Posted on 11/28/2001 6:33:06 AM PST by Registered
To: wideawake
But I hope her successful convalescence gives her time to rethink her assaults on American freedom. (Registered note: Regardng Sarah Brady's lung cancer)
When W and Ashcroft face death I wonder if they will rethink their assaults on American freedom?
33 posted on 11/27/01 7:08 PM Eastern by sakic
To: sakic
When W and Ashcroft face death I wonder if they will rethink their assaults on American freedom
Be specific. Name all of these assaults on freedom that the citizens of the United States are being subjected to by Bush and Ashcroft.
94 posted on 11/27/01 8:26 PM Eastern by Registered
To: Registered
Here you go
101 posted on 11/27/01 8:42 PM Eastern by sakic
To: sakic
The Village Voice!?!?!? Bwaaaahahahahaha! You are a work of art!
147 posted on 11/27/01 9:53 PM Eastern by Registered
To: Registered
Nat Hentoff remains the strongest defender of the Constitution in this country. The fact that you don't know this comes as no surprise.
156 posted on 11/28/01 7:13 AM Eastern by sakic
To: sakic
I know who the man is, however your apparent lemming-like approach to every word that proceedeth out of his mouth draws a shadow on your ability to defend what you said earlier. I just checked and Nat's article apparently hasn't been posted yet in the FR forum. Why don't you post it and let's start discussing the specifics of what Nat's concerns are with the USA PATRIOT Act. Of course, the brunt of his analysis came with the assistance of the beloved ACLU, so this could be a fun exercise.
In my mind your little link to his article in no way justifies the idiotic statement you made at the start of this thread. I'm not immune to making the same type of stupid statement you did, but at least when I make them I apologize and move on.
161 posted on 11/28/01 10:16 AM Eastern by Registered
...and now
Nat Hentoff Giving the FBI a Blank Warrant John Ashcroft v. the Constitution We're going to protect and honor the Constitution, and I don't have the authority to set it aside. If I had the authority to set it aside, this would be a dangerous government, and I wouldn't respect it. We'll not be driven to abandon our freedoms by those who would seek to destroy them. Attorney General John Ashcroft, Legal Times, October 22 It is a good bill . . . that allows us to preserve our security . . . but also protect our liberties. Patrick Leahy, Democrat, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, National Public Radio, October 26 George W. Bush, with great satisfaction, signed the USA PATRIOT Act on Friday, October 26, after both the House and Senate overwhelmingly approved most of what John Ashcroft had urgently sent them, demanding that they move immediately to show the nation and the terrorists that we would surely prevail in this war for freedom. A few hours later, presidential press secretary Ari Fleischer held his regular televised press conference, attended by Washington's elite cadre of journalists, who asked no substantial questions about the new antiterrorism legislation. The subject was disposed of quickly. On the following Sunday morning's commentary and analysis programs, there were also no probing questions about what the bristling new law was doing to the Constitution. Not even Tim Russert, the most careful researcher among the Sunday hosts, paid it much mind. And in the weeks since, in most newspapers, and as usual, on both broadcast and cable television as well as radio, Americans who cared at all were not able to find news of how a good many of their fundamental liberties had been diminished. As George Melloan had said in the October 23 Wall Street Journal, "one of the most insidious things about terrorist attacks" is that "they engender an 'anything goes' mentality within the nation under attack. . . . Yet as both President Bush and Mr. Ashcroft have observed, if the attacks force a general curtailment of civil liberties, the terrorists have won." Well, we've begun to lose that part of the battle. For the following guide to what's actually in the USA PATRIOT Act, I am indebted to the ACLU's extensively detailed fact sheetswhich were sent to Congress and the press as the bill was being steamrollered throughalong with the analyses by the Center for Democracy and Technology in Washington. Also included are interviews with staff members of both organizations and workers at other civil liberties bunkers. To begin with, because of the limited technology in his time, George Orwell could not have conceived of how pervasively we are now going to be surveilled. I have differed with the ACLU on some issues, but the work by its persistent Washington staff was extraordinarily comprehensive. Congress, however, was panicked; and the press, by and large, works hard to understand anthraxbut not the Constitution. I saw hardly any mention, by the way, of the fact that Congress was in such a rush to yield to most of John Ashcroft's demands that although there were some differences between the House and Senate bills, the time-honored practice of holding a conference