Ann Coulter on Fox News tonight

And if you have nothing to say, you won't miss the 1st ammendment.

This is sounding dangerously like a potential tagline....

I am so sorry, I forgo to e-mail you the pics!!

Exactly the type of mindless pro da of which I was referring.

OK, please spell out the specific parts of the act which scare you, since you know what is in it.

OK, please spell out the specific parts of the act which scare you, since you know what is in it.

My biggest concern is how easy it makes it for the government to go through people's records and homes. Sure, good citizens won't have to (in theory) worry about prosecution, but it opens the door for plenty of abuse in the hands of the wrong person.

But maybe I'm overreacting a little...

My biggest concern is how easy it makes it for the government to go through people's records and homes.

Since you know what is in it, you should have no problem being specific in exactly what changes the Act made to existing laws that justifies your concern.

How could it possibly be of any concern to any government, local or federal, that I have overdue books?

It isn't...

Since you know what is in it, you should have no problem being specific in exactly what changes the Act made to existing laws that justifies your concern.

Well, there's section 215. Provided the government says it's to protect terrorism, it can search through any of my personal records without my knowledge or consent.

Section 218 allows them to search my home without accountability to the Department of Justice as long as they can allege that there is any foreign intelligence basis for the search.

The big thing that makes me nervous is, what is the criteria they're using to determine "foreign intelligence basis"? I'll read up more on this later, but it's just something that makes me a little iffy. Fortunately, at least these two expire in 2005, so with just a little luck, won't have to worry about a mad[wo]man having them in place.

"...while we still have a Republican in office - I would suggest: 1. Complete annihilation of the electoral collage. A presidential election based solely on popular vote. This should bar Hillary from being elected. ...."

It was to insure that mentalities like you are never able to obtain the reins of absolute power in America, that our Founders set up the government precisely the way they did.

The Constitution stands in the way of all tyrannical extremists. It stands in the way of what you would enforce on others just as it stands in the way of the Marxist DemocRATS, and you both hate that fact.

You would be a threat to our God-given freedoms if you were ever able to obtain absolute power.

Ahhhh .... the wisdom of America's *inspired* Framers. That wisdom has been proven over and over and over again since our Founding.

Marci Hamilton, ... a nationally recognized expert on constitutional and copyright law ... [in] her forthcoming book, Copyright and the Constitution, examines the historical and philosophical underpinnings of copyright law and asserts that the American "copyright regime" is grounded in Calvinism, resulting in a philosophy that favors the product over the producer.

Calvinism? Hamilton's interest in the intersection of Calvinist theology and political philosophy emerged early in her career when she began reading the work of leading constitutional law scholars. She was puzzled by their "theme of a system of self-rule." "They talked about it as if it were in existence," she said. "My gut reaction was that direct democracy and self-rule are a myth that doesn't really exist."

What Hamilton found was that a "deep and abiding distrust of human motives that permeates Calvinist theology also permeates the Constitution."

Her investigation of that issue has led to another forthcoming book, tentatively titled The Reformed Constitution: What the Framers Meant by Representation.

That our country's form of government is a republic instead of a pure democracy is no accident, according to Hamilton. The constitutional framers "expressly rejected direct democracy. Instead, the Constitution constructs a representative system of government that places all ruling power in the hands of elected officials."

And the people? Their power is limited to the voting booth and communication with their elected representatives, she said. "The Constitution is not built on faith in the people, but rather on distrust of all social entities, including the people."

..Two of the most important framers, James Wilson and James Madison, were steeped in Presbyterian precepts.

It is Calvinism, Hamilton argued, that "more than any other Protestant theology, brings together the seeming paradox that man's will is corrupt by nature but also capable of doing good." In other words, Calvinism holds that "we can hope for the best but expect the worst from each other and from the social institutions humans devise."

"Neither Calvin nor the framers stop at distrust, however," Hamilton said. "They also embrace an extraordinary theology of hope. The framers, like Calvin, were reformers."

Emory Report November 29, 1999 Volume 52, No. 13 -Elaine Justice

"Well, there's section 215. Provided the government says it's to protect terrorism, it can search through any of my personal records without my knowledge or consent."

