Replies to Ashcroft touting PATRIOT Act as pro-freedom [priv]

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

---

Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 09:39:05 -0800
To: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
From: Steve Schear <s.schear () comcast net>
Subject: Re: [Politech] John Ashcroft says PATRIOT Act "honors" liberty
  and freedom [priv]
In-Reply-To: <6.0.0.22.2.20031117115326.02119810 () zdnet07 zdz cnwk>
Mime-Version: 1.0

> > Ordered liberty is the reason that we are the most open and the most 
> > secure society in the world.  Ordered liberty is a guiding principle, not 
> > a stumbling block to security.
> >
> > When the first societies passed and enforced the first laws against 
> > murder, theft and rape, the men and women of those societies 
> > unquestionably were made more free.
> >
> > A test of a law, then, is this:  does it honor or degrade liberty?  Does 
> > it enhance or diminish freedom?
> >
> > The Founders provided the mechanism to protect our liberties and preserve 
> > the safety and security of the Republic:  the Constitution.  It is a 
> > document that safeguards security, but not at the expense of freedom.  It 
> > celebrates freedom, but not at the expense of security.  It protects us 
> > and our way of life.

This naive view ignores the sometimes ad hoc basis for Supreme Court 
rulings, especially when 'essential' federal power is at stake or the court 
is under heavy pressure.  Good examples of the SC bending over are its 
refusal to consider Congressional misbehavior in passing the 14th Amendment 
and its knuckling under to Congress and FDR pressure to pass 
unconstitutional New Deal legislation.  These two episodes form the 
backbone of almost all federal power and agencies formed since the Civil War.

steve

---

Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 08:30:26 -1000
To: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
From: George Mason <masong002 () hawaii rr com>
Subject: Re: [Politech] John Ashcroft says PATRIOT Act "honors" liberty
  and freedom [priv]

At 11:56 AM 11/17/03 -0500, you wrote:
> ---
>
> Excerpt:
> There is a simple reason for this ... the Patriot has not been used to 
> infringe upon individual liberty.
>
> Many of you have heard the hue and cry from critics of the Patriot Act who 
> allege that liberty has been eroded.  But more telling is what you have 
> not heard.  You have not heard of one single case in which a judge has 
> found an abuse of the Patriot Act because, again, there have been no abuses.

I had thought of sending this factoid to you, but didn't as it seemed 
slightly outside the topic parameters of Politech.

Last week, on the MSNBC show "Scarborough Country", the host Joe 
Scarborough (libertarian-conservative) reported that a strip club in Las 
Vegas had been busted under the auspices of the Patriot Act. He was quite 
incensed that under the direction of Ashcroft ( who appears to be an aging 
Basset Hound/Sharpei mix) had turned his attention from al-Qaeda to 
strippers in the name of Homeland Security.


A hui hou--

GM

DSS/DH key id: 0xD60CE0F9
http://www.irstp.com

---

Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 21:39:43 -0600
Subject: Re: [Politech] Justice Department's list of terrorism-related 
court cases
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed
Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v543)
Cc: dalerobertson () hotmail com
To: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
From: Jim Davidson <davidson () net1 net>
In-Reply-To: <6.0.0.22.2.20031117193511.087afa30 () zdnet07 zdz cnwk>

Dear Declan,

It is sort of pretty to imagine that there is still an
independent judiciary in this country, but I have to
ask, who pays the judges?  The checks are cut by the
US Treasury and they are handed out by the same Department
of Justice which is getting its police state activities
sanctioned by those judges.

We also know that under J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI, a part
of the Justice Department, kept files on prominent
politicians and judges to use in extortion.  We were told
after Hoover's death c. 1973 that all that had been done
away with, but lo and behold, under Clinton there was that
"file-gate" scandal where all those FBI files on very
prominent Republicans were found in the White House.  So,
we have to expect that the secret files are still being
kept and the Justice Department is still willing to use
the data it gathers.  After all it is "time of war" and
emergency measures are "fully justified."

I don't see anything listed on the DoJ listing where their
views were challenged by a court.  Does that mean that no
such challenges are possible, or that the courts have
refused to hear such arguments, or that the courts have
been subverted by the same Justice Department, or that the
Justice Department is being highly selective in which
cases it presents, or perhaps the independence of the
judiciary should now be called into question? I don't know.
I'm willing to speculate.

