Panic and the Patriot Act

Wall Street Journal ^ | 12/9/03 | Eric Posner & John Yoo

[bdeaner]

The worst thing about it is its name.

Tuesday, December 9, 2003 12:01 a.m.

The Patriot Act has become a magnet for claims that the government is violating our individual rights. Yesterday, the federal commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks heard testimony from several prominent law professors on the dangers of the act. Last month, Al Gore called for the act's repeal, accused the Bush administration of suspending civil liberties, and claimed that the government was using "fear as a political tool to consolidate its power and to escape any accountability for its use." Democratic front-runner Howard Dean has called the act "morally wrong," "shameful," and "unconstitutional." Many cities have refused to assist the federal government in its implementation.

[bdeaner]

Anything that Algore and Dean hate can't be all bad . . .

[sinkspur]

The hysteria over the Patriot Act is just that.

[William McKinley]

How can this be? I was just being instructed that this was the rebirth of the Gestapo.

[Pitchfork]

If the act "marginally reduces peacetime liberties" then the following questions should be answered:

1) marginal in who's estimation?

2) if it is 'peacetime liberties' then the implication is that we're at war. What war are we fighting? The war on terror? When, by whom, and on what timetable is this 'war' going to be declared over so that full 'peacetime' liberties can be reinstated?

First, I don't think suspending most of the 4th, some of the 5th and 6th amendments should be confused with a marginal reduction in liberty. That the bill of rights the PA is gutting. Freepers on this form howl with indignation at any infringement of the 2nd but seem more than willing to abandon 4 through 6 at the executive’s whim.

Second any open-ended 'reduction in liberty' is indistinguishable from a permanent one! Will the war on terrorism last as long as the Cold War? Longer? Do you think the framers and the authors of the BoR thought "hey lets put in place these fundamental rights, but go ahead and suspend them for 40 or 50 years at a time if you want".

All I can say is: "Welcome to Amerika, show us your papers." It saddens me to see self-proclaimed 'freedome loving conservatives' buying into this statist nonsense.

[IronJack]

It is amazing what illusions people are willing to believe as long as they hold out the promise of safety. And everyone knows that the end justifies the means.

Had a Democrat president even suggested something as draconian as the Patriot Act, these same drones would be storming the Bastille.

I always thought liberals were the moral relativists.

[BikerNYC]

Good point. Can the federal government restrict application of the 2nd Amendment during time of national emergency as it has the 4th Amendment?

[Steve_Seattle]

The specifics discussed by the authors don't seem to support your claim that the 4th, 5th, and 6th Amendments have been gutted. There is a far more threat to the Constitution when justices like Breyer claim that the U.S. Constitution can be re-interpreted through appeals to contemporary trends in international law.

[sinkspur]

Had a Democrat president even suggested something as draconian as the Patriot Act, these same drones would be storming the Bastille.

What rights have you lost? YOU, specifically.

[Ben Ficklin]

The Patriot Act removes the wall.

Would anyone know how, why, or when the wall was put up?

[IronJack]

If anyone has lost rights, I have lost rights. If the defenses of the Bill of Rights are negotiable, then they're as negotiable for me as for anyone else.

That has to be the flimsiest defense yet. Better to stick with McKinley's Mantra:

Republicans can do no wrong.
Republicans can do no wrong.
Republicans can do no wrong.

[WackyKat]

Sure, everyone just bend over and learn to love Big Brother.

And don't forget Patriot 2 is on the way

[sinkspur]

If anyone has lost rights, I have lost rights.

Who has lost "rights", then? Terrorist symps?

[garjog]

We owe the Patriot Act for preventing another attack. We face a crafty enemy with sleeper cells inside our country now using elctronic means of communication to plot mass death. They must be listened to and stopped. One nuclear bomb can ruin your whole day folks. That means 100,000 dead. The real danger is that our government isn't doing enough to spy on these creeps.

[GregoryFul]

One of the central concerns of critics of the "patriot" act is its definition of "terrorist". By the government's definition, anyone suspected of engaging in just about any crime can be classified as a "terrorist", and thereby loose all Constitutional protections against overwhelming government power. It appears to be a free pass for the federal government to suspend any and all of a citizen's rights on the basis of an accusation or suspicion, effectively voiding all citizen's Constitutional rights entirely.

[Pitchfork]

The article presents one interpretation of the act. I don't view that as definitive. In any case the article ends with a caveat which might be paraphrased: "sure the act allows for government abuse of prosecutorial power and if that happens we'll simply have to wait for the legislature or the court to step in".
Given the quotes from all those statist lib-dems and having observed congressional and senatorial republicans do nothing but suck up to the administration for 3 years, I'm not all that confident in the ability of my legislators to protect my rights. Separation of powers works poorly in periods of single party control. And the courts? They're too busy worrying about how the racial distribution of law school admissions, and the like to actually concern themselves with the bill of rights. I've seen no intention on their part to act as a check on runaway executive power!
If the institutional actors don’t play their constitutionally designed role then the document is just paper and ink.

[Agkistrodon]

If the courts decided a saguaro was a horse, would you go out and saddle one up? The fact of the matter is that the Patriot Act, by any rational reading of the Constitution, is an unconstitutional piece of rubbish from beginning to end.
The ACLU couldn't find any instances of abuse of the act? Well, how about the very phrasing of the act which, in part, says that prosecutors can proceed in suspected cases of TERRORISM OR MONEY LAUNDERING, which has already allowed dishonest prosecutors to prosecute money laundering cases which they know perfectly well has nothing to do with terrorism?
Well keep this in mind people:

THE ONLY THING NECESSARY FOR THE CREATION OF A POLICE STATE, REGARDLESS OF THE PUTATIVE FORM OF GOVERNMENT, IS THE CREATION OF DOSSIERS ON EACH INDIVIDUAL.

Does that help any of you get what the Patriot Act is all about?

[secretagent]

later