Rebuttal:

"The furor over section 215 is a case study in Patriot Act fear-mongering. Section 215 allows the FBI to seek business records in the hands of third parties—the enrollment application of a Saudi national in an American flight school, say—while investigating terrorism. The section broadens the categories of institutions whose records and other “tangible items” the government may seek in espionage and terror cases, on the post-9/11 recognition that lawmakers cannot anticipate what sorts of organizations terrorists may exploit. In the past, it may have been enough to get hotel bills or storage-locker contracts (two of the four categories of records covered in the narrower law that section 215 replaced) to trace the steps of a Soviet spy; today, however, gumshoes may find they need receipts from scuba-diving schools or farm-supply stores to piece together a plot to blow up the Golden Gate Bridge. Section 215 removed the requirement that the records must concern an “agent of a foreign power” (generally, a spy or terrorist), since, again, the scope of an anti-terror investigation is hard to predict in advance.
From this tiny acorn, Bush administration foes have conjured forth a mighty assault on the First Amendment. The ACLU warns that with section 215, “the FBI could spy on a person because they don’t like the books she reads, or because they don’t like the websites she visits. They could spy on her because she wrote a letter to the editor that criticized government policy.” Stanford Law School dean Kathleen Sullivan calls section 215 “threatening.” And librarians, certain that the section is all about them, are scaring library users with signs warning that the government may spy on their reading habits.
These charges are nonsense. Critics of section 215 deliberately ignore the fact that any request for items under the section requires judicial approval. An FBI agent cannot simply walk into a flight school or library and demand records. The bureau must first convince the court that oversees anti-terror investigations (the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, court) that the documents are relevant to protecting “against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities.” The chance that the FISA court will approve a 215 order because the FBI “doesn’t like the books [a person] reads . . . or because she wrote a letter to the editor that criticized government policy” is zero. If the bureau can show that someone using the Bucks County library computers to surf the web and send e-mails has traveled to Pakistan and was seen with other terror suspects in Virginia, on the other hand, then the court may well grant an order to get the library’s Internet logs.
Moreover, before the FBI can even approach the FISA court with any kind of request, agents must have gone through multiple levels of bureaucratic review just to open an anti-terror investigation. And to investigate a U.S. citizen (rather than an alien) under FISA, the FBI must show that he is knowingly engaged in terrorism or espionage.
Ignoring the Patriot Act’s strict judicial review requirements is the most common strategy of the act’s critics. Time and again, the Cassandras will hold up a section from the bill as an example of rampaging executive power—without ever mentioning that the power in question is overseen by federal judges who will allow its use only if the FBI can prove its relevance to a bona fide terror (or sometimes criminal) investigation. By contrast, in the few cases where a law enforcement power does not require judicial review, the jackboots-are-coming brigade screams for judges as the only trustworthy check on executive tyranny.
Strategy #2: Invent New Rights. A running theme of the campaign against section 215 and many other Patriot Act provisions is that they violate the Fourth Amendment right to privacy. But there is no Fourth Amendment privacy right in records or other items disclosed to third parties. A credit-card user, for example, reveals his purchases to the seller and to the credit-card company. He therefore has no privacy expectations in the record of those purchases that the Fourth Amendment would protect. As a result, the government, whether in a criminal case or a terror investigation, may seek his credit-card receipts without a traditional Fourth Amendment showing to a court that there is “probable cause” to believe that a crime has been or is about to be committed. Instead, terror investigators must convince the FISA court that the receipts are “relevant.”
Despite librarians’ fervent belief to the contrary, this analysis applies equally to library patrons’ book borrowing or Internet use. The government may obtain those records without violating anyone’s Fourth Amendment rights, because the patron has already revealed his borrowing and web browsing to library staff, other readers (in the days of handwritten book checkout cards), and Internet service providers. Tombstones declaring the death of the Fourth Amendment contain no truth whatsoever.
What’s different in the section 215 provision is that libraries or other organizations can’t challenge the FISA court’s order and can’t inform the target of the investigation, as they can in ordinary criminal proceedings. But that difference is crucial for the Justice Department’s war-making function. The department wants to know if an al-Qaida suspect has consulted maps of the Croton reservoir and researched the toxic capacities of cyanide in the New York Public Library not in order to win a conviction for poisoning New York’s water supply but to preempt the plot before it happens. The battleground is not the courtroom but the world beyond, where speed and secrecy can mean life or death.
Strategy #3: Demand Antiquated Laws. The librarians’ crusade against section 215 has drawn wide media attention and triggered an ongoing congressional battle, led by Vermont socialist Bernie Sanders, to pass a law purporting to protect the “Freedom to Read.” But the publicity that administration-hostile librarians were able to stir up pales in comparison to the clout of the Internet privacy lobby. The day the Patriot Act became law, the Center for Democracy and Technology sent around a warning that “privacy standards” had been “gutt[ed].” The Electronic Freedom Foundation declared that the “civil liberties of ordinary Americans have taken a tremendous blow.” Jeffrey Rosen of The New Republic claimed that the law gave the government “essentially unlimited authority” to surveil Americans. The ACLU asserted that the FBI had suddenly gained “wide powers of phone and internet surveillance.” And the Washington Post editorialized that the act made it “easier” to wiretap by “lowering the standard of judicial review.”
The target of this ire? A section that merely updates existing law to modern technology. The government has long had the power to collect the numbers dialed from, or the incoming numbers to, a person’s telephone by showing a court that the information is “relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation.” Just as in section 215 of the Patriot Act, this legal standard is lower than traditional Fourth Amendment “probable cause,” because the phone user has already forfeited any constitutional privacy rights he may have in his phone number or the number he calls by revealing them to the phone company.
A 1986 federal law tried to extend the procedures for collecting phone-number information to electronic communications, but it was so poorly drafted that its application to e-mail remained unclear. Section 216 of the Patriot Act resolves the ambiguity by making clear that the rules for obtaining phone numbers apply to incoming and outgoing e-mail addresses as well. The government can obtain e-mail headers—but not content—by showing a court that the information is “relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation.” Contrary to cyber-libertarian howls, this is not a vast new power to spy but merely the logical extension of an existing power to a new form of communication. Nothing else has changed: the standard for obtaining information about the source or destination of a communication is the same as always."

