Today, as you may know, Donald Rumsfeld essentially accused anyone who disagrees with the administration of treason, but he wasn't the only one throwing around charges of giving aid and comfort to the enemy. Joining him was the Washington Legal Foundation (WLF), which ran this ad, headlined "Unwittingly Aiding Al-Qaeda" (warning: it's a PDF file), on the op-ed page of today's print New York Times. Sample text:

instead of putting their ideological biases aside, professional activists have worked to obstruct common-sense anti-terror tactics with a torrent of lawsuits and media demagoguery....How amused our enemies must be to find some Americans pushing to extend absolute rights and other legal courtesies to deadly al-Qaeda foot soldiers.

Back in January, Dwight Meredith of P.L.A. (who's giving up blogging and will be missed) noted that the WLF was trying "to prevent funding of legal representation for the poor by attacking the constitutionality of IOLTA (Interest On Lawyer Trust Account) programs." Meredith wrote,

WLF has litigated a case with a potential recovery of $20 all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States in order to, in its own words, “deal a death blow” to groups that provide legal representation for the poor.

(Meredith gives details of the case here.)

Meredith (with an assist from blogger Skimble) notes that WLF pursues ideological lawsuits like this despite the fact that it's a 501(c)(3) corporation, which means that contributions to it are tax-deductible. Meredith also links to a list of WLF's many fat-cat donors (tobacco companies, big drug companies, etc.) and a list of foundation donors (Scaife, Scaife, Olin, Scaife, Olin, Olin...).

Here's the WLF Web site. The foundation specializes in, among other things "business civil liberties" litigation. In other words, it's a plucky fighter attempting to obtain justice for poor, downtrodden megacorporations.

With tax-deductible contributions.

Some of which are used to lecture us on patriotism.