United States v. Mehanna

SELYA, Circuit Judge.

Terrorism is the modern-day equivalent of the bubonic plague: it is an existential threat. Predictably, then, the government’s efforts to combat terrorism through the enforcement of the criminal laws will be fierce. Sometimes, those efforts require a court to patrol the fine line between vital national security concerns and forbidden encroachments on constitutionally protected freedoms of speech and association. This is such a case.

As if that were not enough, the case presents a welter of other issues. At the risk of singling out one of many, we pay particular heed to the…