My latest in PJ Media:
Rhode Island’s WPRI reported Wednesday that “a federal judge is seeking alternative proposals to imprisonment for a Warwick man convicted in a terror plot to behead a conservative blogger.” The question that follows is inevitable: if Nicholas Rovinski, 29, a convert to Islam who plotted to murder Pamela Geller for the crime of drawing Muhammad, had plotted instead to kill some prominent Leftist such as Linda Sarsour, would there be even the remotest possibility that he could get released early? In today’s overheated, hyper-woke environment, the answer is unfortunately quite clear.
Back in 2015, after Islamic jihadis massacred the cartoonists of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris for drawing cartoons of Muhammad, Pamela Geller and I resolved to put on a Muhammad Art Exhibit and Cartoon Contest in the United States, to show that at least some people would not bow to violent intimidation, and would not bow to those who would take away the freedom of speech at the point of a gun. We held our event on May 3, 2015 in Garland, Texas, northeast of Dallas.
The urgency of standing up against violent threats and bullying was vividly illustrated by the fact that two Muslims from Phoenix drove eight hours to Garland to commit a jihad massacre at our event. And the violence wasn’t over even then. The Islamic State (ISIS) put out a death fatwa against Geller, and three Boston-area Muslims, Rovinski, another convert named Daoud (David) Wright, and Wright’s uncle Usaamah Rahim, began plotting to kill her.
The plot never came off. Rahim got impatient and attacked a Boston police officer instead, and was killed. The plot was uncovered; Wright, the mastermind of the beheading scheme, got 28 years in prison for the plot. Rovinski pleaded guilty to two terrorism conspiracy charges and got fifteen years; as he has cooperated with authorities, he was set to be released in 2028.
But he could be back on the streets within weeks. His lawyers say he has cerebral palsy, hypertension, and depression, and that all these conditions make him more vulnerable to coronavirus. They want him to be granted a “compassionate release.”
There is much more. Read the rest here.