Pimping The Patriot Act
By SEAN HANNON

September 18, 2003

 The USA Patriot Act is at last attracting mainstream media attention, now that a good number of Americans, liberals and conservatives alike, have dared to look past the specious acronym (one designed to imply that you are a traitor if you question it) and really analyzed this legislation. More and more Americans who have done so have come to realize how poisonous it is to our democracy and have risen up to challenge it through town resolutions across the nation. I hope to see Weston and Westport follow suit.

 Because of this groundswell of opposition, we are now seeing Attorney General Ashcroft on a PR junket trying to allay fears about it and put to rest misconceptions. The only problem is, he is being allowed to make grossly misleading statements about the new law that are going unchallenged by broadcast journalists and talkshow interviewers who aren’t doing their homework. On Thursday, September 11, Ashcroft spoke on Larry King and said of the Patriot Act: “not only is every case overseen by a Federal judge whose job it is to make sure that the law is followed and that liberties are respected... so you have that case-specific supervision by the judicial branch, the Patriot Act requires that a comprehensive report be given to the Congress twice a year... and there hasn’t been any evidence of abuse...”

 Mr Ashcoft made two assertions here that Mr. King blithely neglected to challenge. Under the Patriot Act, the need to show probable cause is gone. Judges have little authority to scrutinize or reject FBI surveillance applications. All the FBI has to do is “specify” that the records are “sought for” an authorized investigation, and the judge must grant the order. In other words, judges become a rubber stamp and the judicial review is all but gone. The second assertion Ashcroft made was that there hasn’t been any evidence of abuse. Mr, King failed to remind Ashcroft that his own Inspector General, the Justice Department’s internal watchdog, issued a highly critical report last July of Patriot Act-related abuses of civil rights. And if Congress hasn’t been critical of any specific abuses, it is due to the fact that Ashcroft refuses to give them any account of how many times Patriot Act subpoenas have been issued or any details surrounding them.

 President Bush also used September 11 as a moment to push for an expanded Patriot Act that would include “administrative subpoenas” requiring neither judge nor grand jury, and expanding the death penalty to terrorism-related crimes. I know that sounds comforting to some of you, but when an act of civil disobedience, or speaking out in dissent against American injustices, or innocently sending money to a third world charity can fall under the everwidening banner of terrorism-related crimes, it is chilling.

 The President and Attorney General are gutting the Bill of Rights beneath our very noses. They use the anniversary of our pain to sell us on the virtue of an autonomous Executive Branch no longer answerable to the Judicial or Congressional branches of government. Every secret they keep from the American public and our elected officials is done under a blanket claim of “national security”. We must have the courage to assert our faith in the strengths of a free and open society, and reject the repressive fear tactics this administration is offering as a panacea. Challenge it now while we can think. Because after the next attack by Al Qaida, the real threat to our democracy is what we do to ourselves in response.