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Produced & Maintained by Idaho Mountain Express, Box 1013, Ketchum, ID 83340-1013 
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Copyright © 2002 Express Publishing Inc.
All Rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of Express Publishing Inc. is prohibited. 


For the week of August 21 - 27, 2002

Opinion Columns

Is feared U.S. police power being revived?

Commentary by PAT MURPHY


The red-white-and-blue bumper sticker on the tradesman’s pickup truck at a Ketchum construction site — "Love My Country/Fear My Government" — is fading.

When new, it bespoke outraged reaction to the Ruby Ridge clash between the Weaver family and the FBI and, later, the Waco inferno blamed on the FBI. Tales of no-knock home invasions by SWAT teams also spread around the Internet about hat time.

But just as the bumper sticker is fading, so, too, has the militant suspicion of federal powers that fathered the militia movement.

Yet, today, the 10th anniversary of the beginning of Ruby Ridge siege, federal police powers are expanding more rapidly and becoming more pervasive in American life than at any other time.

And with far more dangerous dimensions.

This burgeoning power is being concentrated in the hands of U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, a political and religious zealot who often acts as if he’s above the law and, unlike predecessors, rarely appears in public to account for his actions.

Most Americans who casually follow Ashcroft’s activities seem unconcerned. So far, they perceive Ashcroft is using powers to detain "them" ¾ Arabs and followers of Osama bin Laden ¾ in the war on terrorism without appeal to a court and without lawyers.

But the same power could be turned on "us" ¾ Americans" ¾ simply if Ashcroft declares by fiat that an American is a terrorism suspect or "enemy combatant" and with no need for Ashcroft to justify it.

Items:

  • An angry federal Judge Robert G. Doumar ordered Ashcroft aides who refused to answer his questions to produce documents justifying the detention of U.S. citizen Esam Hamdi, 21 as a terrorism suspect. "This case appears to be the first in American jurisprudence where an American citizen has been held incommunicado and subjected to an indefinite detention in the continental United States without charges, without any findings by a military tribunal, and without access to a lawyer," Judge Doumar wrote.

  • Ashcroft has refused to answer questions of the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee, chaired by Rep. James Sensenbrenner Jr., D-Wis., investigating how Ashcfroft is using his broad new anti-terrorism powers. Ashcroft instead sent answers to the House Intelligence Committee that plans no investigations and has asked no questions.

  • President Bush has ordered Ashcroft and Defense Scretary Donald Rumsfeld to determine whether the U.S. military should have more domestic powers over civilians.

  • George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, one of the most persistent and acerbic critics of President Clinton’s conduct, writes that "Attorney General John Ashcroft’s announced desire for camps for U.S. citizens he deems to be ‘enemy combatants’ has moved him merely from being a political embarrassment to being a constitutional menace."

Since Ashcroft once told a congressional committee that he believes critics and protesters of President Bush’s anti-terrorism policies were aiding enemy interests, would Ashcroft slap critics and protesters into detention camps without benefit of hearings or lawyers?

Ashcroft’s use of detention camps stirs memories of President Nixon’s "Huston Plan," named after White House aide Tom Huston, which proposed illegal wire taps, entry of homes without search warrants, opening mail, and the roundup of thousands of Vietnam war protesters to be held in barbed-wire compounds in the nation’s capital.

In later years after his resignation as a result of the Watergate burglary, Nixon justified the "Huston Plan" on the basis that he believed any presidential order is legal.

Fortunately, five days after the media disclosed the plan, Nixon abandoned it under pressure from no less than J. Edgar Hoover, FBI director, who even saw the tyrannical and unconstitutional character of the plan.

Are we on the brink of reliving history?

 

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The Idaho Mountain Express is distributed free to residents and guests throughout the Sun Valley, Idaho resort area community. Subscribers to the Idaho Mountain Express will read these stories and others in this week's issue.