You continued:

"Section 218 allows them to search my home without accountability to the Department of Justice as long as they can allege that there is any foreign intelligence basis for the search."

To the contrary, section 218 provides trivial changes to the FISA Act of 1978. The only change is that foreign intelligence or terrorism need only be "a significant purpose" of the investigation, as opposed to "the purpose". That's it. There is no change to the level of accountability. The following paragraph from the article above applies here as well:

"Ignoring the Patriot Act’s strict judicial review requirements is the most common strategy of the act’s critics. Time and again, the Cassandras will hold up a section from the bill as an example of rampaging executive power—without ever mentioning that the power in question is overseen by federal judges who will allow its use only if the FBI can prove its relevance to a bona fide terror (or sometimes criminal) investigation."

BTTT!!!

Rhetoric vs. Reality

A recent National Review Online piece [http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-lynch082103.asp] by the Cato Institute's Timothy Lynch addressed a number of questions to the Attorney General about the Patriot Act. As Director of Public Affairs at the Department of Justice, I am responding to Mr. Lynch's questions.

CATO RHETORIC: "Mr. Ashcroft, you say that Congress passed the Patriot Act by an 'overwhelming margin,' but do you think the vote would have been different if legislators had known about your plans to hold terrorism suspects indefinitely and to prosecute others in military tribunals, instead of the civilian courts? You may recall that you announced those initiatives once the debate over the necessity of the Patriot proposal was over and the law was officially enacted."

REALITY: The Patriot Act continues to enjoy 3-1 popular support in a recent USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll, despite a months-long disinformation campaign about it. The Patriot Act was passed in the Senate by a vote of 98-1 and a House vote of 357-66. The same small, but vocal, minority who opposed the Patriot Act when it passed overwhelmingly in October, 2001, opposes it now. These are many of the same groups that opposed the 1996 Anti-Terrorism Act signed by President Clinton. In other words, these opponents not only think we are doing too much now to fight terrorism, they thought we were doing too much on September 10, 2001.

