover. Here is a quote by Lynne Stewart's lawyer:
MICHAEL TIGAR: ". . .The only way that we will ever get to the bottom of the American concentration camp abuses at Gitmo and Abu Ghraib is that if the lawyers for these prisoners are permitted to tell their stories to the world. If the government can shut off that communication, which they have attempted to do over and over and over again, these activities will continue in secret, blessed as they are by the highest officials of government in a country which has for the first time in its history given a cabinet job to a fellow who says that the Geneva Convention is obsolete and that the torture memo doesn’t mean anything."