Patriot Act - This should make for a good fight
 

Liberty Beat
by Nat Hentoff
Patriot Act Besieged
A Justice Department honcho confesses: 'We are losing the fight for the Patriot Act'
May 28th, 2004 1:00 PM


The objective of the Patriot Act [is to make] the population visible and the Justice Department invisible. The Act inverts the constitutional requirement that people's lives be private and the work of government officials be public; it instead crafts a set of conditions that make our inner lives transparent and the workings of government opaque. - Elaine Scarry, "Acts of Resistance," Harper's Magazine, May 2004

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The Patriot Act makes it able for those of us in positions of responsibility to defend the liberty of the American people. - George W. Bush, quoted by the National Committee Against Repressive Legislation, May 2004



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In March, at the Washington University School of Law in St. Louis, I debated Chuck Rosenberg, chief of staff to James Comey, John Ashcroft's second-in-command at the Justice Department. A former counsel to FBI director Robert Mueller, Rosenberg, a former prosecutor, has specialized in counterintelligence and counterterrorism.

The next day, the headline in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch story on the debate (March 22) was "Ashcroft Staffer Admits Patriot Act Is Unpopular." And Chuck Rosenberg was quoted in the story: "We're losing this fight."

The reporter, Doug Moore, told me Rosenberg had made that admission during the intermission in our debate. It wasn't my eloquence that deflated Rosenberg, but rather my focus that afternoon on the insistent resistance to the Patriot Act around the country—and in Congress.

By May, 311 towns and cities—and four state legislatures (Alaska, Hawaii, Vermont, and Maine)—had passed Bill of Rights resolutions instructing the members of Congress from those areas to roll back the most egregiously repressive sections of the Patriot Act, subsequent executive orders, and other extensions of the act.

According to Nancy Talanian, director of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee in Northampton, Massachusetts, and the primary organizer and coordinator of this campaign to preserve the Constitution, "Hundreds more communities and states are considering resolutions. Last December, the National League of Cities approved a resolution calling for amending the Patriot Act."

And on May 12, The Hill, a Washington publication that gets inside congressional maneuvers, ran a report by Alexander Bolton ("Presidential Push Fails to Quell GOP Fear of Patriot Act"): "A group of libertarian-minded Republicans in Congress is blocking President Bush's effort to strengthen domestic counterterrorism laws and reauthorize the USA Patriot Act, which the president has made one of his top domestic priorities this year."

Not the whole Patriot Act, but sections of it, come up for congressional renewal by December 2005. Bush is pressing hard for Congress to renew those parts now. Standing in his way, however, is Republican conservative James Sensenbrenner, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. According to The Hill: "Sensenbrenner has made it clear to colleagues that he will not consider reauthorization of the bill until next year."

On April 20, Wired News (wired.com) quoted constitutional law professor David Cole, of the Georgetown University Law Center, on the resistance to the Patriot Act. Since 9-11, Cole has been the Samuel Adams of our time, a one-man version of the pre-Revolution committees of correspondence. Said Cole:

"One year after 9/11, National Public Radio did a poll and found that only 7 percent of Americans felt they had given up important liberties in the war on terrorism. Two years after 9/11, NBC or CBS did a very similar poll and they found that now 52 percent of Americans report being concerned that their civil liberties are being infringed by the Bush administration's war on terrorism. That's a huge shift."

And on April 14, in Salt Lake City, when the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, came home to harvest support for the Patriot Act, among his fiercest critics was Scott Bradley of the Utah Branch of the ultra-conservative EagleForum. Bradley reminded Hatch—Ashcroft's premier cheerleader in Congress—of a prediction by Osama bin Laden in a BBC interview after 9-11. The arch-terrorist said:

"The battle has moved to inside America. . . . Freedom and human rights in America are doomed. The U.S. government will lead the American people and the West in general into an unbearable hell and choking fire."

Scott Bradley went on to tell Hatch: "The United States is stronger and braver than that," but "we must make absolutely certain that the rush for security does not . . . destroy what we really cherish about this great nation."

Then, this libertarian conservative confronted Orrin Hatch with a grave warning by James Madison in 1788:

"I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachment of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations."

The next day, as if to confirm Madison's prophecy, the Associated Press reported, "The number of secret surveillance warrants sought by the FBI has increased by 85 percent in the last three years, a pace that has outstripped the Justice Department's ability to quickly process them."

They'll process these warrants, which are authorized by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the AP notes, for "wiretaps, video surveillance, property search and other spying on people believed to be terrorists or spies."

