In other words: A discussion of The Bush Administration
The unPatriotic Act
If the deficit is Bush's Number 1 domestic weakness (as I say below), than the patriot act is a strong number two. No one likes it.
Conservative backlash
A grass-roots drive to resist the attorney general's broad expansion of police powers in the name of fighting terrorism has picked up so much support in the American heartland it threatens not only repeal of the legislation but political damage to President Bush as well.
...
So the attorney general is out stumping in the presidential battleground states of Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan, as well as the first caucus state of Iowa, trying to sell the Patriot Act as vital to the war on terrorism while a Justice Department Web site seeks to dispel "myths" put out by critics.
This spin control performance is offensive both in its message and its tactics. Mr. Ashcroft, who bullied Congress into granting law enforcement agencies sweeping new powers while the nation was still traumatized by the Sept. 11 attacks, is once again using fear to get his way.
Most outrageously, he asserts that the nation is "safer" now because of the broader police powers and that "if we knew then what we know now, we would have passed the Patriot Act six months before Sept. 11."
Well, perhaps -- if the FBI, so hidebound, so risk-averse and so technologically outmoded that it ignored many clues within its grasp, would somehow have been transformed. But the new police powers in the Patriot Act don't fix any of that.
And the NYTimes should have an essay with this title in October, 2001, but better late then never: An Unpatriotic Act
One member of Congress, Representative John Conyers Jr., a Michigan Democrat, has charged that Mr. Ashcroft's lobbying campaign, in which United States attorneys have been asked to participate, may violate the law prohibiting members of the executive branch from engaging in grass-roots lobbying for or against Congressional legislation. Legal or not, the campaign seeks to shore up a deeply flawed piece of legislation. The Patriot Act is the Bush administration's attempt to make the country safe on the cheap. Rather than do the hard work of coming up with effective port security and air cargo checks, and other programs targeted at actual threats, the administration has taken aim at civil liberties.
The administration is clearly worried, as opposition to the excesses of the Patriot Act grows across the country and the political spectrum. Instead of spin-doctoring the problem, Mr. Ashcroft should work with the law's critics to develop a law that respects Americans' fundamental rights.
- rob 1:46 PM - [PermaLink] -
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