Students, Nuns and Sailor-Mongers, Beware

[LeahMira]

Students, Nuns and Sailor-Mongers, Beware
By Jonathan Turley
The Los Angeles Times
Friday 17 October 2003

Atty. Gen. Ashcroft is pulling out all the stops to prosecute protesters.

It has lain dormant in the darkest recesses of American law for 125 years,but this month Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft introduced critics of theadministration to his latest weapon in law enforcement.

In a Miami federal court, the attorney general charged the environmentalgroup Greenpeace under an obscure 1872 law originally intended to end the practice of "sailor-mongering," or the luring of sailors with liquor and prostitutes from their ships. Ashcroft plucked the law from obscurity topunish Greenpeace for boarding a vessel near port in Miami.

Not only is the law being used to prosecute one of the administration's most vocal critics in an unprecedented attack on the 1st Amendment, but it appears to be part of a broader campaign by Ashcroft to protect the nation against free speech, a campaign that has converted environmentalists into "sailor-mongers" ...

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