between the two bodies to resolve the disagreements was abandoned. Instead, behind closed doors, the leaders worked out a "preconference" arrangement. Therefore, when this law is challenged in the courtsby the ACLU and othersthe judges, without a formal conference report in front of them, will not have a clear understanding of the legislative intent of this law. Maybe that's what our leaders wanted. To begin with, because of the limited technology in his time, George Orwell could not have conceived of how pervasively we are now going to be surveilled. St. Petersburg Times syndicated columnist Robyn Blumner has noted that we are already changing from being citizens to being dossiers. But you ain't seen nothing yet. The USA PATRIOT Act has markedly loosened the standards for government electronic surveillanceof our computers, e-mail, Internet searches, and telephones. This means all kinds of telephones, including, for example, not only the pay phones that the suspect may be using, but any pay phones in the area of his or her travels. This vast expansion of eavesdropping is due to the law's extension of roving wiretaps, and to the one-stop national warrant that will cover a suspect anywhere he or she goes. That wouldn't have surprised Orwell. This peripatetic surveillance applies not only to terrorist investigations, but under some provisions of the law, to routine criminal investigations. As the ACLU emphasizes, this law "limits judicial oversight of electronic surveillance by: (i) subjecting private Internet communications to a minimal standard of [judicial] review; (ii) permitting law enforcement to obtain what would be the equivalent of a 'blank warrant' in the physical world; (iii) authorizing scattershot intelligence wiretap orders that need not specify the place to be searched or require that only the target's conversations be eavesdropped on; and (iv) allowing the FBI to use its 'intelligence' authority to circumvent the judicial review of the probable cause requirement of the Fourth Amendment." (Probable cause means demonstrating that a crime has occurred, is occurring, or will occur.) So say goodbye to the Fourth Amendment: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, household papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, will not be violated; and no warrants will issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the person or things to be seized." Keep in mind that the new law's definition of "domestic terrorism" is so broad, as we shall see in future columns, that entirely innocent people can be swept into this surveillance dragnet. You are not immune. As law professor and privacy expert Jeffrey Rosen points out in the October 15 New Republic, "If [unbeknownst to you] your colleague is a target of [the already in-place] Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Investigation [with its very low privacy standards], the government could tap all your [own] communications on a shared phone, work computer, or public library terminal." Furthermore, all this vast "intelligence" data can now be shared with the CIA, which is again alloweddespite its charter forbidding it to engage in internal security functionsto spy again on Americans in this country, and without a court order. People of a certain age may remember when the CIA did spy here on law-abiding dissenters, mostly on the left, in total contempt of the Constitution. Next week: The breaking in of your doors when you're not there for FBI secret searches ("black bag jobs") under the authority of the USA PATRIOT Act. Related Stories: "Military Justice Is to Justice as Military Music Is to Music" by Alan Dershowitz "No to Military Tribunals: They Are Not Fair" by Norman Siegel "Abandoning the Constitution to Military Tribunals" by Nat Hentoff "Technology and Its Discontents: Cyber-libertarians, Technologists, and Congress Wrangle Over Electronic Privacy Issues During Wartime" by Brendan I. Koerner |
The "Terror Threat" will never be gone. The gov't has told us as much already.
Yes, that is true. It is part of the "Oceania is at war with Eastasia. Oceania has never been at war with Eurasia..." doctrine of gov't.
I guess it would be more accurate to say "when the emotional frenzy of anti-terrorism subsides..."
Just like the Mafia is still around in part, the national obsession is over. RICO = Pro Life Protesters, and PA = Tax Cheats.
For all of you PA/Big Gov't GOP statists out there, why don't we just let the gov't have everyone declare an oath of undying loyalty to the President, and have the gov't emblazon a bar code on your forehead which shows your movements and controls all your money. After all, you have nothing to hide.
Anyone who resists is obviously a terrorist-subversive and we shall strip them of all their wealth and purchasing power and kill them at secret gov't tribunals.
There's an idea who's time has come! Come on big gov't GOP statists, it's all in the name of national security.
That is far too close to the truth to be funny. All hail King George.
Only if you include courts as federal authorities.
