Look who’s revolting against ‘Patriot
Act’?
"I am cosponsoring the Freedom to Read
Protection Act, designed to protect libraries, bookstores and ultimately
citizens from government investigating what we read. I also am working on
additional legislation with organizations interested in rolling back the Patriot
Act’s more egregious trespasses."
Is that a left-leaning Democratic liberal
speaking before the American Civil Liberties Union’s national convention?
Nope.
It’s actually the July 4 statement of
Idaho’s conservative Republican First District Congressman C.L. (Butch) Otter,
one of a growing number of Democrats and Republicans frightened by powers given
to U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft in the so-called Patriot Act.
Panicked by Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New
York City and the Pentagon, and succumbing like sheep to slick White House
marketing of legislation with the glitzy, flag-waving title of "Uniting and
Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required To Intercept and
Obstruct Terrorism Act" (first letters form "USA Patriot"), Congress passed the
legislation in October 2001.
Otter voted against the bill, saying "my
conscience would not allow it, its constitutionality is questionable and my
constituents oppose it."
Second thoughts are spreading in Congress
not only because members have finally read all 1,016 sections of the bill
covering thousands of pages, but because of how President Bush’s autocratic
attorney general has treated civil liberties with contempt--rounding up hundreds
of people he merely deems "terrorism suspects," holding them incommunicado like
a Third World tyrant, refusing counsel, then months later releasing or charging
them with petty immigration violations. His FBI agents also have been checking
libraries to see who’s reading what.
Otter, among others, wisely sees this as
blatantly hostile to the Bill of Rights, and wants to roll back Ashcroft’s
power.
"We celebrate our freedoms," Otter writes
in his Independence Day message, "and the sacrifices made by those who came
before to ‘secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.’ But
are we doing our best to honor those sacrifices if we allow our freedoms to be
eroded? Surely the Framers did not intend the Bill of Rights to apply only when
it is convenient."
Despite heavy-handed indifference to
liberties, Attorney General Ashcroft (with President Bush’s blessing) wants the
Patriot Act expanded to give him more power.
To what end? The power to round up
political critics whom Ashcroft once condemned in testimony before Congress as
aiding U.S. enemies? Or, to immunize President Bush against congressional
action—such as impeachment—if he’s found to have misused intelligence agencies
for politics, as did President Nixon during Watergate?
In pre-Bush times, Republicans had a
tradition of revolting against the sort of expanded authoritarianism Ashcroft
demands.
Britain’s King George III used such power,
until American colonists revolted and created a nation built on liberties and
law.
Under cover of the misnamed Patriot Act,
attorney General Ashcroft (with President Bush’s tacit approval) seems willing
to revert to tactics of King George rather than honor freedoms wrought by
bloodshed of colonists in 1776.