The Supreme Court acted yesterday to prove yet again that the law can, indeed, be quite an ass.

According to a 6-3 ruling, it’s a crime to try to persuade groups classified by the US as terrorist organizations to make peace not war:

In a case pitting free speech against national security, the Supreme Court on Monday upheld a federal law that makes it a crime to provide “material support” to foreign terrorist organizations, even if the help takes the form of training for peacefully resolving conflicts.
[...]
David D. Cole, a lawyer for the plaintiffs with the Center for Constitutional Rights, said … “This decision basically says the First Amendment allows making peacemaking and human rights advocacy a crime,” Mr. Cole said.

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Roberts said that Americans are actually “free to become members” of terrorist groups.” However:

What they cannot do it (sic; and in the NYT too!) make a contribution to a foreign terrorist organization, even if that contribution takes the form of speech. “Such support,” he wrote, “frees up other resources within the organization that may be put to violent ends,” “helps lend legitimacy to foreign terrorist groups” and strains “the United States’ relationships with its allies.”

So:
a) It’s now a crime to strain the United States’ relationships with its allies? (If so, perhaps putting a huge strain on the United States’ relationships with its allies, as a certain dimwitted former two-term President indubitably did, qualifies as a high crime?)
b) How, pray, does trying to teach terrorists to make peace not war free up other resources within the organization that may be put to violent ends?
c) If you just sign up to become a member of a terrorist organization, and do nothing else with or for them, haven’t you just extended them moral support by an act of speech? Haven’t you just helped lend legitimacy to the group? How is this not a contribution takes the form of speech?
d) For that matter, when the US government designates it to be a terrorist organization in the first place, doesn’t that lend much more legitimacy to the group than any act of a private individual could?

Shouldn’t Supreme Court decisions, at the very least, be required to make sense?

Justice Breyer, in dissent, said the activities at issue “involve the communication and advocacy of political ideas and lawful means of achieving political ends.” It is elementary, he went on, that “this speech and association for political purposes is the kind of activity to which the First Amendment ordinarily offers its strongest protection.”

If this is John Roberts’ idea of calling “balls and strikes”, then I have four words for the Chief Justice: “Balls to you, sir!” (Always important to strike the right note of respect, I think.)