In a police state, the first casualty is justice.  For my
own part, I think the imprisonment at Guantanamo of, e.g.,
British citizens without providing access to counsel or
access to British consular personnel is idiotic.  What does
the Bush Administration have to fear from due process for
these prisoners?  If they are all as guilty as sin, then
due process will find that they are all guilty as sin, and
they will remain imprisoned.  Due process doesn't mean let
them out without a hearing, it means don't hold them
forever without a hearing.

If basic liberties like habeas corpus do not apply in time
of war, then there is something wrong with the constitution.
There is nothing wrong with habeas corpus.  It is possible
to preserve habeas corpus and fight an effective war.  So,
the penchant of the courts and the executive branch to
favor police state behavior is unjustifiable.

It will all end very badly.

Regards,

Jim
 http://www.ezez.com/free/freejim.html

---

Reply-To: "todd glassey" <tglassey () Stanford edu>
From: "todd glassey" <todd.glassey () worldnet att net>
To: <politech () politechbot com>, "Declan McCullagh" <declan () well com>
References: <6.0.0.22.2.20031117115326.02119810 () zdnet07 zdz cnwk>
Subject: Re: [Politech] John Ashcroft says PATRIOT Act "honors" liberty and 
freedom [priv]
Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 10:42:39 -0800

Declan - wow - right. This is the bottom line - the P.A. has not been used
as the abusive tool that many of its opponents claimed it would be. There
have been no doors-kicked-in, no random arrests, and well none of the things
that many of the more anarchistic voices on this and other lists
prophesized.

Simply put - this is more scare tactic used by those that want there to be
"no government" to arouse and provoke those that cannot gather this
information for themselves. But lets move forward and ask a couple of simple
questions -

    1)    200 years ago - was there even the slightest possibility that a
single individual could cause catastrophic or mass destruction on their
own? -= perhaps if they carried a few pounds of Dynamite into a mine they
could close it down - but that's pretty much it... There were no World Trade
Center's to attack, no 747's or any other aircraft to attack them with. No
dirty bombs, no fission or fusion weapons - no bioterrorist tools, so keep
the perspective in place.

    2)    There is also a general feeling that personal privacy is eroding -
and IMHO that also is BS. Personal Privacy is a myth - it never existed
except as a fall-out of the difficulty in performing  the various
surveillance services and their modality and also, operating costs. So the
facts are pretty simple here...

The world is a much different place when we started all the talk about
personal liberty and the  "god given" rights that a human being has... and
well - no one ever said that there was going to be privacy such that your
cell-phone's location wouldn't be collectable. Your hardwired land line is
not so why should the cellular - OH Yeah - because until very recently it
was technologically impossible - but with Datum and others inventions (one
of mine too!) the real question becomes one of  whether there ever any
formal commitment that cellular locations should be anonymous? and in
response to this, my answer is I think not...

This is just one of the MANY MANY changes that are happening to us
culturally as we step into wireless and paperless commerce, and well we just
need to get over it.

Todd Glassey

---

Subject: Re: [Politech] John Ashcroft says PATRIOT Act "honors" liberty and
        freedom [priv]
From: Steve Withers <swithers () mmp org nz>
To: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
Date: 18 Nov 2003 14:10:03 +1300
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

On Tue, 2003-11-18 at 05:56, Declan McCullagh wrote:
> ---
>
> Excerpt:
> There is a simple reason for this ... the Patriot has not been used to
> infringe upon individual liberty.
>
> Many of you have heard the hue and cry from critics of the Patriot Act who
> allege that liberty has been eroded.  But more telling is what you have not
> heard.  You have not heard of one single case in which a judge has found an
> abuse of the Patriot Act because, again, there have been no abuses.

The Patriot Act itself is an abuse.

Hitler did not violate German law while detaining people, trying them in
secret courts and executing them under their emergency laws at the
time.

I guess the victims had notbing worry about then. It was done acording
to the law.

(hint: the law WAS the problem).

--
Steve Withers <swithers () mmp org nz>


_______________________________________________
Politech mailing list
Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/
Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)