What are you doing for Valentine's Day? Bleeding-heart progressives across the country are raising money for "an evening of music, song and sharing love for recently released People's Lawyer Lynne Stewart." Warm fuzzies for one of the world's most notorious terrorist helpers? I can't think of a more stomach-turning way to mark the holiday.
Thanks to the Obama administration, Stewart walked out of prison on New Year's Eve. She is reportedly suffering stage-four breast cancer. Now she's passing the plate among her supporters, asking them to foot the bill for her health insurance deductibles and co-pays, as well as for a "special diet, vitamins and other healing methods." What, no Obamacare?
Has Stewart shown exceptional remorse or good behavior to warrant such compassion? Don't forget: Both the Bureau of Prisons and a federal judge previously had denied Stewart's petition for a compassionate release, but a U.S. Attorney intervened. This preferential treatment is extraordinary: Since 1992, the annual average number of prisoners who receive compassionate release has been less than two-dozen.
Let me remind you of what she did, who benefited, who died, and how she has acted since being caught red-handed and freed.
Stewart was convicted in 2005 of helping terrorist Omar Abdel Rahman - the murderous Blind Sheik - smuggle coded messages of Islamic violence to outside followers in violation of an explicit pledge to abide by her client's court-ordered isolation. Rahman, Stewart's "political client," had called on Muslims to "destroy" the West, "burn their companies, eliminate their interests, sink their ships, shoot down their planes, kill them on the sea, air or land." He issued bloody fatwas against U.S. "infidels" that inspired the 1993 WTC bombing, the 1997 massacre of Western tourists in Luxor, Egypt, and the 9/11 attacks.
Stewart ignored a judge's communications ban, transmitting Rahman's edicts of violence to fellow jihadist Rifa'l Ahman Tara in Egypt. She smuggled out a coded order to his followers lifting a ceasefire between his terrorist group and the Egyptian government. She personally delivered one of the messages to a Reuters reporter.
Far from the innocent grandma her supporters continue to portray her as, Stewart was caught on video making distracting "covering noises" - tapping the table, shaking a water jar - for the Blind Sheik's translator to evade the communications ban.
After receiving a measly initial sentence of 28 months for abetting terrorism, the disbarred civil rights attorney was re-sentenced to 10 years in jail. A federal panel of judges felt the need to spotlight her smugness. "From the moment she committed the first act for which she was convicted, through her trial, sentencing and appeals," Judge Robert Sack of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals wrote, "Stewart has persisted in exhibiting what seems to be a stark inability to understand the seriousness of her crimes."
Stewart failed to understand "the breadth and depth of the danger in which" her crimes had "placed the lives and safety of unknown innocents, and the extent to which they constituted an abuse of her trust and privilege as a member of the bar," the panel concluded.
This jihad-coddling grandmother remains defiant. She called 9/11 an "armed struggle." Upon her initial sentencing, she boasted that she could serve the term "standing on her head." After she was convicted of aiding and abetting Rahman, she told an interviewer she "would do it again." She has repeatedly told liberal sycophantic journalists that she would not have done anything differently.
After a jubilant return to New York City upon her release last month, Stewart thanked Louis Farrakhan, bragged about her (convicted cop-killer) Mumia Abu Jamal pin, condemned the government that had just released her and vowed to continue her radical advocacy of "political prisoners." No regrets, no remorse, no repentance.
Stewart doesn't need to solicit President Obama and the White House for a Valentine's Day donation. They delivered her the biggest "LUV YA" candy heart a terror-enabler could ask for: her release papers sealed with a kiss. XOXO.
Michelle Malkin is the author of "Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks and Cronies" (Regnery 2010).
