From the Albany Times-Union:
http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories...date=8/24/2003
Mr. Ashcroft, on the trail
The attorney general campaigns in defense of the largely indefensible Patriot Act
First published: Sunday, August 24, 2003
This is about politics, pure and simple. Not terrorism and not the level of law enforcement required to stop it. Attorney General John Ashcroft is off on a campaign-style swing through some states that will be critical to President Bush's re-election bid in defense of the Patriot Act for one reason and one reason only. The country is having second thoughts about the sweeping legislation passed so hastily after the Sept. 11 attacks.
The very Congress that passed the law now wants to amend some of its most intrusive provisions. The people affected by a law that does far more to curtail civil liberties than enhance security demands as much. Some 150 municipalities, including Albany and Schenectady, along with the states of Alaska, Hawaii and Vermont, have passed resolutions condemning all or part of the law.
So Mr. Ashcroft invokes Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill in his defense of the Patriot Act. He cites his own views as well, with his contention that the law has stopped subsequent terrorist attacks.
Laura Murphy, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Washington office, is among those who sees through Mr. Ashcroft's barnstorming tour. Hers is a most telling observation, that "there is a growing sense among regular Americans of all political stripes -- from the most right-wing to the most left -- that the Patriot Act went too far, too fast."
The Bush administration's more skilled political practitioners -- the President himself, say, or his handler Karl Rove -- would have a hard enough time defending a series of laws that have never received the proper scrutiny.
An example of their excesses would be the provision that allows what are known as "sneak-and-peek" searches. That means federal agents can secretly search a house or an office but delay notifying the target of the search. Mr. Ashcroft insists the prompt notification that would otherwise be required damages anti-terror investigations.
Few people will fall for that one. Certainly nothing can be culled from the collected works of Mr. Churchill to defend such a thing. The House passed an amendment earlier in the summer that would cut off funding for that portion of the law. Credit for that assertion of civil liberties and common sense goes to Rep. C.L. "Butch" Otter, a conservative Republican from Idaho.
As for other troublesome provisions of the Patriot Act, let's hear what Mr. Ashcroft has to say about, for example, the empowerment of a special intelligence court to issue grand jury-like subpoenas for business records. Or allowing agents to find out what individual suspects buy in bookstores and check out of libraries.
The last time Mr. Ashcroft went off on such an extended campaign tour, it was in a losing attempt to keep his Senate seat in the 2000 election. His latest effort deserves no more success.
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