Patriot Act Not the Most Dangerous Game in Town
Harvey Silverglate and Carl Takai, writing for the Boston Phoenix, say:
While we’re all fretting over the Patriot Act, John Ashcroft’s Justice Department is after much bigger game
First, let's take a look at the Patriot Act:
Personally shepherded through Congress by Attorney General John Ashcroft, it authorizes the kinds of things that send shivers down civil libertarians’ spines: invasions of personal privacy, restrictions on financial transactions, racial and ethnic profiling, blurring the line between foreign intelligence and domestic law enforcement, and punitive registration requirements for immigrants and visitors. And that’s just a partial list.
Silverglate says our focus on the Patriot Act has distracted us from Bush's parallel move--taking away our "threshold rights" --
fair elections, open and publicly accountable government, judicial review of executive action, the right of the accused to a public jury trial, separation of powers among the three branches of government, and the rights to free expression and free association —
Silverglate argues that the Patriot Act provisions can be repealed or sunsetted. Threshold rights are more permanent.
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