--- Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 09:39:05 -0800 To: Declan McCullagh <declan@private> From: Steve Schear <s.schear@private> Subject: Re: [Politech] John Ashcroft says PATRIOT Act "honors" liberty and freedom [priv] In-Reply-To: <6.0.0.22.2.20031117115326.02119810@private> Mime-Version: 1.0 >>Ordered liberty is the reason that we are the most open and the most >>secure society in the world. Ordered liberty is a guiding principle, not >>a stumbling block to security. >> >>When the first societies passed and enforced the first laws against >>murder, theft and rape, the men and women of those societies >>unquestionably were made more free. >> >>A test of a law, then, is this: does it honor or degrade liberty? Does >>it enhance or diminish freedom? >> >>The Founders provided the mechanism to protect our liberties and preserve >>the safety and security of the Republic: the Constitution. It is a >>document that safeguards security, but not at the expense of freedom. It >>celebrates freedom, but not at the expense of security. It protects us >>and our way of life. This naive view ignores the sometimes ad hoc basis for Supreme Court rulings, especially when 'essential' federal power is at stake or the court is under heavy pressure. Good examples of the SC bending over are its refusal to consider Congressional misbehavior in passing the 14th Amendment and its knuckling under to Congress and FDR pressure to pass unconstitutional New Deal legislation. These two episodes form the backbone of almost all federal power and agencies formed since the Civil War. steve --- Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 08:30:26 -1000 To: Declan McCullagh <declan@private> From: George Mason <masong002@private> Subject: Re: [Politech] John Ashcroft says PATRIOT Act "honors" liberty and freedom [priv] At 11:56 AM 11/17/03 -0500, you wrote: >--- > >Excerpt: >There is a simple reason for this ... the Patriot has not been used to >infringe upon individual liberty. > >Many of you have heard the hue and cry from critics of the Patriot Act who >allege that liberty has been eroded. But more telling is what you have >not heard. You have not heard of one single case in which a judge has >found an abuse of the Patriot Act because, again, there have been no abuses. I had thought of sending this factoid to you, but didn't as it seemed slightly outside the topic parameters of Politech. Last week, on the MSNBC show "Scarborough Country", the host Joe Scarborough (libertarian-conservative) reported that a strip club in Las Vegas had been busted under the auspices of the Patriot Act. He was quite incensed that under the direction of Ashcroft ( who appears to be an aging Basset Hound/Sharpei mix) had turned his attention from al-Qaeda to strippers in the name of Homeland Security. A hui hou-- GM DSS/DH key id: 0xD60CE0F9 http://www.irstp.com --- Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 21:39:43 -0600 Subject: Re: [Politech] Justice Department's list of terrorism-related court cases Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v543) Cc: dalerobertson@private To: Declan McCullagh <declan@private> From: Jim Davidson <davidson@private> In-Reply-To: <6.0.0.22.2.20031117193511.087afa30@private> Dear Declan, It is sort of pretty to imagine that there is still an independent judiciary in this country, but I have to ask, who pays the judges? The checks are cut by the US Treasury and they are handed out by the same Department of Justice which is getting its police state activities sanctioned by those judges. We also know that under J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI, a part of the Justice Department, kept files on prominent politicians and judges to use in extortion. We were told after Hoover's death c. 1973 that all that had been done away with, but lo and behold, under Clinton there was that "file-gate" scandal where all those FBI files on very prominent Republicans were found in the White House. So, we have to expect that the secret files are still being kept and the Justice Department is still willing to use the data it gathers. After all it is "time of war" and emergency measures are "fully justified." I don't see anything listed on the DoJ listing where their views were challenged by a court. Does that mean that no such challenges are possible, or that the courts have refused to hear such arguments, or that the courts have been subverted by the same Justice Department, or that the Justice Department is being highly selective in which cases it presents, or perhaps the independence of the judiciary should now be called into question? I don't know. I'm willing to speculate. In a police state, the first casualty is justice. For my own part, I think the imprisonment at Guantanamo of, e.g., British citizens without providing access to counsel or access to British consular personnel is idiotic. What does the Bush Administration have to fear from due process for these prisoners? If they are all as guilty as sin, then due process will find that they are all guilty as sin, and they will remain imprisoned. Due process doesn't mean let them out without a hearing, it means don't hold them forever without a hearing. If basic liberties like habeas corpus do not apply in time of war, then there is something wrong with the constitution. There is nothing wrong with habeas corpus. It is possible to preserve habeas corpus and fight an effective war. So, the penchant of the courts and the executive branch to favor police state behavior is unjustifiable. It will all end very badly. Regards, Jim http://www.ezez.com/free/freejim.html --- Reply-To: "todd glassey" <tglassey@private> From: "todd glassey" <todd.glassey@private> To: <politech@private>, "Declan McCullagh" <declan@private> References: <6.0.0.22.2.20031117115326.02119810@private> Subject: Re: [Politech] John Ashcroft says PATRIOT Act "honors" liberty and freedom [priv] Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 10:42:39 -0800 Declan - wow - right. This is the bottom line - the P.A. has not been used as the abusive tool that many of its opponents claimed it would be. There have been no doors-kicked-in, no random arrests, and well none of the things that many of the more anarchistic voices on this and other lists prophesized. Simply put - this is more scare tactic used by those that want there to be "no government" to arouse and provoke those that cannot gather this information for themselves. But lets move forward and ask a couple of simple questions - 1) 200 years ago - was there even the slightest possibility that a single individual could cause catastrophic or mass destruction on their own? -= perhaps if they carried a few pounds of Dynamite into a mine they could close it down - but that's pretty much it... There were no World Trade Center's to attack, no 747's or any other aircraft to attack them with. No dirty bombs, no fission or fusion weapons - no bioterrorist tools, so keep the perspective in place. 2) There is also a general feeling that personal privacy is eroding - and IMHO that also is BS. Personal Privacy is a myth - it never existed except as a fall-out of the difficulty in performing the various surveillance services and their modality and also, operating costs. So the facts are pretty simple here... The world is a much different place when we started all the talk about personal liberty and the "god given" rights that a human being has... and well - no one ever said that there was going to be privacy such that your cell-phone's location wouldn't be collectable. Your hardwired land line is not so why should the cellular - OH Yeah - because until very recently it was technologically impossible - but with Datum and others inventions (one of mine too!) the real question becomes one of whether there ever any formal commitment that cellular locations should be anonymous? and in response to this, my answer is I think not... This is just one of the MANY MANY changes that are happening to us culturally as we step into wireless and paperless commerce, and well we just need to get over it. Todd Glassey --- Subject: Re: [Politech] John Ashcroft says PATRIOT Act "honors" liberty and freedom [priv] From: Steve Withers <swithers@private> To: Declan McCullagh <declan@private> Date: 18 Nov 2003 14:10:03 +1300 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On Tue, 2003-11-18 at 05:56, Declan McCullagh wrote: > --- > > Excerpt: > There is a simple reason for this ... the Patriot has not been used to > infringe upon individual liberty. > > Many of you have heard the hue and cry from critics of the Patriot Act who > allege that liberty has been eroded. But more telling is what you have not > heard. You have not heard of one single case in which a judge has found an > abuse of the Patriot Act because, again, there have been no abuses. The Patriot Act itself is an abuse. Hitler did not violate German law while detaining people, trying them in secret courts and executing them under their emergency laws at the time. I guess the victims had notbing worry about then. It was done acording to the law. (hint: the law WAS the problem). -- Steve Withers <swithers@private> _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)
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