John Ascroft: America is freer today !

[Tamara]

Danimal,

If all you great lovers of literature don't want the government to know what you are reading, go to a bookstore and buy it.

IIRC, bookstore sales records are covered, too.

 

[Bruce H]

Anybody the quotes Machiavelli in their sig line would do well to remember what happened to Machiavelli.

 

[Danimal]

I know exactly what happened to Machiavelli. Care to share how that may or may not apply to this discussion?



(P.S. Pay cash Tamara, unless you are nervous about those GPS micro tracking strips the feds have woven into the new bills these days....)

 

[rick_reno]

Is America freeer?

I suggest you take a look at these recent Supreme Court decisions to ascertain if America is more free today than in the past - draw your own conclusions about where we're going.

1. Illinois v. Rodriquez, 497 U.S. 177 (1990) - Allows authorities to search your home based upon the consent of someone who has absolutely NO authority to grant the search.

2. Alabama v. White, 503, U.S. 953 (1990) - Allows authorities to stop your car based on an anonymous tip completely lacking any indication of reliability.

3. Mich. Dept. of State Police v. Sitz - Subject motorists to mandatory sobriety tests without any indicatiojn they have been drinking or that their driving is impaired.

When the Patriot Act was passed there were only two copies of it floating around - and the Senate building had been evacuated because of the anthrax scare. This isn't the climate that I like seeing important legislation being debated in - but it happened.

Remember, this is not the first time in our history freedoms have been eroded in a time of national crisis. Lincoln suspended Habeas Corpus, Wilson had the Palmer raids and Roosevelt interred Asian-Americans for no reason other than national origin.

Todays invasions of our privacy are very subtle. The technology they are using you can't see or feel. It's not like the Red Coats invading your home and going thru your bedding searching for a weapon. Todays efforts steal your conversations and it muddies the water between the 1st and 4th Amendments. Remember 1984, they imprisoned people not by locking their bodies up but by locking their thoughts and communications up.

 

[Danimal]

Hey Rick, what were the Palmer Raids? I've never heard of those. Can you give us a quick history lesson. BTW, LOVE the signature line!

 

[rick_reno]

Just go here, they've written up the Palmer Raids better than I could. I'm trying to get a shell on one of our trucks before winter hits...gotta run

http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/hist409/red.html

 

[Tamara]

Danimal,

(P.S. Pay cash Tamara, unless you are nervous about those GPS micro tracking strips the feds have woven into the new bills these days....)

I don't get too worked up about the strips in dollar bills nor black helicopters. I don't own a Reynold's Wrap yarmulke, either. I do however, firmly believe that any law will be misused to the full extent possible; ask any Right-to-Life protester prosecuted under the RICO statutes.

Why should I have to use cash just to prevent the government from using some harebrained operation like the TIA to scrutinize my reading list? Why did those guys in the goofy wigs bother including that silly Fourth Amendment, anyway?


(PS: Just because the federales haven't yet used their swoopy new powers to conduct a clandestine search of your home while you were picking up a pint of Haagen Dasz from the Quickie Mart doesn't mean that they don't now have the legal power to do so. Saying "Well, show me that you've lost that right!" is as pointless as, well... Say a new law had been passed that suspects could be shot summarily. Just because you ain't been shot yet don't mean your right not to get shot hasn't been infringed. I'd trust a Midwestern S&L before I'd trust my government. The guys who invented it told me not to trust it, and if anybody should know, they would. )

 

[Danimal]

(PS: Just because the federales haven't yet used their swoopy new powers to conduct a clandestine search of your home while you were picking up a pint of Haagen Dasz from the Quickie Mart doesn't mean that they don't now have the legal power to do so. Saying "Well, show me that you've lost that right!" is as pointless as, well... Say a new law had been passed that suspects could be shot summarily. Just because you ain't been shot yet don't mean your right not to get shot hasn't been infringed. I'd trust a Midwestern S&L before I'd trust my government. The guys who invented it told me not to trust it, and if anybody should know, they would. )

I actually agree with you about the powers of government. It scares me too. But it would just go so much further in helping the anti-Patriot Act argument if someone could provide examples of actual abuse. I don't doubt the veracity of the possibilities, but without actual examples, the argument is going to be relegated to the conspiritorial trash heap by most folks. It's almost as if the answer of "I can't provide examples....because the government is so sneaky and powerful, I would never know" is passing as actual proof. I own a truck and if I had a mind to, I could go and run over a bunch of people. However, most people do not treat me with contempt and suspicion just because I have the power and means to do something evil. It usually takes some sort of proof. Sure, you can argue that by the time I run someone over, or the Patriot Act claims the rights of an innocent victim, the damage will be done. And you are right - and we need people to be looking forward to see what might happen. But I hate to see bright people compromise their credibility by refusing to be objective and realistic.

