For the week of September 17 - 23, 2003

Idaho’s ‘lightweight’ turns heavyweight

Commentary by Pat Murphy

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Who would’ve thought that Butch Otter, Idaho lieutenant governor-cum-congressman, would amount to much more in Washington than a Western cliché. You know—cowboy hat, boots, horse, reliable party-line Republican yes-man, and spinner of country folk tales.

But there he is, a junior Republican that some political railbirds considered a lightweight, taking on President Bush and Attorney General John Ashcroft and thrashing them on a vital national issue in the war on terror.

Otter persuaded a stunning majority in the House of Representatives—309 to 118—to strip Ashcroft’s vaunted Patriot Act of power to issue secret search warrants without telling targets of searches. The Senate must now act on the House vote.

Republican Otter’s success in chipping away at the Patriot Act rattled the White House, and, according to The New York Times, was what prompted Ashcroft to hit the road for a string of orchestrated speeches to uniformed law enforcement audiences to defend the Patriot Act.

With no help, thank you, from Idaho’s other three more senior Washington delegates (Sens. Larry Craig and Mike Crapo and Rep. Mike Simpson), Otter’s daring success has cast doubt on President Bush’s new appeal for more stringent police powers.

Presumably Otter will challenge the latest Bush-Ashcroft plea to Congress to "untie the hands" of law enforcement by giving federal agency bureaucrats—not judges—authority to issue search warrants.

Is there no end to the police state measures Bush seeks with scare tactics as Ashcroft’s front man? Have Bush and Ashcroft forgotten that the United States was built as the world’s most envied society on a foundation of freedoms, not shackles of liberties?

Imagine potential abuses by some rogue zealot brought to Washington by Ashcroft, who himself equates critics of Bush policies with aiding terrorists. Would Bush critics find their homes and offices invaded by Ashcroft agents fishing for evidence of "unpatriotic" behavior?

Ashcroft claims he doesn’t abuse his power. But rough estimates (the Bush government doesn’t release figures) report several thousand people have been picked up, detained without lawyers, held incommunicado without charges, then in small groups released and deported without explanation.

One wonders why other members of the House and Senate stood around like Nervous Nellies whining ands wringing their hands about the Patriot Act and the attorney general’s heavy-handed tactics toward civil liberties, but left the job of trimming the sails of President Bush and Ashcroft to a second-term Idaho congressmen, let alone a Republican at that.

Today’s Republicans don’t take kindly to mavericks in their ranks who embarrass their president, even on principle. GOP House members are herded like cattle by their ruthless majority leader, Rep. Tom DeLay, whose coarse methods have earned him the nickname of "The Hammer."

Could it be that Butch Otter will shrug off fear of retribution for embarrassing President Bush and emerge as the House’s equivalent of the Senate Republican maverick, John McCain?

 

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