Fortunately, the American people understand that the Patriot Act supplies vital tools for the fight against terrorism. It allows various agencies within the federal government to share information in order to prevent terrorist attacks; it updated the law to keep up with the changing technologies terrorists use; and the Patriot Act allows law enforcement to use the same crime-fighting tools against terrorists that have been used successfully for years against drug dealers and organized crime.

I should point out that this question demonstrates confusion about what is and what is not part of the Patriot Act as well as a misunderstanding of pre-existing law in this country. The detention of illegal aliens was authorized under pre-existing immigration law. Military tribunals have been used throughout our history as an exercise of the President's well-established war powers. Thus, neither of these was an "initiative" announced by the Attorney General after passage of the Patriot Act.

When Mr. Lynch speaks of "plans to hold terrorism suspects indefinitely," he may be referring to the detention of approximately 750 illegal aliens who were present in the United States in violation of law and who were of possible interest to the 9/11-attack investigation. The Patriot Act had no effect on law enforcement's authority to detain those illegal aliens, which existed prior to passage of the Patriot Act. These approximately 750 aliens were detained because they were illegally in the United States. Approximately two-thirds of these illegal aliens have now been deported and only a handful are currently detained. However, all were charged with criminal or civil violations of federal immigration law, and the detention of these individuals was legal, appropriate, and necessary.

Illegal aliens in removal proceedings do not have an automatic right to bond and release; the fact that an alien was of interest to the investigation into the 9/11 terrorist attacks, means that the FBI had concerns that the alien may have posed a danger to the community and/or presented a flight risk. The simple fact is that illegal aliens who are not detained tend to flee. In a report released in February 2003, the Justice Department's Inspector General found that 87 percent of aliens who are not detained during the pendency of their removal proceedings flee.

Similarly, the Patriot Act did not effect the authority of the U.S. armed forces to detain captured enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay or elsewhere. Nor is their detention an "initiative" announced by the Attorney General. Rather, these individuals, captured during military hostilities, are under the supervision of the Department of Defense. Detainees at Guantanamo, who have demonstrated their will to cause harm to the U.S. and its allies by participating and supporting terrorism, are detained only until it is determined they are not a threat, or for the duration of hostilities — not for an indefinite time. The United States always has had the authority to detain enemies captured on the battlefield. The purpose of doing so is to deny their services to the enemy as well as to gather intelligence about the enemy to protect our interests.

Military commissions are also unrelated in any way to the Patriot Act and they are not an "initiative" of the Attorney General. The President has always had the constitutional authority to create military commissions. Military commissions historically have been used to try violations of the law of war and are separate from the criminal-justice system. The President has stated that military commissions will be used only to try enemy combatants who are foreign nationals, not U.S. citizens.

Nevertheless, the President and the Defense Department have ordered that those tried by military commission receive many of the protections afforded to the accused in civilian courts. For example, military-commission procedures apply a presumption of innocence, require proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, apply a privilege against self-incrimination, and prohibit drawing an adverse inference if the accused chooses not to testify. Anyone tried before a military commission will be represented by a military defense counsel free of charge. In addition, the accused may hire civilian defense counsel at his own expense. Military-commission proceedings will be open to the maximum extent practicable, consistent with protecting national-security information. Commission panel members will have as their primary duty ensuring a full and fair trial.

CATO RHETORIC: "Mr. Ashcroft, you say that 132 individuals have been convicted or pled guilty in your terrorism investigations, but there have been reports that federal prosecutors are making veiled threats — that if suspects fight the charges by pursuing a jury trial before an impartial judge, well, then, they'll be turned over to the U.S. military, where they will be held in solitary confinement indefinitely. Have you investigated these newspaper reports? Is such conduct by a federal prosecutor constitutional, legal, and ethical?"

REALITY: Among the 132 individuals who have been convicted or pled guilty are shoe-bomber Richard Reid and "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh, as well as individuals who were financing terrorism or had provided false documents or other assistance to terrorists. As to alleged reports about "veiled threats," Mr. Lynch appears to be referring to a story in the Washington Post on July 29, 2003, entitled "No Choice But Guilty," which contained several errors and misquoted the U.S. Attorney in Buffalo, Michael Battle. The U.S. Attorney wrote the following letter to the editor to correct those errors but the Post declined to publish it, perpetuating the false information. U.S. Attorney Michael Battle's letter follows in its entirety:

To the Editor:

Michael Powell's story "No Choice But Guilty" in the July 29, 2003 Washington Post contains several errors in quotes attributed to me; the reporter appears to have attributed quotes or statements to me that I did not make, in order to justify his story.

