Posted on 07/02/2003 8:00:07 PM PDT by rube
Grateful for patriot acts
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 Most importantly, the Patriot Act revised outdated rules that fatally hampered surveillance of suspected terrorists in America.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.
(Excerpt) Read more at NewsAndOpinion.com ...
As we look forward to the July 4th extended weekend with its barbeques and fireworks, I wonder if we can put aside our lifestyles and think about the defense of our liberties?
So if you're a guy buggering another guy in your house it's okay...just don't be counting out $5500 in 20s in your house because you will have been reported to the Feds by your bank, and they could now be watching you and tapping your phones without telling you. They could be eavesdropping on you without a warrant. Eventually they can arrest you and hold you without charging you with a crime.
I find it interesting that someone who lived through such a brutal regime would be so instrumental in the creation of another one.
This Fourth of July I will spend a lot of time lamenting the demise of this Republic.
I agree. A quote I have on my personal website from Southack, at my Free Republic link, states this:
"On the path towards the Rule of Men and away from the tranquility of the Rule of Law, the historical trap has been for good citizens to call upon stricter and stricter government, followed by stronger and stronger government, until government itself becomes so overbearing that it becomes more of the enemy than the anarchy from the Rule of Men.
As the olde maps used to cite: 'Here there be dragons.'" ~ Southack
Four decades of liberalism, multiculturalism, etc., concluding with the Clinton administartion has brought us to where we are. Now we deal with the dragons.
Exodus 22:2 "If a thief is caught in the act of breaking into a house and is killed in the process, the person who killed the thief is not guilty."
That's why you burn them first.
Liberty - but not too much? How much is "too much"?
You haven't been around here long, huh? Today? July 3?
The FBI and CIA already had the tools to get the job done. We have given more powers without demanding accountability for existing powers.
That is bad government all the way round.
Holy crap! For once I agree with you 100%. Sign of the apocolypse? :-)
Have a great holiday.
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