It’s good that a federal judge last week lifted a government-imposed gag order on librarians wanting to testify to Congress about FBI requests for information about library patrons and their reading habits. As the judge argued, the librarians have a First Amendment right to be part of a “current and lively debate in this country over the renewal of the Patriot Act.”
The librarians are on the front line of the most controversial provision of the act — let them give their perspective.
On another important civil rights issue, a federal court upheld the Bush administration’s power to hold an American citizen indefinitely without trial. Jose Padilla (see photo), the alleged “dirty bomb” plotter, has been jailed for three years without charges.
Yes, he is accused of having al-Qaida ties and thus of being an “enemy combatant,” but as an American, shouldn’t he either be charged or released? The potential for government abuse is troubling.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
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15 Comments
The ban is only temporary for this one case, but it brings up an important point.The gag order prevented the librarian from testifying about it’s use to Congress.
If a law’s use has to be kept from the lawmakers can it really be about protecting us?
I would expect something like this in one of the countries run by a dictatorship.
Same thing applies on holding an american citizen indefinitely without charges.
There’s something about the whole Patriot act that is scary. Lawmakers signing it and not having read it? From both parties? Who are these people we keep electing? We’ve got some wolfs in sheeps clothing running our country…again from both parties.
Thank God for the 4th Circuit. The libs still want to subpoena our enemies into submission.
Today’s Wall Street Journal
No Way, JoséSeptember 13, 2005; Page A16
The timing couldn’t have been better. Two days before the anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, a panel for the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously last Friday that the President “unquestionably” has the power to detain an American citizen who has taken up arms against his country.
But wait. Didn’t the Supreme Court say precisely that in its Hamdi decision last year? So it did, as Judge Michael Luttig notes repeatedly in his 25-page opinion penned for the court. That wasn’t enough for José Padilla’s attorneys, who argued that Hamdi, which concerned an American picked up on a battlefield in Afghanistan, didn’t apply to their client, who was arrested domestically, at O’Hare Airport.
Padilla, for readers who may have forgotten, is the Brooklyn-born former gang leader who was recruited by al Qaeda, trained in Afghanistan, and equipped, funded and dispatched back to America. The “battlefield” in this case was to be American apartment buildings, which Padilla is accused of plotting to blow up. President Bush designated him an enemy combatant in 2002. The “locus of capture” is “irrelevant,” Judge Luttig writes. Common sense says that Padilla poses the same threat of returning to the battlefield whether he was captured at home or abroad.
In previous wars, Americans who conspired to kill their fellow citizens were subject to trial by military commission, an option the President expressly ruled out in his post-9/11 order limiting military tribunals to non-citizens. Padilla’s supporters want him to be charged in the criminal justice system or released. They include the American Civil Liberties Union, the People for the American Way Foundation, and former Clinton Justice officials Janet Reno, Eric Holder and Philip Heymann, who all want a return to the days of treating terrorism like a law-enforcement problem. In the week of the 9/11 anniversary, we’re glad the Fourth Circuit didn’t authorize a return to this September 10 mindset.
The “Patriot Act” has shreaded the Constitution and nothing out of Washington has ever been temporary.
JUSTA GUY! The Liberals have been shreadding the Constitution for years, so I hear ya!
Joe and Jimmy seem to want to do with the Constitution what fundamentalists have done with the Bible…in other words, read the text without having any grasp of the underlying message, the time in which the text was written, the style of writing, the events going on at the time, etc. I suppose you can read Pinnochio and really believe there was a little wooden puppet who became a flesh and blood boy…and miss the moral of the story entirely.
The Constitution needs to be read with a thorough understanding of the issues of concern to the Founding Fathers, the “Enlightenment” environment in which they formed their ideas..including the ideas of “tyranny of the majority”, “social contract”, and “consent of the governed”, and their personal ideas about what they were actually saying.
I think it is fair, in short, to say that: 1) laws need to be “fact based” (this is in the Constitution btw)..meaning that there must be objective data demonstrating why a law is necessary for the good of the society, 2) we have a contract with everyone else in the society concerning personal freedom, common defense, and the other rights guaranteed us in the Bill of Rights, 3) that government should be limited in its power and frustrated by the mechanisms for execution of that power.
You people just don’t get it! Our Fearless Leader has proven beyond all doubt that the terrorists hate us for our freedom! The Patriot Acts I&II address this issue. By the time we get to the 13th step, the terrorists will think of us as brothers, and before we get to the 15th or 16th act, Iran will invade us on humanitarian grounds. This is the presidents plan, and if it means giving up our freedom to follow it, we should be glad to be shot by our patriotic government rather than be bombed by evil terrorists! All Hail our Fearless Leader!
Jed I like your post.Reminds me of Westy in Viet Nam saying:”Well, we had to destroy the village in order to save it.”
Tracy,Thanks! I sorta had that one in mind when I wrote that.
You’ll forgive me for not citing my source for this, but someone once said that our justice system was designed that a thousand guilty men should go free before one innocent man was unjustly punished. If anyone can help me with the source for that I thank you in advance.
The Patriot act should trouble ALL Americans. And to be fair it can be said that not a few conservatives stand with most liberals in their fear and suspicion of this act.
Jed is right in expressing concern over Patriot act 2 and whatever may follow that.
I’m a liberal. I do not like President bush. I am quite outspoken about my dislike. I do not like those who support president bush……….who has said, “You are either with us or against us” The patriot act gives bush the power to decide just who and who is not an enemy of the state. So I hope you understand my particular worry. Am I the next to be declared “an enemy combatant”?
To the supporters of the patriot act and the successors to it that further erode freedom in the name of “national security” I offer you this: bush cannot be re-elected(not yet anyway) and given his current approval rating it is LIKELY that someone more to MY liking will be the next head of state.
Imagine THAT! Think about what you so fear in us “liberals” and picture us with the muscle of the Patriot act at OUR disposal!
“Those who sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither liberty nor security”…..Benjamin Franklin
Aw, JR, that was cute.
Liar.
Did NOT post that, JR.
It’s funny . . . I just go through these posts to see what “I” didn’t post.
But keep it up, troll boy. It shows the level of your discourse.
Anybody who supports Bush with the level of devotion you do isn’t too smart, so we know what we’re dealing with.
And your tactics prove it.
JR,I don’t know who said that, but I heard it in grade school way back when. Of course the ratio at that time was 10 guilty to 1 innocent, but there’s been a lot of inflation since then.
JR–
William O. Douglass, Supreme Court Justice
His quote represented what he HOPED would happen–that a 1000 guilty would go free before 1 innocent man was convicted.
Thanks the info Galahad.
I forget the figure, but a great many inmates at Guantanamo were released the other day for lack of any evidence of threat to America.
What worries me is that in treating anyone and everyone as an “enemy” based on the littlest of evidence may in the very practice be creating enemies.
Don’t worry about your “clone” Galahad. Celebrate it! Such folks have so little ground to stand on that they must assume the identity of those who have earned recognition and respect in these posts. Gotta forgive the shrubbies! Imagine how hard they have to try and defend their idiot!