For example, I did not say that the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of New York never explicitly threatened to invoke enemy combatant status, but that all sides knew the government held that hammer. I did not say: "I don't mean to sound cavalier, but the war on terror has tilted the whole legal landscape… We are trying to use the full arsenal of our powers." What I explained to the reporter was that the issue of enemy combatant status for the Lackawanna Six defendants was not raised by my office. The issue was raised by defense counsel, which sought assurances that enemy combatant status would *not* be considered. At the request of defense counsel, that assurance was provided in the agreements that accompanied the guilty pleas of the defendants in this case.

I also did not say, as the reporter writes: "Battle said defense lawyers came to realize two facts of life. Attorney General John D. Ashcroft would not hesitate to veto any deals. And the Defense Department stood ready to ask Bush to designate the defendants as enemy combatants." I never said that, directly or indirectly. What I did say, in response to a question about who approved the plea deals, is that my office worked on reaching the deals, in proper consultation with the Department of Justice. As is standard practice in all terrorism cases, consultation occurs with the Department of Justice; in some cases, all the way up to the Attorney General's office.

Proper context is important in every news story. In this case, my quotes were either taken out of context, or mischaracterized, in order to feed the reporters' perception that federal prosecutors offered the Lackawanna Six defendants "No Choice But Guilty." As I've already stated, that is completely false — there were no threats by the government, implicit or otherwise. At the plea hearings for each defendant, the court asked each defendant under oath whether they were pleading guilty because of any threats. Each defendant stated they were pleading guilty freely and voluntarily. Each of the defendants' lawyers, as officers of the court, were present, and none of them stated to the court that any of the pleas were based on threats or coercion.

Thank you,
Michael Battle
United States Attorney, Western District of New York

CATO RHETORIC: "Mr. Ashcroft, in congressional testimony, you have claimed that federal law-enforcement agencies have been making steady 'progress' in the war against terrorism. In support of that claim, you note that 'more than 18,000 subpoenas and search warrants' have been executed. In other words, the federal government has threatened more than 18,000 people (citizen and noncitizen alike) with fines and imprisonment if they do not comply with government demands. My question is this: When you say that American soldiers have laid down their lives for the 'cause of liberty,' what do you mean by 'liberty'? And do you expect your department will be making even more 'progress' by executing more subpoenas and search warrants this year?"

REALITY: Yes, we do believe that subpoenas issued by grand juries comprised of United States citizens, and search warrants issued by a judge upon a showing of probable cause, allow us to make progress in the war on terror. The use of subpoenas and warrants has long been a standard investigative technique in virtually every type of criminal investigation. Justice Department prosecutors have done no more than make use of these centuries-old legal tools to fight a 21st-century war.

In order to effectively fight terrorism, we must gather information about the terrorists' plots. In the aftermath of 9/11, thousands of subpoenas and court orders were issued so we could learn about the 19 hijackers' travels, the places they lived or stayed, their associates, the people they encountered, the phones, banks, or rental stores they used. Without the use of grand-jury subpoenas and judicially approved search warrants, we would not have the wealth of information that we have about the 19 hijackers and their associates today.

Far more important, however, is the use of subpoenas and court orders to prevent terrorists from launching future attacks. Subpoenas and court orders are used to follow up on the hundreds of pieces of valuable intelligence information we have obtained from our investigations and battles overseas and elsewhere. They are also used to track the activities of alleged terrorist cells in this country in communities as diverse as Buffalo, Seattle, Detroit, and Portland.

