Who Let the Dogs In? (55 page)

In this fight for our cherished freedoms, those cherished freedoms should definitely be the first thing to go. Sieg heil, y’all.

December 2001

John Ashcroft II

B
Y
GEORGE,
we need honest, reasoned debate around here and not fear-mongering, so anyone out there who suspects Attorney General John Ashcroft of being a nincompoop is clearly aiding terrorists and giving ammunition to America’s enemies. Ashcroft says so, and if that’s not reasoned debate, what is?

Under the high standards of reason set forth by Ashcroft, we are allowed to present CORRECT information (those who present incorrect information, like some people in government, erode our national unity and diminish our resolve) as to what the attorney general is up to. While Operation Enduring Freedom continues in Afghanistan, enduring freedom is not looking so good here at home—and like the A.G., I would be the last to encourage people of goodwill to remain silent in the face of evil.

Here is some CORRECT information about enduring freedom:

•  Ashcroft’s urpily named PATRIOT Act permits government agents to search a suspect’s home without notification. In J. Edgar Hoover’s day, this was known as “a blackbag job.” As Nat Hentoff reports in
The Progressive:
“A warrant would be required, but very few judges would turn a government investigator down in this time of fear. Ashcroft’s ‘secret searches’ provision can now extend to all criminal cases and can include taking photographs, the contents of your hard drive, and other property. This is now a permanent part of the law, not subject to any ‘sunset review’ by Congress.”

Many of our tough-minded brethren, to whom it is perfectly clear that less freedom equals more security, have dismissed complaints by saying, after all, these measures only apply to non-citizens, and besides, the worst parts of it will sunset in four years. Wrong. This means you, fellow citizens—if you happen to know someone whose brother-in-law rented a garage apartment to a guy who knew someone who might be a terrorist. Benjamin Franklin said, “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty or safety.” But I’m pretty sure Franklin didn’t mean to aid terrorists, so please don’t report him to the A.G.

•  The expansion of wiretapping authority to computers simply puts privacy in cyberspace in jeopardy without any concomitant gain to law enforcement. According to James X. Dempsey, deputy director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, neither Congress nor the media have put all this together to see the breadth of the dragnet.

The government can now delve into personal and private records of individuals even if they cannot be directly connected to a terrorist or foreign government. Bank records, e-mails, library records, even the track of discount cards at grocery stores can be obtained on individuals without establishing any connection to a terrorist before a judge. According to the
Los Angeles Times,
al-Qaeda uses sophisticated encryption devices freely available on the Internet that cannot be cracked. So the terrorists are safe from cyber-snooping, but we’re not.

•  Ashcroft and Co. essentially say, “Trust us, we won’t misuse these new laws.” But in fact the FBI and the CIA have repeatedly violated such trust to spy on everyone from Martin Luther King Jr. to Jean Seberg. That’s why the checks were there to begin with.

•  According to an analysis of PATRIOT by the Electronic Freedom Foundation, the government made no showing that the previous powers of law enforcement and intelligence agencies to spy on U.S. citizens were insufficient to allow them to investigate and prosecute acts of terrorism: “Many provisions . . . instead of (being) aimed at terrorism, are aimed at nonviolent, domestic computer crime. In addition, although many of the provisions appear aimed at terrorism, the government made no showing that the reasons they failed to detect the planning of the recent attacks or any other terrorist attacks were the civil liberties compromised by the bill. The government may now spy on websurfing of innocent Americans, including terms entered into search engines, by merely telling a judge anywhere in the U.S. that the spying could lead to information that is ‘relevant’ to an ongoing criminal investigation.”

The person spied on does not have to be the target of the investigation nor is probable cause required.

•  The military tribunals idea is so bad the administration has been backing up on it steadily, especially since Spain has already announced it won’t turn over its al-Qaeda suspects to a system so violative of international standards. The Spaniards, who have been fighting Basque terrorists for years, are not noticeably “soft on terrorism.”