 

[Nightfall]

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

Wonder when we get our doubleplusgood telescreens?

Patriot Act VII maybe?

 

[kentucky bucky]

With this paranoia about Ashcroft that some of you guys have been spewing, you could get a job writing screenplays for Michael Moore. This is really about hate isn't it? You just hate Bush and anybody in his Administration. You better hope that a man like Ashcroft stays in that office and the "other side" doesn't get in, or you will REALLY see abuse of office!!
You guys are probably the types that slammed the Bush Administration for not doing enough to stop 911, There's no winning with you people, so I'm not beating this dead horse any more!:banghead:

 

[Orthonym]

k b, I don't hate W,

I VOTED for him! I'm one of the 537. How___________ever, I didn't vote for him because I wanted him for Prez, I voted for him because I know how the Electoral College works. I voted for him because I honestly thought him to be the smaller curculio. (That's lesser of two weevils. Snork!)

I knew the FL election was going to be close, but imagine the state going to Gore by one vote (mine!) because I had voted for Harry Browne.
(Shudder! I'd have had to change my name and hide out!)

Edit: changed 'imagined' to 'imagine'.

 

[Delmar]

kentucky bucky

What most people ARE worried about is when somebody like Feinstein gets into the White House-and its going to happen one day. Giving the Government that kind of power is just begging for it to be abused. Yeah, I voted for GW, and thought Ashcroft would be a friend to the BOR and not just to the 2A.

Look at the damage that has been done courtesy of the RICO act! Started out looking okay-getting the drug lords was awful tough, so they come up with this deal about being able to seize large amounts of cash. Some law enforcement agencies began to seize cash from travelers in the border states with no other justification than they had a large amount of cash on their person or belongings.

The stiffed citizen then has to hire a lawyer to get their own money back.
And, despite all the talk about the country being safer, we're STILL trying to get the pilots trained to have firearms in the cockpit. What in the heck is the holdup there? Simple-the Feds still do not want armed flight crews and are dragging their feet.

Isn't there something about Americans being secure in their persons, papers and effects? Isn't there something about a warrant, issued upon probable cause, presented to a magistrate?

 

[Tamara]

Danimal,

I own a truck and if I had a mind to, I could go and run over a bunch of people. However, most people do not treat me with contempt and suspicion just because I have the power and means to do something evil.

Ah, but your birth certificate did not forbid you to buy any trucks.

Part of the problem with documenting any abuses of the Patriot Act is the loathesome provisions for secrecy built into it. The Justice Department is supposed to report every six months on all its Patriot-related doings to the House Judicial Committee. Apparently there are too many uncontrollabe Democrats there, because Ashcroft and co. have flouted that little regulation and reported to the Intelligence Committee instead. Other provisions like the fact that it's a federal felony to even mention that you're being investigated under Sec. 215, and Sec. 213 allowing the federales to delay notifying you that they served a search warrant on you until they're darn good and ready, make it pretty difficult to assess exactly what's been done under the Patriot Act. Asking a room full of gagged people to speak up if they feel that their rights have been violated isn't likely to elicit many responses. Coming home and finding your house ransacked, and then finding out six months later when you're arrested for membership in subversive organizations that you hadn't been burgled, but rather it had been the cops doing the ransacking is something that's supposed to happen in the old USSR or some third-world banana republic, not the US of A. Of course it's all cool now when the only people likely to have their house searched are Arab terrorists, but you know the progression as well as I do; next it could be militia members, then John Birchers, then GOA members... constantly encroaching nearer and nearer the mainstream.



(BTW: Didn't some prosecutor in NC attempt to use one provision or another in a meth case recently?)

 

[Al Norris]

Danimal wrote:
I own a truck and if I had a mind to, I could go and run over a bunch of people. However, most people do not treat me with contempt and suspicion just because I have the power and means to do something evil. It usually takes some sort of proof.

Oh really? Do you own a gun? Hmmmm?

 

[BryanP]

If all you great lovers of literature don't want the government to know what you are reading, go to a bookstore and buy it.

