Patriot Act Besieged -- A Justice Department honcho confesses: 'We
are losing the fight for the Patriot Act'
http://www.villagevoice.com/hentoff/
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0422/hentoff.php
nation
Liberty Beat
by Nat Hentoff
Patriot Act Besieged
A Justice Department honcho confesses: 'We are losing the fight for
the Patriot Act'
May 28th, 2004 1:00 PM
Attorney General Ashcroft confronted by the people rising
(check out image: from video, www.whitehouse.gov)
The objective of the Patriot Act [is to make] the population visible
and the Justice Department invisible. The Act inverts the
constitutional requirement that people's lives be private and the
work of government officials be public; it instead crafts a set of
conditions that make our inner lives transparent and the workings of
government opaque. - Elaine Scarry, "Acts of Resistance," Harper's
Magazine, May 2004
----------------------------------------------------------------------
----------
The Patriot Act makes it able for those of us in positions of
responsibility to defend the liberty of the American people. - George
W. Bush , quoted by the National Committee Against Repressive
Legislation, May 2004
----------------------------------------------------------------------
----------
In March, at the Washington University School of Law in St. Louis, I
debated Chuck Rosenberg, chief of staff to James Comey, John
Ashcroft's second-in-command at the Justice Department. A former
counsel to FBI director Robert Mueller, Rosenberg, a former
prosecutor, has specialized in counterintelligence and
counterterrorism.
The next day, the headline in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch story on
the debate (March 22) was "Ashcroft Staffer Admits Patriot Act Is
Unpopular." And Chuck Rosenberg was quoted in the story: "We're
losing this fight."
The reporter, Doug Moore, told me Rosenberg had made that admission
during the intermission in our debate. It wasn't my eloquence that
deflated Rosenberg, but rather my focus that afternoon on the
insistent resistance to the Patriot Act around the countryâ€"and in
Congress.
By May, 311 towns and citiesâ€"and four state legislatures (Alaska,
Hawaii, Vermont, and Maine)â€"had passed Bill of Rights resolutions
instructing the members of Congress from those areas to roll back the
most egregiously repressive sections of the Patriot Act, subsequent
executive orders, and other extensions of the act.
According to Nancy Talanian, director of the Bill of Rights Defense
Committee in Northampton, Massachusetts, and the primary organizer
and coordinator of this campaign to preserve the
Constitution, "Hundreds more communities and states are considering
resolutions. Last December, the National League of Cities approved a
resolution calling for amending the Patriot Act."
And on May 12, The Hill , a Washington publication that gets inside
congressional maneuvers, ran a report by Alexander Bolton
("Presidential Push Fails to Quell GOP Fear of Patriot Act"): "A
group of libertarian-minded Republicans in Congress is blocking
President Bush's effort to strengthen domestic counterterrorism laws
and reauthorize the USA Patriot Act, which the president has made one
of his top domestic priorities this year."
Not the whole Patriot Act, but sections of it, come up for
congressional renewal by December 2005. Bush is pressing hard for
Congress to renew those parts now. Standing in his way, however, is
Republican conservative James Sensenbrenner, chairman of the House
Judiciary Committee. According to The Hill: "Sensenbrenner has made
it clear to colleagues that he will not consider reauthorization of
the bill until next year."
On April 20, Wired News ( wired.com ) quoted constitutional law
professor David Cole, of the Georgetown University Law Center, on the
resistance to the Patriot Act. Since 9-11, Cole has been the Samuel
Adams of our time, a one-man version of the pre-Revolution committees
of correspondence. Said Cole:
"One year after 9/11, National Public Radio did a poll and found that
only 7 percent of Americans felt they had given up important
liberties in the war on terrorism. Two years after 9/11, NBC or CBS
did a very similar poll and they found that now 52 percent of
Americans report being concerned that their civil liberties are being
infringed by the Bush administration's war on terrorism. That's a
huge shift."
And on April 14, in Salt Lake City, when the Senate Judiciary
Committee chairman, Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, came home to harvest
support for the Patriot Act, among his fiercest critics was Scott
Bradley of the Utah Branch of the ultra-conservative EagleForum.
Bradley reminded Hatchâ€"Ashcroft's premier cheerleader in
Congressâ€"of a prediction by Osama bin Laden in a BBC interview
after 9-11. The arch-terrorist said:
"The battle has moved to inside America. . . . Freedom and human
rights in America are doomed. The U.S. government will lead the
American people and the West in general into an unbearable hell and
choking fire."
Scott Bradley went on to tell Hatch: "The United States is stronger
and braver than that," but "we must make absolutely certain that the
rush for security does not . . . destroy what we really cherish about
this great nation."
Then, this libertarian conservative confronted Orrin Hatch with a
grave warning by James Madison in 1788:
"I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom
of the people by gradual and silent encroachment of those in power
than by violent and sudden usurpations."
The next day, as if to confirm Madison's prophecy, the Associated
Press reported, "The number of secret surveillance warrants sought by
the FBI has increased by 85 percent in the last three years, a pace
that has outstripped the Justice Department's ability to quickly
process them."
They'll process these warrants, which are authorized by the secret
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the AP notes, for "wiretaps,
video surveillance, property search and other spying on people
believed to be terrorists or spies." And we'll never know if our
records are being included in the databases. These are secret
searches.
Que le vaya bien
--- End forwarded message ---
To subscribe send an email to:
Activist_List-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Activist_List/
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
Activist_List-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
|