My, my how her rhetoric changes, now that she has had some time to reflect upon her behavior (AKA=Day of Judgement, American style.)

NEW YORK (AP) - She’s already a grandmother of 14, a cancer survivor and a former civil rights lawyer who took on radical clients others considered toxic.

Lynne Stewart will soon find out if she will be forced to assume another role – prison inmate.

“I couldn’t tell you I’m not stressed,” Stewart said about her Monday sentencing in a Manhattan terrorism case. “I’m very concerned.”

The AP goes out of it’s own way to paint a picture of sweet old Grandmother here. One who has loving grandchildren, AND a cancer survivor. Lynne Stewart should be concerned about her potential new title…but it’s not good enough. The word TREASON doesn’t enter the picture here as I believe it should. The US Government has been lenient to Ms. Stewart.

Prosecutors have asked a federal judge to impose a 30-year term for what they described in court papers as Stewart’s “extremely dangerous and devious” conduct to help an Egyptian terrorist leader communicate with followers.

It’s treasonous.

Stewart, 67, recently responded by writing the judge a nine-page letter seeking leniency.

Mixed with her trademark defiance – “I am not a traitor” – was a measure of contrition. After some soul searching, she wrote, she had concluded that a careless over-devotion to her clients – “I am softhearted to the point of self-abnegation” – was her undoing.

The letter was an attempt to “look back at this disaster in my life and speak to the judge from my brain and my heart,” she told The Associated Press in a recent telephone interview. “I think mercy is a great quality, but it’s very hard to ask for it for myself.”

She admits the plea may be too little, too late.

“I don’t know whether it’s the lawyer or the Irish in me that says, ‘Prepare for the worst,’” she said. “I’m prepared to be led out of that courtroom in handcuffs.”

She will led out of the courtroom with handcuffs on because she is a dangerous woman. She is also a lawyer. She knows how to use and abuse the system, what strings to pull. It won’t work this time and she knows it.

It was hardly unusual for Stewart to question authority and defend unpopular figures in her three-decade legal career. With an aggressive yet self-effacing courtroom style, she represented Black Panthers, leaders of the 1960s student activist group Weather Underground, a former mob hit man and a man accused of trying to kill nine police officers.

As with other clients, she grew close to Abdel-Rahman and watched as he deteriorated mentally and physically through years of solitary confinement – to the point, she says, that she felt compelled to help him speak out.

She believes the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, more than anything, made her behavior intolerable in the eyes of the government and gave it an excuse to make an example out of her.

Ms. Stewart has a resume full of anti American activites and legal cases she has represented. She’s had a lifetime to change her way but has not done so. To ask for mercy now is too little, too late.

Testifying in her own defense, Stewart insisted she never condoned the sheik’s terrorist agenda. But she also called herself “a revolutionary with a small ‘r,’” saying she believed violence against institutions was sometimes necessary to fight oppression.

She still believes it.

“My politics hasn’t changed,” she said. But she regrets not striking a gentler tone on the witness stand.

“I probably should have spent more time talking about what kind of lawyer I am, so the jury would understand,” she said.

After her conviction, the attorney-turned-criminal defendant became a medical patient when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Surgery and radiation treatments have restored her health enough to face sentencing.

Her politics hasn’t changed. A trailer trash lawyer, we have here. Good riddance Lynne Stewart. You’re a clever yet cowardly woman. Own your mistakes and own them with sincerity and honesty.