In other words: A discussion of The Bush Administration
Lemme write this quick--
-- before the F.B.I. comes a knockin' and locks my ass up and throws away the key and denies me a lawyer or even charges me with a crime, because dissent is now illegal and makes you a domestic terrorist in the eyes of John Ashcroft.
The unusual initiative comes after the Justice Department, in a previously undisclosed legal opinion, gave its blessing to controversial tactics used last year by the F.B.I in urging local police departments to report suspicious activity at political and antiwar demonstrations to counterterrorism squads. The F.B.I. bulletins that relayed the request for help detailed tactics used by demonstrators - everything from violent resistance to Internet fund-raising and recruitment.
In an internal complaint, an F.B.I. employee charged that the bulletins improperly blurred the line between lawfully protected speech and illegal activity. But the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, in a five-page internal analysis obtained by The New York Times, disagreed.
The office, which also made headlines in June in an opinion - since disavowed - that authorized the use of torture against terrorism suspects in some circumstances, said any First Amendment impact posed by the F.B.I.'s monitoring of the political protests was negligible and constitutional.
Notice how the words "torture" "terrorism" "political protests" and "constitutional" fit neatly in the same sentence. Not Stalin enough for you? Take a gander:
"We vetted down a list and went out and knocked on doors and had a laundry list of questions to ask about possible criminal behavior," [Joe Parris, a bureau spokesman] added. "No one was dragged from their homes and put under bright lights. The interviewees were free to talk to us or close the door in our faces."
How's that for reassuring? No one was dragged from their homes and tortured for no reason at all! Don't you feel safer after hearing him say that's what the F.B.I. isn't doing?
"This kind of pressure has a real chilling effect on perfectly legitimate political activity," said Mark Silverstein, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado, where two groups of political activists in Denver and a third in Fort Collins were visited by the F.B.I. "People are going to be afraid to go to a demonstration or even sign a petition if they justifiably believe that will result in your having an F.B.I. file opened on you."
I wonder how many people logged off this website after reading that just now? I hear the sound of laptops clicking shut from sea to shining sea. Remember "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon"? Now it's not so quaint and funny ... now we have "Six Degrees of Investigation" and I'm officially at No. 2 after talking to my neighbor at the Saturday pig roast -- who was investigated by the feds. So I better wrap this up:
Prosecutors have now informed the [three young men subpoenaed in Missouri] that they are targets of a domestic terrorism investigation, Ms. Lieberman said, but have not disclosed the basis for their suspicions. "They won't tell me," she said.
Federal officials in St. Louis and Washington declined to comment on the case. Ms. Lieberman insisted that the men "didn't have any plans to participate in the violence, but what's so disturbing about all this is the pre-emptive nature - stopping them from participating in a protest before anything even happened."
The three men "were really shaken and frightened by all this," she said, "and they got the message loud and clear that if you make plans to go to a protest, you could be subject to arrest or a visit from the F.B.I."
You better watch out, you better not cry, you better think twice, I'm telling you why.
- Michael 11:03 AM - [PermaLink] -
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