Mr. Lynch appears to believe that Americans can acclimate themselves to intermittent terrorism. As he explains in the introduction to his study, "Breaking the Vicious Cycle: Preserving Our Liberties While Fighting Terrorism": "The American people can accept the reality that the president and Congress are simply not capable of preventing terrorist attacks from occurring." We profoundly disagree. The fact is that we have disrupted, detected, and dismantled hundreds of terrorists and their networks worldwide as well as in this country — and we must continue to do so. Terrorism will remain a threat to this country, but there are legal tools and methods that can assist us in making every effort to prevent further acts of terrorism. We can — and will — attack the terrorist threat legally and consistent with a free society.

CATO RHETORIC: "Mr. Ashcroft, you have said that if Congress were to 'abandon the tools' of the Patriot Act, it would 'senselessly imperil American lives and American liberty.' As you know, the Patriot Act makes it a crime for anyone who has been served with a subpoena to speak to anyone about the matter. Writing to the local newspaper or placing a call to one's representative in Congress about such a subpoena would constitute a criminal offense. Are you saying that if the Congress were to revisit and abandon that 'tool' and legalize speech about FBI subpoenas, that liberty would be imperiled?"

REALITY: Section 215 of the Patriot Act allows the FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act; passed in 1978) court to issue orders for business records in international-terrorism or espionage cases — just as federal grand juries have long been able to obtain the same records through subpoenas in ordinary criminal cases. Records can be obtained under section 215 only through a court order (not, as Mr. Lynch states, through a "subpoena"), and only if the court determines that the FBI is legally entitled to them (the FBI has no authority to issue such orders unilaterally).

Section 215 of the Patriot Act does not make it "a crime for anyone who has been served with a subpoena to speak to anyone about the matter." However, Section 215's confidentiality rule is necessary to protect our national security, and is based on nondisclosure orders that courts always have been able to enter in ordinary criminal cases. For example, the judge in the Kobe Bryant case may order the news media to refrain from divulging information about the alleged victim's personal life, in order to protect her privacy. In the same way, if we were to serve a court order on a flight-training school to find out if a Mohammed Atta is taking flight lessons, we obviously would not want the school to tell Atta, who might then accelerate his terrorist plot. As with any court order, the FISA-court can consider sanction, but the Patriot Act does not make such violations criminal offenses.

We do enthusiastically welcome debate about the Patriot Act and invite all Americans to learn the facts about this important legislation by logging on to www.lifeandliberty.gov. Our new website includes an overview of the Patriot Act, its entire text, statements from Members of Congress explaining the law, factual information dispelling some of the major myths perpetuated about the act, as well as other information.

— Barbara Comstock is Director of Public Affairs at the Department of Justice. September 3, 2003, 12:35 p.m.
http://nationalreview.com/comment/comment-comstock090303.asp

We welcome discussion about the Patriot Act and would encourage readers to learn more about it on our new website http://www.lifeandliberty.gov/.

I was being a) methamphetamenous (not literally, mind you), and b) sarcastic about everything except the point that we should keep Hillary away from the White House when I wrote what we should do to go about doing so. The three points I listed were not meant to be taken seriously.

Interesting articles; thanks for pulling them up.

I'm not sure what I think about the Patriot Act right now, but I know I'll never be opposed to it. This morning in COM101, my teacher made a few comments about the negatives of the Patriot Act, and I tend to oppose his views on such things almost on principle. (Example: in the next breath, he said that the Gov. Bush files were archived in a private facility--which is an outright lie.)

I'm not sure what I think about the Patriot Act right now, but I know I'll never be opposed to it.

And I just realized that makes no sense forever. I meant to say, "I'm not sure what I think about the Patriot Act right now, but I know I'll never be a vehement opponent of it." Call it a Freudian slip, perhaps.

Either way, I'm dropping out of this, considering that I probably look stupid enough as it is.

Yeah Hillary as Prez in 2008.....
AND BILL AS ~~VICE~~ VISE PREZ...

the wresting enthusiats(demos) would love it.. and other morons(voters) would salivate over it... and the republicans would posture over a 3 term prez(BILL) and get sidelined over leagalities..

Gag - puke - choke! - What are you trying to do, make a "true" socialist country?

Gag - puke - choke! - What are you trying to do, make a "true" socialist country?

Okay... I said I wouldn't post to this thread again, but... once again, that was sarcasm and hyperbole. :)

Although if I honestly believed that pure socialism was the only way we could keep Hillary out of the White House...