http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/editorial/1135558 Nov. 16, 2001, 6:04PM Bush going too far curtailing our rights By HELEN THOMAS The Bush administration is using the national trauma and state of emergency resulting from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to trample the Bill of Rights. Operating on fears and apparently sensing that the American people may be willing to forego many of their civil liberties in the name of national security, Attorney General John Ashcroft, in particular, is riding roughshod over individual rights. Let's hope the people are not willing to set aside key protections of the Constitution in the current crisis. Once taken away, those basic rights may be hard, if not impossible, to restore. To win confirmation for his Cabinet post, the right-wing Ashcroft overcame strong opposition to his controversial appointment by promising to carry out the law of the land even if he disagreed with it. And he has certainly done that on the issue of legal abortion rights. But he is now using the war in Afghanistan and on the home front to push his own ideology. An egregious example is his approval of a rule that permits the Justice Department to eavesdrop on the confidential conversations between lawyers and some clients in federal custody. These clients include suspects who have been detained but not charged with a crime whenever the government says such steps are necessary to prevent acts of terrorism. [...] On Tuesday night, after declaring an "extraordinary emergency," President Bush announced he had issued a directive claiming the power to order military trials for suspected international terrorists and their collaborators. That directive, which applies to non-U.S. citizens arrested here or abroad, allows him to take the highly unusual step of bypassing the nation's criminal justice system with its rules of evidence and constitutional guarantees. I think that would be a mistake. [...] ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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