Whtachayall got Lawyers?

I recently spoke with a friend of mine who I'll call a senior Justice Department lawyer. Believe me, he is in a position to know what he is talking about. He said that the sections of the Patriot Act that civil libertarians whine about most loudly have NEVER been used. Of course, that doesn't stop them from whining about the existence of these sections. :rolleyes:

Oh, and I am in favor of expedited warrant procedures for suspected terrorists. I believe that preventing apartment buildings from being blown up with natural gas, for example, is a sufficiently important governmental interest to justify reduced procedural requirements.

Well, I think the governemnt was already too invasive before they did the PAs.:munchin

You want to be the monkey today? LOL

OK, how?

[claymores out, stacking mags, anticipating the unexpected -- something really sneaky LOL]

Well, having been a victim of the un-justice system several times:

Probable cause is a joke. No one is clean enough to not have probable cause, especially when driving.

The FBI can't even keep track of their own guns and computers, and we're going to trust them?

Most people aren't terrorists - I'd like to see how many have been a "person of interest" and more importantly - why?

I think they are using it for a crutch to make crappy cases stand up a little stiffer.

I want a referendum, not votes by the elected representatives (aka agenda holders).

What's the criteria for being designated a terrorist?

Short step to more gun control.

They can't even get the airports right and we're going to trust them to search homes and workplaces?

HERE HERE!! NDD for Director Homeland Security!!!

Dayem, dat be one fasssst lil monkey. Cain't stomp 'im if ye cain't ketch i'm, eh? LOL

I get that you don't like cops, the FBI or the Feds in general, but what does this have to do with the Patriot Act? Surely you agree that searches are proper under some circumstances, right? You have a problem with the Feds searching Osama bin Laden if he walks across the border? How about Jose Padilla?


Fair point, but this is just speculation. I don't see evidence of abuse, just your suspicion driven by your colored view of law enforcement.


That's the whole point! Well, a big part of it anyway . . .


Move to California. You can see what a pristine process that is -- no "agenda holders" involved in referenda at all. :rolleyes:


I don't know. Let's do a thread in the terror forum. What's the relevance here?


Which you always oppose, right? LOL

atta' boy RL... get that closet gun grabber.. that pic he posted earlier in the gear forum LOOKED like he was TRAININ' people for makin' martyrs!! I am calling for a referendum on highly trained gringos entering this country from Latin America. LOL :munchin

Expanding on what RL said, most of the controversial sections have never been used by the Attorney General.

For example, Section 412 of the USAPATRIOT Act, regarding indefinite detention of any alien suspected of terrorist links, is often cited by liberals as having disregarded the rights of immigrants after 9/11.

In fact, all 1000 aliens detained since 9/11 were held under pre-PATACT Naturalization & Deportation Laws. These laws allow the Govt. to detain aliens, with expired/invalid visas, until they can be deported to their native country. All detained aliens have the right to a deportation hearing and those that did request it were given one. Really the only thing we saw different after 9/11 was the government enforcing laws they already had available to them.

If sec.412 is ever used, the Attorney General has to certify the detention with probable cause of espionage and/or terrorist activity within 7 days. The detention lasts until the alien is removed from the US through deportation proceedings.

Just the other day Al Gore cited abuse of sec 412 in his Bush bashing speech for moveon.org, obviously facts aren't important to the former VP.

Knackered already, NDD? :p

Looks to me like he is letting you guys continue to dig.

TR

I took three shots and moved. He is in for a big surprise. LOL

Anybody who wants to can learn about the erosion of individual freedoms in the United States by reading Lost Liberties. It was written during Clinton's administration. It seems to me that all the Patriot Act did (in terms of real impact on individual rights) was place into law things that were already being done through regulation or executive order. Does that make these things right? Nope, and the IRS and their screwed up way of dealing with problems is a perfect example (IRS says you owe taxes, you disagree. They freeze/sieze your assets, bank accounts, etc. Now, you can't afford to fight them in court because your assets are frozen, even if they are dead wrong).

Don't have time to get into the whole of it, but one of the things that irks the shit out of me is this whole 'bad laws are okay because they haven't used them' argument. What the hell is that?

There's only two ways it can go. If they were good laws, people wouldn't have to use that argument. If they're bad laws, then the argument is a shoddy excuse... it's like a cop sticking a gun to your head, and then saying, 'Trust me. I know you didn't do anything, but this is just in case you do. I haven't done anything wrong, because I haven't used this pistol yet, so don't complain!'