Ah. So not having your reading habits scrutinized by Herr Ashcroft is a privilege relegated only to those who have the cash to buy any and all books they want? The poor just have to suck it up. Hey, they're poor, they're probably Democrats, they deserve to suffer.

I make a decent living these days. I can (and often do) buy any book I want without worrying about the effect on my budget. When I was younger that was not true. I worked my way through many a library. Some of the books I chose to read out of curiosity would be looked askance by our beloved Attorney General.

 

[TallPine]

With this paranoia about Ashcroft that some of you guys have been spewing, you could get a job writing screenplays for Michael Moore. This is really about hate isn't it? You just hate Bush and anybody in his Administration. You better hope that a man like Ashcroft stays in that office and the "other side" doesn't get in, or you will REALLY see abuse of office!!

Sigh ... read one of my previous posts ... this has been covered already.

What is the matter with you anyway ....

 

[cma g21]

Sadly, I see no way out of this.
Can you imagine the reaction if the Patriot Act was to be repealed and then a major terrorist attack occurred?
Which party do you think will risk political suicide to repeal it?

 

[lapidator]

Don't believe me? Go look up the Emergency Decrees passed after the burning of the Reichstag. Here's a hint: Germany, 1933. Oh, what the hell, here's the rest of the story:

Ha, I was handed this by a co-worker.

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0316-08.htm

Published on Sunday, March 16, 2003 by CommonDreams.org
When Democracy Failed: The Warnings of History
by Thom Hartmann

The 70th anniversary wasn't noticed in the United States, and was barely reported in the corporate media. But the Germans remembered well that fateful day seventy years ago - February 27, 1933. They commemorated the anniversary by joining in demonstrations for peace that mobilized citizens all across the world.

It started when the government, in the midst of a worldwide economic crisis, received reports of an imminent terrorist attack. A foreign ideologue had launched feeble attacks on a few famous buildings, but the media largely ignored his relatively small efforts. The intelligence services knew, however, that the odds were he would eventually succeed. (Historians are still arguing whether or not rogue elements in the intelligence service helped the terrorist; the most recent research implies they did not.)

But the warnings of investigators were ignored at the highest levels, in part because the government was distracted; the man who claimed to be the nation's leader had not been elected by a majority vote and the majority of citizens claimed he had no right to the powers he coveted. He was a simpleton, some said, a cartoon character of a man who saw things in black-and-white terms and didn't have the intellect to understand the subtleties of running a nation in a complex and internationalist world. His coarse use of language - reflecting his political roots in a southernmost state - and his simplistic and often-inflammatory nationalistic rhetoric offended the aristocrats, foreign leaders, and the well-educated elite in the government and media. And, as a young man, he'd joined a secret society with an occult-sounding name and bizarre initiation rituals that involved skulls and human bones.

Nonetheless, he knew the terrorist was going to strike (although he didn't know where or when), and he had already considered his response. When an aide brought him word that the nation's most prestigious building was ablaze, he verified it was the terrorist who had struck and then rushed to the scene and called a press conference.

"You are now witnessing the beginning of a great epoch in history," he proclaimed, standing in front of the burned-out building, surrounded by national media. "This fire," he said, his voice trembling with emotion, "is the beginning." He used the occasion - "a sign from God," he called it - to declare an all-out war on terrorism and its ideological sponsors, a people, he said, who traced their origins to the Middle East and found motivation for their evil deeds in their religion.

It's a pretty far stretch to equate the onslaught of WWII to the "War on Terrorism", remember that Lincoln suspended habeas corpus and Adams signed into law the Alien and Sedition Acts....


lapidator

 

[publius]

So it looks like we can have the Patriot Act which could be scary and abused, but hasn't been - or we can live in the armed camp where our real rights and our real freedoms would be out the door.

Your speculation. Here's mine: we can have the Patriot Act which could be scary and abused, but hasn't been - or we can live in the armed camp where our real rights and our real freedoms would be out the door - or we can have a government which must report searches, and have citizens who can talk about them, and still manage to avoid living in an armed camp. Letting the government secretly find out anything about anyone is not a precondition for security. I'd say it's the opposite. Is it scary that citizens might have secrets, and some of those citizens might be terrorists? Yes, but unaccountable government is scarier.

To whoever it was that asked, it's the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court which has never denied a warrant. When dealing with the thugs who run other countries, our country probably needs the spying powers granted by the FISA, but turning them on citizens is another matter entirely.

