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Loser
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For those of you who don't feel comfortable clicking blind links.
Micheal Moore
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On October 26, 2001, just six weeks after the devastation on September 11, Congress passed the USA Patriot Act. Ashcroft and his cronies wasted no time in attempting to further their agenda at the expense of a traumatized nation.
USA Patriot is an acronym for "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism", but all that elaborate language does not succeed in hiding the dangerous nature of the document.
So just what does the Patriot Act give the Bush administration the right to do?
Well, for starters, it allows the FBI to monitor everything from e-mail to medical records to library accounts, providing frightening access to once private information.
They can now legally wiretap phones, break into homes and offices, and access financial records without probable cause.
The Patriot Act broadens terrorism to include "domestic terrorism" which could potentially be used to target activist groups within the country speaking out against Bush's treacherous deeds.
The Patriot Act also disregards attorney-client privilege and authorizes government surveillance of previously confidential discussions.
Immigrants can be detained indefinitely based on suspicion alone, and the Patriot Act aids the excessive amounts of deportations that are taking place.
Calling this the Patriot Act is quite a dangerous action within itself, because the implication follows: if you speak against the Patriot Act, well, you sure aren't being a good citizen in our country's time of need. When Bush labels his actions as the model of patriotism, he then classifies all dissent as un-American. While this may be comforting to him, it is actually an insult to patriotism.
Protecting the Constitution and the Bill of Rights demonstrates a great respect for the government of this country and the rights of its citizens, and that sounds downright patriotic.
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Patriot II: What it is
It's not over yet. Currently, the Justice Department is working on the Domestic Security Enhancement Act, an extension of the Patriot Act that has been dubbed "Patriot II". Perhaps one of the most dangerous aspects of this bill would grant the government the right to detain someone indefinitely without ever disclosing their identity, allowing the person to ultimately disappear. It would also broaden local police's ability to spy on "terrorist" groups, including domestic religious and political organizations. The government could take sweeping "anti-terrorist" action, like obtaining an individual's financial and library records without a warrant and allowing wiretaps without a court order. How else could this affect you?
Well, if you engage in civil disobedience, the government would have the right to strip you of your citizenship! Had enough? Stop this act before it starts!
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Jonah Goldburg
Editor of 'National Review Online'
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The latest embarrassment is the revelation that the Department of Justice has not invoked the Patriot Act's Section 215 - a section of the act that the ACLU crowd claims has turned the FBI into a library-raiding Gestapo.
What, in reality, is Section 215? It's a relatively innocuous provision of the Patriot Act that allows law enforcement to obtain, after getting approval from a judge, documents from third parties - your credit card company, for example - if they're pertinent to a terrorism investigation. (#)
Not only has the government never used 215, but the section doesn't even mention libraries - or any of the other secular holy sites allegedly imperiled by it.
At minimum, critics should stop talking about the Patriot Act's "trampling of rights" in the present tense. And lest they claim that they are being "vigilant" in the face of potential threats, someone should remind them that vigilance is fine, but lying and fear-mongering is crying wolf.
The Section 215 bashing is just the latest in an ongoing campaign to make up a problem out of the Patriot Act that does not exist. I'm sure you've heard that the Patriot Act also permits, in the words of Nick Gillespie of Reason magazine, "spying on the Web browsers of people who are not even criminal suspects." Errr, wrong. The Patriot Act actually toughens the standards by which the government can snoop on electronic communications.
Before the Patriot Act, there was no settled law on whether the government - or for that matter, some random stalker or Amazon.com - could acquire that kind of information. The Patriot Act made it a crime for the government or anybody else to pry into your e-mail without getting a court order.
(#) Well, it's a good thing the Patriot Act requires the DOJ's inspector general to investigate civil rights complaints.
The last report, issued over the summer, found that there were 34 "credible" allegations of abuse out of 1,037 claims made over a six-month period (note: that's allegations, not convictions).
And most of these "credible" but unproven allegations involved such horrors as verbal harassment of prisoners by prison guards. That's not nice and it shouldn't happen, but it's hardly 1930s Germany.
The complaints of lost civil rights go on.
We hear about prisoners "kept in secret" when they're really not. Rather, the government won't release their names to the media - or to the terrorists who are keen to find out such information. However, the prisoners themselves - through their lawyers or families - are free to release their names.
The ACLU says that the feds can secretly enter your home while you're out and rifle through your files, underwear drawer, whatever. Well, that's true, if the cops get a warrant first and notify you later.
If that scares you, I'm sorry. But it's hardly something new.
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Last edited by redravin40; 10-08-2003 at 07:57 PM..
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