Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Hentoff: Ashcroft v. Constitution (or sakic's argument for slamming W and Ashcroft on Patriot Act)
(holding my nose) The Village Voice ^ | 11.26.01 | Registered

Posted on 11/28/2001 6:33:06 AM PST by Registered

EPILOGUE..

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 sheets—which were sent to Congress and the press as the bill was being steamrollered through—along 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 anthrax—but 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 courts—by the ACLU and others—the 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 surveillance—of 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 allowed—despite its charter forbidding it to engage in internal security functions—to 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



TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Editorial
KEYWORDS: patriotact
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 41-6061-8081-100 ... 361-369 next last
To: Carbon
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.

61 posted on 11/28/2001 9:10:07 AM PST by Orion
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 59 | View Replies]

To: Orion
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.

62 posted on 11/28/2001 9:16:09 AM PST by AUgrad
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 61 | View Replies]

To: OWK
"delay in notification of the execution of any criminal search warrant, at the discretion of federal authorities. "

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); "

63 posted on 11/28/2001 9:17:37 AM PST by mrsmith
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 47 | View Replies]

Comment #64 Removed by Moderator

To: mrsmith
"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

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?

65 posted on 11/28/2001 9:32:09 AM PST by AUgrad
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 63 | View Replies]

To: AUgrad
I'm not interested in rants, some here are- good luck.
66 posted on 11/28/2001 9:38:26 AM PST by mrsmith
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 65 | View Replies]

To: mrsmith
Federal agencies will circumvent this requirement the way they frequently get "no-knock" warrants authorized now: either find a compliant judge, or else lie in the affidavits used to obtain the warrant.
67 posted on 11/28/2001 11:13:15 AM PST by alpowolf
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 63 | View Replies]

To: Registered
do you want law enforcement to go through the same process to once again get judicial approval for a tap?

Yes.

68 posted on 11/28/2001 11:40:17 AM PST by cruiserman
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 27 | View Replies]

To: Registered
Ashcroft is scum and a liar.
69 posted on 11/28/2001 11:43:42 AM PST by Demidog
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Orion
Anyone who resists is obviously a terrorist-subversive…

We’re all in this together.


70 posted on 11/28/2001 11:49:40 AM PST by dead
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 61 | View Replies]

To: Carbon
"The "Terror Threat" will never be gone. The gov't has told us as much already."

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.

71 posted on 11/28/2001 12:29:16 PM PST by Native American Female Vet
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 59 | View Replies]

Comment #72 Removed by Moderator

To: dead
I guess we're all OK with Echelon, Know Your Customer, and National ID cards now as well. If you have nothing to hide...

And now their newest creation, "Magic Lamp". If you liked Echelon, you'll just LOVE this one.

73 posted on 11/28/2001 10:16:47 PM PST by Jolly Rodgers
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 15 | View Replies]

To: Registered
They can't use any information outside the original request against anyone in the courts.

Of course they can. They'll use it in the new "secret" courts.

74 posted on 11/28/2001 10:18:22 PM PST by Jolly Rodgers
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 17 | View Replies]

To: OWK
The law also creates a requirement for ANYONE convicted of a violent crime, to surrender DNA for the purposes of establishing an identification database. Not just terrorists.... anyone.

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.

75 posted on 11/28/2001 10:21:33 PM PST by Jolly Rodgers
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 28 | View Replies]

To: Registered
I have no problem requiring someone that committed a violent crime submitting their DNA. Why in the world would you? It's modern day fingerprinting.

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?

76 posted on 11/28/2001 10:22:48 PM PST by Jolly Rodgers
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 32 | View Replies]

To: Registered
Let me see: We've had laws against hijacking airplanes:We've had a law against bombing buildings: We've had a law against sending poisons thru the mail: Those laws were not obeyed by the terrorists!!! Question, why do we need a new law except to keep law abiding citizens in check because criminals do not obey any laws!!
There are 20,000+ gun laws on the books, have they stopped one shooting? There are laws against murder, have they stopped one murder? There are laws against rape, have they stopped one rape and on and on!
According to congressman Ron Paul, the law was not even set to print and yet it passed overwhelmingly in the senate and house. Does that bother anyone but me?
The GESTAPO Law will come back to haunt America's freedom.
I suggest to all, especially to those who have deified Pres Bush, watch what he is doing on the home front while we are diverted by the "police action". This man is a political genius who uses machavelian methods on us.
Flame away.
77 posted on 11/28/2001 10:31:14 PM PST by poet
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: OWK; Registered
The law also authorizes the collection of any domestic electronic communication registers (phone logs, net traffic lists, cell phone records, pager records...etc.) without need for a warrant.

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.

NOW FOR THE CONSTITUTION

Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

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

78 posted on 11/28/2001 10:40:20 PM PST by AAABEST
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 60 | View Replies]

To: sakic
Nat Hentoff remains the strongest defender of the Constitution in this country. The fact that you don't know this comes as no surprise.

You've got to be kidding. UnFuggin Believable.

Hentoff's passion still burns

by Jim Trageser
This review first appeared in the American Reporter.

Speaking Freely
Speaking Freely: A Memoir
By Nat Hentoff
Alfred A. Knopf; New York, N.Y: 1997



Buy it now at Amazon.com

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. Stone’s 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 Stone’s 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. Stone’s
 Weekly (1953-68) and I.F. Stone’s 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 Stone’s 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, Stone–writing editorials for the New York
 Post– applauded Stalin’s infamous show-trials.  “Stone was
 lyrical in his praise of the Soviet government,” writes Dr.
 Kenneth J. Campbell in Moscow’s Words, Western Voices,
 “claiming that Communism was transforming Europe’s most
 backward nation ‘into the most advanced.’ ”
       Stone’s 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 Stone’s 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. Stone’s Weekly was the
 launching pad for missiles aimed at U.S. foreign policy–
 especially when it collided with Moscow’s.  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 [Khrushchev’s 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 identification–saying 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 agency’s 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
                                           [Sergei’s] aid,” while urging the Russian spy-master to
                                           “consider that he had three small children and did not want to
                                           attract [the FBI’s] 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.”  Sergei’s 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 Stone’s 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.

79 posted on 11/29/2001 1:45:41 AM PST by VinnyTex
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies]

To: VinnyTex
If this thread was about Izzy Stone you might be correct. However, it's about Hentoff's allegations against our current government's policy of undermining our Constitution. You've posted a piece about someone I'm not familiar with. Congrats.

Now, address Hentoff's points and dispute them if you can.

80 posted on 11/29/2001 3:30:34 AM PST by sakic
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 79 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 41-6061-8081-100 ... 361-369 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson