Posted on 10/28/2001 11:05:56 AM PST by sargon
"Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny," British parliamentarian Edmund Burke explained in 1800.
Two centuries have passed, but legislatures continue to reinforce the link between bad law and tyranny. The U.S. Congress did so this week, with the passage of the ambitiously named Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT) Act.
Rare are the moments in American history when a Congress has surrendered so many cherished freedoms in a single trip to the altar of immediate fear.
Crafted in Attorney General John Ashcroft?s little shop of legal horrors from the remnants of past assaults on the Constitution, the "USA PATRIOT ACT" is a legislative Frankenstein?s monster.
"This bill goes light years beyond what is necessary to combat terrorism," argues Laura Murphy, Director of the ACLU Washington National Office. "Included in the bill are provisions that would allow for the mistreatment of immigrants, the suppression of dissent and the investigation and surveillance of wholly innocent Americans."
And the bad legislation is now the law of the land. Signed Friday by President Bush, it was opposed in the Senate only by Russ Feingold, D-Wi. In the House is drew broader opposition from 62 Democrats -- including the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, Michigan?s John Conyers, and Congressional civil liberties watchdogs such as Massachusetts? Barney Frank and Georgia?s John Lewis -- as well as three Republicans and Vermont Independent Bernie Sanders.
What freedoms have Americans lost? Civil libertarians worry most that the new legislation:
-- Permits the Attorney General to incarcerate or detain non-citizens based on mere suspicion, and to deny re-admission to the U.S. of non-citizens (including lawful permanent residents) for engaging in speech protected by the First Amendment.
-- Minimizes judicial supervision of telephone and Internet surveillance by law enforcement authorities in anti-terrorism investigations AND in routine criminal investigations unrelated to terrorism.
-- Expands the ability of the government to conduct secret searches, again in anti-terrorism investigations AND in routine criminal investigations unrelated to terrorism. This means that law enforcement authorities can enter and search an individual?s home without presenting a warrant or in any way informing the subject of the search.
-- Gives the Attorney General and the Secretary of State the power to designate domestic groups as terrorist organizations and to block any non-citizen who belongs to them from entering the country.
-- Makes the payment of membership dues to political organizations a deportable offense.
-- Grants the FBI broad access to sensitive medical, financial, mental health, and educational records about individuals without having to show evidence of a crime and without a court order.
-- Will lead to large-scale investigations of American citizens for "intelligence" purposes and use of intelligence authorities to by-pass probable cause requirements in criminal cases.
-- Puts the CIA and other intelligence agencies back in the business of spying on Americans by giving the Director of Central Intelligence the authority to identify priority targets for intelligence surveillance in the United States.
-- Allows searches of highly personal financial records without notice and without judicial review based on a very low standard that does not require probable cause of a crime or even relevancy to an ongoing terrorism investigation.
-- Allows student records to be searched based on a very low standard of relevancy to an investigation.
-- Creates a broad new definition of "domestic terrorism" that could target people who engage in acts of political protest and subject them to wiretapping and enhanced penalties.
Standing alone in the Senate to oppose the legislation, Feingold recalled past assaults on basic liberties: "The Alien and Sedition Acts, the suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War, the internment of Japanese-Americans, German-Americans, and Italian-Americans during World War II, the blacklisting of supposed communist sympathizers during the McCarthy era, and the surveillance and harassment of antiwar protesters, including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., during the Vietnam War."
He then explained to his fellow senators: "Now some may say, indeed we may hope, that we have come a long way since the those days of infringements on civil liberties. But there is ample reason for concern. And I have been troubled in the past six weeks by the potential loss of commitment in the Congress and the country to traditional civil liberties."
In the contemporary legislature where he sits, the Senate of the United States of America, no member would stand with Russ Feingold. But he did not stand alone. Surely, a legislator from another era and another legislature, Edmund Burke, was with him in spirit.
Anyone who has read my other posts knows that I am quite in support of this war and generally supportive of the President thus far, so please refrain from the ad hominem attacks and name calling simply because I oppose this specific tyranny. I voted for the President who signed this bill, but he has lost my future vote for now, at least...
Flame away.
Furthermore if the President could lose your support over ONE issue, then your support is not worth anything to begin with.
I find it amazing, 225 years after some very intelligent people wrote the Declaration of Independence, that today Americans are falling all over themselves to give up everything our predecesors fought so hard to keep.
"Those who trade freedom for security gain neither"
Freedom is like being pregnant. Either you are or you aren't.
Flame suit on.
We will not keep our freedom if we find excuses to ignore the constitution "just this once". There is NO ACCEPTABLE reason to ignore any provision of the Bill of Rights and we must fight this outrage at every opportunity.
So do I. One of those intelligent people was my G-G-G-G-G grandfather. Therefore, the insults and flames don't really hurt me personally at all; I have a clear conscience in my opposition to tyranny, in all its forms, majority or otherwise. But it does sadden me that there are always so many who are willing to exchange essential liberty for some kind of imagined temporary safety. This sort of mob hysteria inevitably leads to greater tyranny...
This is the standard argument of statists. Would you support having all your phone calls and emails monitored, and a GPS transmitter in your car? Would you trust Hillary Clinton and Janet Reno with these powers?
That's a very misleading statement. The Constitution expressly forbids exiling American citizens, so anyone who has studied our system knows that this deportation can only happen to foreignors who are here in the U.S., however, very few Americans even know our own system (and that lack of knowledge leads to a lot of baseless fearmongering over these sorts of laws).
Frankly, we haven't lost any freedoms. We might get inconvenienced, but we aren't prohibited from doing anything by this new law.
Of course, and so did you only you probably didn't know it. For over 200 years it's been legal for Postmasters to read postcards. If you wanted privacy, you had to go to the effort of mailing a letter instead of a postcard.
Likewise, if you want private e-mails, then use encryption. No one is forbidding you from using encryption just as no one is forbidding you from mailing a letter instead of a postcard. Encryption is also available for your phone as well as GPS/car (by the way, the only GPS transmitters are in space via our satellites - everything else is a reciever).
We haven't lost any freedoms. We might have to tolerate a few inconveniences, but we can still do everything today that we could legally do prior to 9/11 (in regard to this new law).
Until the government decides to sneak a little transmitter in your keyboard to broadcast the passphrase needed to unlock your encryption/decryption keys.
Also, what's going to happen when anyone who refuses to turn their guns into the government is branded a 'terrorist'?
The Constitution also expressly forbids a lot of other things the government does on a day-to-day basis.
Now is not the time for rampant, unfounded paranoia.
But even that won't catch you handwriting your passphrase on your palm pilot (hey, I can be even more paranoid than you if this is a competition)...
Perhaps they have the 2nd Amendment in their nightstand.
They haven't been asked to quarter soldiers in their house in peacetime or in wartime.
My right to be secure in my home has not been violated. No one has entered my home with unreasonable searches or seizures. And I have yet to see where probable cause has been written out of anything.
Not one of us is being held in jail without indictment. And the ones being held without indictment that are being held due to possible terrorism links; are being held in time of public danger. No private property has been taken by our government (except for the land theft by x42 and Babbitt).
No one has denied my right to vote.
There are no curfews in my neighborhood nor any marshall law enacted.
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