"any notice required, or that may be required, to be given may be delayed if (1) the court finds reasonable cause to believe that providing immediate notification of the execu- tion of the warrant may have an adverse result (as defined in section 2705); "
This is the same govt. who routinely steals the property of citizens on the grounds that they have "reasonable suspicion" that a crime has been committed. No arrest much less a conviction required. If they will take your property based on "suspicion" do you think they will hesitate to violate your privacy. Oh yeah, I forgot, I'm doing nothing wrong,I have nothing to fear, Right?
Yes.
Anyone who resists is obviously a terrorist-subversive
That is correct. Look what Tom Ridge says.
This is a transcript from a segment done on Britt humes Special Report.
Catherine Herridge:
This is a new war we are fighting as you have said many times, What will you consider the terms of victory for Homeland Defense?
Tom Ridge:
That's a wonderful question because as we equate victory with previous wars. We saw our enemy surrender..a..we saw a variety of very visible and tangible things that said that we've won. I think obviously we asses victory differently because these are shadow enemies, shadow soldiers.
We may not know the victories we enjoy on the battlefield because in many instances if we disrupt their activity, if we take them down before an incident has occurred. If we pushed our perimeter for far off the border and beyond the oceans, that we get them and they are arrested, incarcerated and dealt with in other parts of the world... a... the American public may never know of those successes.
I guess when we have more countries united with us and we've improved our infrastructure as we do every single day and we just say to ourselves we done everything we can in America to reduce the risks and protect ourselves we'll feel good about that, but we'll never achieve complete and total visible victory as long as there is one person out there that could potentially attach some... a ...explosives, or do something to disrupt our way of life. It may not even necessarily be an external terrorist. It may be a Timothy McVeigh, an anarchist, someone from this country, but I think America wants us to be more secure as we're prepared to invest in greater security and I think that they ought to take a great deal of comfort that every single day that's what their president wants done, that's what the citizens want done, that's what the congress wants done and basically that's what America is doing.
And now their newest creation, "Magic Lamp". If you liked Echelon, you'll just LOVE this one.
Of course they can. They'll use it in the new "secret" courts.
Once upon a time only criminals had to give their fingerprints. I've never been arrested for a crime in my entire life, but I've been compelled to give my fingerprints many times over. It won't be long before we'll be required to give a DNA sample for the acquisition of simple permits and licenses, background checks, etc.
How do you feel about having to give a DNA sample before being allowed to exercise your 2nd Amendment rights, or opening a bank account?
The law also authorizes the delay in notification of the execution of any criminal search warrant, at the discretion of federal authorities.
The law authorizes federal authorities to issue a demand order to educational facilities, requiring the surrender of all education records for any individual, without a warrant.
Learn when you're wrong Registered. There are few around here more stubborn than I, but I had my mind changed several times by the valid arguments of other posters. OWK can be a dick sometimes, by he's right on the money here.
The truth is screaming at you.
THE "PATRIOT"(barf) ACT IS AN ORWELLIAN POS
You've got to be kidding. UnFuggin Believable.
Speaking Freely: A Memoir By Nat Hentoff Alfred A. Knopf; New York, N.Y: 1997 |
Nat Hentoff still feels the rage.
In his latest book, "Speaking Freely," Hentoff quotes columnist Tom Wicker writing about I.F. Stone, the iconoclastic firebrand journalist of the '60s and one of Hentoff's heroes: "What keeps on energizing Izzy is that he has never lost his sense of rage."
so Nat's hero is Izzy Stone... Well just who in the hell is Izzy Stone?
I.F. Stone: Red and Dead
by Robert D. Novak
This is the ninth anniversary of I.F. Stones death. When
he died of a heart attack in a Boston hospital on June 18,
1989, he rated a top-of-the-page New York Times obituary
that called him a pugnacious advocate of civil liberties,
peace and truth and asserted that his integrity was
acknowledged even by detractors. On ABC television,
Peter Jennings praised Stones credo: To write the truth, to
defend the weak against the strong, to fight for justice. A
eulogy by the civil libertarian Nat Hentoff described him as a
lonely pamphleteer prying loose the truth in I.F. Stones
Weekly (1953-68) and I.F. Stones Bi-weekly (1969-71).
From the days when I covered Congress in the late 50s
and early 60s, I remember Izzy as a solitary figure prowling
Capitol Hill, rumpled, loaded down with documents, and
flashing a bemused smile. He was much admired as a symbol
of incorruptibility. In fact, looking back at Stones lifetime
work, one sees a pattern emerge.
