I protest.: Congressional oversight.

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April 27, 2003

Civil Rights

Congressional oversight.

Saturday's Counterpunch has this article: Elaine Cassel: The Other War: Bush Administration and the End of Civil Liberties.

You want something horrifying? This is horrifying. Ms. Cassel enumerates the steady erosion of our civil rights from the 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act to the 2001 "USA PATRIOT" Act and the contemplated "Patriot II" act. At one point she says:

Indeed, people recently arrested for "crimes" allegedly uncovered as a result of such secret surveillance have been stunned to learn that the Patriot Act specifically disallows any judicial review of the legality of the warrant or of the evidence obtained as a result. Secret detentions, secret evidence, secret trials. What's next? Secret executions?

I wouldn't put it past Ashcroft, quite honestly.

I don't believe that we're on a "slippery slope" towards tyranny. I firmly believe that we can as a people take our power back from those who have arrogated it to themselves, vote the bastards out of office or impeach them if necessary and avoid the fascist dictatorship that some appear to desire. On the other hand, I also believe that there are those, Ashcroft, Chaney and many others among them, who have a strong, vested interest in pushing us down that slope towards tyranny. The fewer rights we have, the less power we have, the more they have and the more they can carry out their activities in secret, where they can do what they want, accountable to no one. This is certainly the dream of anyone who hungers for power.

They said that it couldn't happen in Germany in 1930, too. It can happen here, and it will if we do nothing to stop it.

Posted by Frank at April 27, 2003 9:57 PM