Name ANYBODY whose rights were lost in the big Ashcroft Concentration Camp Roundup Jubilee, academically known as the Patriot Act. Hopefully, you will be smarter than a few folks and choose someone OTHER than an admitted terrorist and traitor.

Why? Why not choose Jose Padilla, who I think is a terrorist? Evidently, Ashcroft think so too. The point is, the amendments 4 through 8 of our Constitution are concerned primarily with the rights of the accused. Lots of times, the accused are actually guilty!

Libraries are usually government run, either through the county or city. If they want to look at your records, it seems they have the unfettered ability to do so since they own the books and the building. If all you great lovers of literature don't want the government to know what you are reading, go to a bookstore and buy it.

I wouldn't say unfettered. I doubt if, pre-9/11, one of my city councilmen could get a bug up his butt and go to the library demanding to know what I read just because the city owns it. I seriously doubt he could do so and also order the librarians not to speak about it. But even if he could, there's a huge difference, in my mind anyway, between letting the city have that kind of power, and giving it to the feds. The feds never owned the books.

Speaking of owning the books, my house is very small, my income is not huge, and my wife has a book habit that could choke a Boeing hangar. As noted earlier, buying every book one might want to read is just not possible for everyone.

Under federal law prior to the Patriot Act, any law enforcement agent could get a warrant to search a particular person's library records if a person could be identified, or even the entire library record if a particular person was not identified, upon a showing of probable cause.

Getting a warrant from a regular court and getting a warrant from a FISA court are two very different things. Gagging librarians is different from not gagging them.

To sum up, it's the secrecy. That's the problem. A rubber stamp court makes a mockery of division of powers, just as reporting to the wrong committee in Congress makes a mockery of oversight. I don't want to just trust what John Ashcroft and his minions are doing when the curtain is drawn.

A request: Someone recently posted here an excellent analysis of the PA which discussed in depth how it updated the old, telephone-specific language of wiretapping laws to include the internet. I had read almost all of it when my computer crashed, and now I don't remember where I got it. If you know what I'm talking about and know where to find it, please email me the info. Thanks.

 

[rick_reno]

freer today

v

 

[standingbear]

(burning the library card) well,thats that.i cant name any examples of exactly why i dont feel more free now.all i can say is-its a good thing if it catches a terrorist but in order for them to catch the terrorist,they are allowed to go "fishing".fishing meaning some armchair desk commando decides that you or i are reading the wrong books or suscribing to the wrong magazines or participating in an activity that is deemed unacceptable.you can then be secretly checked out with ALL the trimmings-bank accts,mail,internet..and nobody is allowed to tell you cause its a secret.you can be detained with no recourse,locked up and their aint nothing anybodys gonna do to help.its this that really bothers me.the fact it can be done.no accountability.your papers..please.

 

[Moparmike]

Lapidator, that link has some scary similarities. I generally hate the mindset of and the style of argument of "Progressives", but that hits too close to home. I have done some _very_ amature-ish research into the politics of pre-WWII Germany, and note some very disturbing similarities. Very little would have to change in order for more "ducks to get into their rows." Namely, certain power-hungry politicians with expert Propoganda Ministers....err, umm, Secretaries of the Press with a different slogan: "Do it for the future. Do it for the children."

Sie Papieren, bitte.

 

[spartacus2002]

Here's a scary thought for all those folks who say "well, the laws haven't been abused yet, so you aren't in danger."

Imagine if a Democrat won the White House in 2004, and appointed Hillary as Secretary of the Dept of Homeland Security.....

 

[Sean Smith]

It would be more realistic to say that Hillary does the appointing in 2004 or 2008.

Off on a slight tangent... is it just me, or do Departments of Homeland Security and Patrot Acts sound Nazi-esque just based on the names? I wonder how different people would be reacting if they were called something bland and bureaucratic sounding? Or happy and harmless? It would be just as bad, but I bet Ashcroft et. al. could have cut the negative media coverage in half with some semantic fiddling.

"I'm going to vote Libertarian because of the Civil Service Coordination Bureau! You know they investigate mindcrimes, right?"

"I can't tell you how much I hate the Flowers and Puppies Act! Congress folded to that fascist Bush!"

 

[Bill Hook]

Ashcroft should consider a new career as a comedian, should the gig as AG (or is that People's Commisar/Reichsfuhrer of Justice?) doesn't work out.