Continue now with our lead story, the radical Professor Ward Churchill's situation. Can he be tried for either treason or sedition?

[A]as you may know, "The Factor" got involved with the Ward Churchill story, because Hamilton and other colleges were paying the guy to spread his hateful anti-American rhetoric. I feel that's kind of dubious, don't you? After our initial reporting, everyone canceled Churchill, except for the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater. Now we called Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle, but he is unavailable, as they say. But joining us now from Madison is Wisconsin state assemblyman Steve Nass. This just came in over the wire, Mr. Noss, interestingly enough. You know, the Hamilton College is what started this whole thing for "The Factor." He was going to speak there. And we got on to the story and they canceled him. Well, the woman who invited him to speak there, Nancy Rabinowitz, has now resigned her position as the director of the project that brings in these kinds of speakers. So that's good.

There is simply no argument to be made that the Pentagon personnel killed on September 11 fill that bill. The building and those inside comprised military targets, pure and simple. As to those in the World Trade Center . . . Well, really. Let's get a grip here, shall we? True enough, they were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break. They formed a technocratic corps at the very heart of America's global financial empire – the "mighty engine of profit" to which the military dimension of U.S. policy has always been enslaved – and they did so both willingly and knowingly. Recourse to "ignorance" – a derivative, after all, of the word "ignore" – counts as less than an excuse among this relatively well-educated elite. To the extent that any of them were unaware of the costs and consequences to others of what they were involved in – and in many cases excelling at – it was because of their absolute refusal to see. More likely, it was because they were too busy braying, incessantly and self-importantly, into their cell phones, arranging power lunches and stock transactions, each of which translated, conveniently out of sight, mind and smelling distance, into the starved and rotting flesh of infants. If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I'd really be interested in hearing about it.

The unanimous anger caused by the human and psychological damage inflicted on the American people by the unexpected and shocking deaths of thousands of innocent people, whose images have shaken the world, is perfectly understandable. But who have been the beneficiaries? The extreme right, the most backward and right–wing forces, those in favor of crushing the growing world rebellion and sweeping away everything progressive that is still left on the planet. It was an enormous error, a huge injustice, and a great crime, whoever they are who organized or are responsible for this action

“'Some People Push Back': On the Justice of Roosting Chickens," Ward Churchill, September 11, 2001 (Here linking the Dark Night Press website's edition of Churchill's commentary.) “On the Injustice of Getting Smeared,” Ward Churchill, CounterPunch, February 3, 2005 “The Right Has a License To Write Anything,” Alexander Cockburn, CounterPunch, February 5-6, 2005 "The Churchill episode: Two unfortunate currents," Editorial, Indian Country Today, February 10, 2005 "Ward Churchill: Right to Speak Out; Right About 9/11," Robert Jensen, CounterPunch, February 14, 2005 Historical Census Statistics on Population Totals By Race, 1790 to 1990, and By Hispanic Origin, 1970 to 1990, For The United States, Regions, Divisions, and States, Campbell Gibson and Kay Jung, U.S. Census Bureau, September, 2002 (For the PDF version of the same report)