He was born Isidor Feinstein, the son of Russian-Jewish
immigrants, in Philadelphia in 1907. He dropped out of the
University of Pennsylvania his junior year to devote full time
to duties as a reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer. While
working for the Philadelphia Record in 1933, he wrote
articles for Modern Monthly under the pseudonym Abelard
Stone that assailed Franklin D. Roosevelt for moving toward
Fascism and called for a Soviet America.
In the 1930s, Stonewriting editorials for the New York
Post applauded Stalins infamous show-trials. Stone was
lyrical in his praise of the Soviet government, writes Dr.
Kenneth J. Campbell in Moscows Words, Western Voices,
claiming that Communism was transforming Europes most
backward nation into the most advanced.
Stones subsequent writings in the Nation and other
left-wing publications expressed nearly unrelieved approval
of Soviet policy and opposition to NATO and other
anti-Kremlin initiatives. The climax came with the publication
in 1952 of Stones book The Hidden History of the Korean
War, which claims that the United States and South Korea
provoked the North Korean invasion in 1950. Campbell calls
it a masterpiece of innuendo, anti-American rhetoric,
repetition of Soviet propaganda themes and a dearth of
evidence to support his theses.
From its beginning in 1953, I.F. Stones Weekly was the
launching pad for missiles aimed at U.S. foreign policy
especially when it collided with Moscows. So, to Stone,
Nikita Khrushchev, not John F. Kennedy, was the hero of the
1962 missile crisis. Needless to say, Stone attacked the U.S.
intervention in Vietnam early and often.
That Izzy Stone was far out on the left (a fact largely
omitted from the fawning obituaries) began to take on a
sinister cast four years after his death.
Oleg Kalugin, a former KGB major general stationed in
Washington, in a 1992 interview with the London
Independent, said: We had an agent a well-known America
journalist with a good reputation who severed his ties with
us after 1956 [Khrushchevs denunciation of Stalin]. I myself
convinced him to resume them. But in 1968, after the
invasion of Czechoslovakia...he said he would never again
take any money from us. Gen. Kalugin later told Soviet
intelligence expert Herbert Romerstein and Reed Irvine of
Accuracy in Media that the agent was I.F. Stone.
Under intense fire from the mainstream media, Kalugin
backed away from this identificationsaying Stone was only
a fellow traveler. But other information started to come out.
In 1993, Accuracy in Media obtained FBI documents under
the Freedom of Information Act that showed that former
Daily Worker editor John Gates, operating as an informant,
identified Stone as a covert Communist party member in the
1930s.
More damaging is evidence from the Venona papers. These
intercepted documents, decoded by U.S. intelligence and
released by the National Security Agency in 1996, show that
NKVD agent Vladimir Sergei, working under cover of the
Tass news agencys Washington bureau, recruited Stone in
1944. Stone was at first unresponsive, but Sergei learned that
Stone had belonged to the party in the 30s and tried again.
He was more successful on the second attempt.
According to Sergei, Stone had reacted to the first approach
negatively, fearing the consequences. Now, it was
reported back to Moscow that Stone was not refusing his
[Sergeis] aid, while urging the Russian spy-master to
consider that he had three small children and did not want to
attract [the FBIs] attention. Stone expressed his
unwillingness to spoil his career, Sergei reported.
Stone also asserted to Sergei that he earned as much as
$1,500 a month through his newsletter (about $150,000 a year
in 1998 money), but that he would not be averse to having a
supplementary income. Sergeis cable dealt with
establishment of a business contact with Stone, who was
given the code name BLIN (pancake in Russian).
No wonder the obituary writer appeared to know nothing of
this: Hardly a word has appeared in the mainstream press
about Stones Communist connections. And the Nation
names its annual prize for excellence in student journalism
the I.F. Stone Award. Ignoring the past, however, does not
expunge it.
Reprinted by permission of The Weekly
Standard
June 22, 1998 p. 16-17
The bottom line is, Izzy Stone was a KGB agent and carried water in this country for Joseph Stalin, the biggest mass murderer in history... And he's Nat Hentoff's hero... and you think Nat is the strongest defender of the constitution we have... You're fuggin out to lunch.
Now, address Hentoff's points and dispute them if you can.
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