Grateful for Patriot Acts

TownHall.com ^ | Wednesday, July 2, 2003 | by Michelle Malkin

[JohnHuang2]

To civil-liberties alarmists, Viet Dinh is a traitor. To me, he is an American hero.

Dinh, 35, is widely known -- and reviled -- as the primary architect of the Patriot Act. Until May, he was an assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Policy in John Ashcroft's Justice Department. (He stepped down to return to his law school post at Georgetown University.) Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Dinh told The Christian Science Monitor, "our nation's ability to defend itself against terror has been not only my vocation but my obsession."

This Fourth of July holiday, I will give thanks for those like Dinh who have worked tirelessly to ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, and secure the blessings of liberty that no other country in the world can match.

A constitutional law expert, Dinh's office had been mostly concerned with judicial nominations before Sept. 11. After the mass murder of 3,000 men, women and children on American soil, Dinh became an instrumental member of the brain trust that designed the Bush administration's anti-terrorism policies. Most importantly, the Patriot Act revised outdated rules that fatally hampered surveillance of suspected terrorists in America. Dinh also helped craft plans to monitor the entry and exit of foreign students and to register and track non-immigrant visitors from high-risk Middle Eastern countries.

An immigrant himself who escaped from communist Vietnam a quarter-century ago aboard a rickety boat, Dinh notes that foreign visitors to our shores are guests obligated to obey the laws -- some which "have not been enforced for 50 years." It was time, Dinh and his colleagues decided, to start enforcing them.

The results speak for themselves:

-- The feds have busted more than 20 suspected al Qaeda cell members from Buffalo, N.Y., to Detroit, Seattle and Portland, Ore.

-- More than 100 other individuals have been convicted or pled guilty to terrorist related crimes.

-- The United States has deported 515 individuals linked to the Sept. 11 investigation.

-- Hundreds of foreign criminals and suspected terrorists, plus one known member of al Qaeda, were prevented from entering the country thanks to the National Entry-Exit Registration System -- which Sen. Ted Kennedy attempted to sabotage earlier this year.

-- Long overdue fingerprint cross checks of immigration and FBI databases at the border have resulted in the arrest of more than 5,000 fugitives, wanted for crimes committed in the United States.

-- And nearly two years after the Sept. 11 attacks, there has not yet been another mass terrorist attack on our homeland.

Opponents of the Bush administration's homeland defense and immigration enforcement efforts complain that the war on terror has eviscerated civil liberties and constitutional rights. They have falsely portrayed the Patriot Act as allowing the feds to spy on library patrons without a warrant or criminal suspicion -- a lie perpetuated by the truth-challenged New York Times.

They have hysterically compared the detention of illegal aliens from terror-friendly countries to the World War II internment of Japanese. And they have likened Ashcroft, Dinh, and the Justice Department to the Taliban and Nazis. Never mind that the courts have so far upheld every major initiative and tactic from keeping immigration deportation hearings closed, to maintaining secrecy of the names of illegal alien detainees, to allowing use of the Patriot Act surveillance powers.

Dinh is refreshingly unapologetic and to the point in response to the alarmists: "The threat to liberty comes from Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network, not from the men and women in blue who work to uphold the law." Drawing on Edmund Burke's theory of "Ordered Liberty," which argues that liberty cannot be exercised unless government has first provided civil order, Dinh observes: "I think security exists for liberty to flourish and liberty cannot exist without order and security."

On July 4th, this fundamental lesson of Sept. 11 must not be forgotten. The charred earth, mangled steel, crashing glass, fiery chaos and eviscerated bodies are indelible reminders that the blessings of liberty in America do not secure themselves.

[JohnHuang2]

Wednesday, July 2, 2003

Quote of the Day by Liz

[BlackbirdSST]

I fall into the, he's a traitor, crowd. Blackbird.

[poet]

"The threat to liberty comes from Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network, not from the men and women in blue who work to uphold the law"

Tell that to the people at Waco and Ruby Ridge!! These murderers are still walking free.

BS! It is a gestapo act and was probably designed BEFORE 9/11. It wipes out the Writ of Habeous Corpus if you are Suspected of terrorist acts. You can now be held incommunicado indefinitely. It also cutails future dissent against a government policy if a commissar dtermines that your "intent" is to cause bodily injury, etc.

If you like Gestapo 1, you're going to love Gestapo 2.

All they had to do was add two words to existing law, to wit; domestic terrorists.

AND, don't forget, Section 802 no expiration date as does the rest of the "police state act." Why do you suppose that is? This is a tie-in to the New World Order. Just watch how many of the EU's policies we initiate in the future.

Bush and both parties have violated their sworn oaths to uphold the constitution on three occasions: CFR, Gestapo act and the Fatherland act.

[Cacophonous]

I usually am a huge fan of Malkin, but I disagree with her here. The fact is the threat is not from the men in blue (i.e., local cops), but from the FEDERAL law enforcement agencies. I'll concede that under our current leadership, we might not see a Waco or Ruby Ridge, but the infrastructure is there for someone less scrupulous to abuse it.

[philman_36]

"I think security exists for liberty to flourish and liberty cannot exist without order and security."
Just belieeeeeve...and then make a law to enforce what you belieeeeeve.

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
Benjamin Franklin

[philman_36]

"I think security exists for liberty to flourish and liberty cannot exist without order and security."
On the same note...
Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.
Frédéric Bastiat

The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks ... It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men.
Samuel Adams

[philman_36]

And one more if I may...
The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home.
James Madison

[eno_]

Not only is he a traitor, the success in finding some terrorists in the U.S. would have occurred without the Patriot Act, and SHOULD have occurred before 9/11. It WOULD have if anyone was paying attention to the immigration status of young Arab men.

In short, the FBI getting some of its act together does not provide evidence supporting the success of the Patriot Act. Repeal it.

[cgk]

Malkin ping.

[sauropod]

Suuuuuuuuuuuure Michelle.

Can you say secret trials and evidence?

I knew you could.

Wait'll another Janet Rhino gets her grubby paws on power.

[Marysecretary]

That's what I fear in all this, a socialist president and another Reno for Attorney General. Now that's scary.

[Capitalism2003]

Go Michelle...Go Michelle...woot woot!

[Tailgunner Joe]

bttt

[poet]

"I'll concede that under our current leadership, we might not see a Waco or Ruby Ridge, but the infrastructure is there for someone less scrupulous to abuse it."

Since they presented, passed and signed these laws, they can't be left off the hook. If their intentions were honorable, why did they pass the laws in the first instance?

Only people with a totalitarian mindset would even think of such draconian laws.
These people are not what they seem to be.

[Cacophonous]

I stand chastised and corrected. You are exactly right.

[poet]

"I stand chastised and corrected."

That was not my intent and I apologize if it came across as a chatisement.

FReegards

[Roscoe]

Time for the crackpots to start raving and frothing about the mouth about the Patriot Act being TYRANNY!!!! (Don't ask them for any evidence, of course.)

Go, Michelle!

[Cacophonous]

No I was serious. I gave a typical mealy-mouthed "moderate" response, with the intent of keeping the Bush sycophant crowd off of my back. I hate it when people do that.

And you are right; if they have honorable intentions, they wouldn't need the law, no matter which political whorehouse they live in.