•  Lest you think our only attorney general does not care about rights, I point out that when it comes to the 550 he has “detained” since September, without evidence, without charges, without identification, and without legal counsel, he so fully respects the Second Amendment rights of these noncitizens that he has reversed the Justice Department’s previous stand to forbid the FBI to check on their gun-purchase records in order to protect their privacy. Also, Ashcroft fully believes in the rights of the unborn. The born are on their own.

December 2001

John Ashcroft III

S
OMETIMES
I FORGET
how truly simpleminded the Bushies can be. The front page of
The New York Times
reports, “The Bush administration seems to accept and even relish (Attorney General) Ashcroft’s role as lightning rod on difficult criminal justice issues.”

Since the attorney general has so amply demonstrated his clueless incompetence, it may seem difficult to plumb why it should be so. But it is precisely, you see, because liberals consider John Ashcroft a dangerous nincompoop that the administration thinks he’s doing a good job. They really are that simple.

In the Texas Legislature, the press occasionally gives the If-He-Votes-Yes, I-Vote-No Award for some egregious example of this particular strain of non-thinking. Any halfway smart politician loves to have another pol in this position. That’s when you introduce a resolution in favor of Motherhood just to watch the other guy vote against it.

It takes no great detective to see the pattern here. Before September 11, Bush’s entire foreign policy consisted of being Not Clinton. If Clinton was for something, Bush was against it, and vice versa. This did not, you may have noticed, lead to an effective foreign policy.

Likewise, most people had difficulty understanding why the administration was so set on drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge when it didn’t make any sense. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates 3.2 billion barrels of economically recoverable oil, which would at most reduce our foreign dependence by a couple of percentage points. We can save twice that with a tiny improvement in fuel mileage, which the Bushies opposed. It’s just dumb to drill there, and the enviros were in a snit about it.

Precisely. It was because the enviros were in a total snit that the Bushies felt they were doing the right thing. Unfortunately, this is four-year-old thinking.

Because John Ashcroft has become a bugbear for liberals, the Bushies assume he must be doing something right. Not necessarily.

As David Cole reports in
The Nation,
“To date, despite the thousands of Arab and Muslim immigrants arrested, searched, profiled and questioned, Ashcroft has charged only a single person—Zacarias Moussaoui—with any involvement in the attacks of September 11. And he was arrested before the attacks occurred. Such broad-brush tactics are unlikely to succeed, for they give notice to potential targets, allowing them to evade detection while alienating the very communities we must work with to identify potential threats who may be living among them.”

Ashcroft is still “detaining”—such a nice euphemism—hundreds of non-citizens on immigration charges, even though many of those charges have been resolved. Under Ashcroft’s orders, they are being tried in secret proceedings closed to all outside observers.

U.S. District Judge Nancy Edmunds has declared the closed proceedings unconstitutional, and Superior Court Judge Arthur D’Italia of New Jersey, calling the secret arrests “odious to a democracy,” has ordered the INS to release the names of those detained.

Ashcroft’s prosecution of Lynne Stewart, the New York lawyer who has bravely defended some terribly unpopular clients, is a mystery. She is not charged with furthering any illegal or violent activity. Ashcroft has also made prosecution of Moussaoui more difficult by insisting on the death penalty. We knew in advance that meant France would not cooperate by releasing information that could lead to the death penalty. It’s all very well to sit around and gritch about the French, but it doesn’t get us any forwarder.

Then we have this ludicrous situation at Gitmo, where we now say we may keep these people locked up even if they are acquitted of whatever charges are finally leveled against them. A permanent policy of imprisonment without conviction or even trial—that’s worse than stupid, it’s horrible.

The administration has already backed down from its original position and will now require public trials, unanimous votes for the death penalty, and some review. But they insist they can put you in a dungeon forever and they never have to say why. It’s like the old French lettre de cachet that used to figure as plot device in potboilers like
The Count of Monte Cristo.
One can only conclude the problem is the administration has no idea what to do with these prisoners.

April 2002

Jimmy Carter

F
OR
THOSE INTERESTED
in high points in the history of Bad Manners, there was rather a breathtaking moment last week when columnist and television pundit Bob Novak chose to use the occasion of Jimmy Carter’s winning the Nobel Peace Prize to trash the man.