Bush Caught In A Major Lie

[Mia]

I wanted to also...until I remembered I can't! Unfortunately, absolute power corrupts absolutely and all of that.

We'll have more examples than we want to prove it soon.

[Zeebadee]

"The Padilla case is not completely resolved...", "... it is not possible to establish this case..."

So, a mere 22 months in jail without any of the rights guaranteed by the Constitution to ALL American citizens is just "giving the government the benefit of the doubt", or simply a "procedural problem"?? What can you possibly be thinking of? This actually has nothing to do with Padilla, it has everything to do with establishing the executive branch's right to unilaterally declare someone a "combatant" and tossing them into the gulag. If the Patriot Act troubles you now, what will you feel when criticizing the government is declared detrimental to public order and gets you labelled an enemy combatant? The really scary thing is that the Bush administration may not even abide by a supreme court decision, they have defied the courts before.

"...activists and dissidents aren't being swept off the streets..."

Of course not, at least not right away. It has traditionally started with the least and worst of the citizenry. When the public has become accustomed to SOME of it's citizens being denied their Constitutional rights, it's much easier to justify similar treatment to ANY of them. Ashcroft and his ilk scare the daylights out of me. The greatest danger to all of us is not our declared enemies, but those that would "protect" us from them.

[Mia]

Absolutely. First, Arab-americans are in deep-doo. In times of "war" the administration can pretty much do whatever it wants. It's rarely exercised here, at least % wise.

But, rmnunez, when you say it doesn't affect "our citizens yet" there are two problems with that. One, people in our country who are not citizens are still entitled to human rights. 2)IT DOES affect our citizens right now. And not just our Arab-americans.

Anyone associated with the "wrong people", knowingly or unknowingly, can have their email and phones tapped into. My boyfriend is from Syria. He holds dual citizenship. This is a country the US is after right now. I'll bet a million dollars my privacy is gone right now along with his.

So I may not be being held in custody, but my rights are being trampled on if I am correct.

What if you chat with the "wrong person" on the internet and suddenly your private conversations are being listened to by the CIA?

I firmly believe that we have enough intelligence capability in our hands to avoid stripping ordinary citizens of their privacy.

I wasn't against the act at first - I was like you and wanted to trust my government. Then I thought through all the implications and the examples of abuse in the past every time things like this were given to people in power.

[rmnunez]

Mia, how unlikely do you think it is that your dual-nationaled Syrian boyfriend has any sort of terrorist connection? (don't answer that here) If your answer in any measure reflects your personal knowledge of the man, it is from knowledge the government lacks. If you were a government agent tasked to identify and track potential terrorists and found out about a male dual-national Syrian -with nothing more- would you look any further? I would look further, but I don't know the fellow as well as you do.

Part of the problem has to do with how the problem is approached. The more one sees terrorism as a law-enforcement problem, the less sense curtailments of civil rights in the US make sense. The more you see the current effort as a military exercise, the less sense concern over juridic procedural compliance makes.

Seems to me the problem is both military and law-enforcement. I don't expect American GIs to shout "freeze, you're under arrest" before shooting and think its silly to expect captive terrorists to be 'Mirandized'. How far can you go before it becomes outrageous? Seems like they are getting pretty close, but since we know the Supreme Court will hear Padilla, we can establish a 'line' of some sort is trying to get drawn; that US citizens arrested in the US may have more due process than (for example) Guantanamo detainees.

How do we deal with confronting witnesses or evidence? Properly the prosecution must put its cards on the table so the accused (presumed innocent) can mount his defense. In a terrorist context, doesn't it make some sense to limit showing a suspected terrorist how much is known about their activities? Terrorism implies group effort and some sort of organization to support their efforts. These suggests they meet, share information and make plans based on instructions, resources and developments among themselves. Providing the suspected member of an organization with information about who he met with, when and where might 'tip-off' other members of the terrorist's cell.

As a law-enforcement problem, prosecuting terrorism probably merits some curtailment of due-process guarantees even absent this whole post-911 scenario.

What I have seen of legal analyses focus on the distinction in rights availing to citizens and foreigners. Some rights are not contingent on citizenship rather than on location. There are fundamental, basic, universal rights which could be deemed to apply no matter what. Due process guarantees may or may not be fully within these universally applicable rights. It depends on which rights specifically are at issue and what other rights are implied. Take the privacy issue, if terrorism has a its lesser-included crime a conspiracy, how could this be shown without some invasion of privacy, wouldn't they need to have a mole, microphones, some sort of way to monitor the meetings and contacts before the fact? properly you get a warrant from some judge. The warrant needs to be fairly specific (location, parties and purpose) and then becomes a matter of public record. Can you see this applied without trouble in the terrorist context?

What I do think is a bit extreme is all this ranting and raving about the trampling of civil rights across America. Ridge isn't deploying stormtroopers already. Ecologists, homosexuals, pacifists, minorities, marxists and assorted fellow-travellers, even if publicly voicing sympathy for terrorists, are not being routinely rounded up and locked up indefinitely by the jackbooted thugs of some imagined Bushian fascist state. I see nothing to show the US is headed that way either.

Past history doesn't help much with this either. I suppose the internments of Japanese in WW2, and there were some cases involving labor unions and the War Powers act. Sedition and treason charges did abridge due process guarantees in Civil War litigation. There were instances of governmental abuse repressing anarchists and communists, but nothing like a trend or something that passed unnoticed. How many people do you think the US government could secretely arest and hold without outside contact before it became known? I suppose if we were talking about foreigners with few local ties, then there could be quite a few detainees held incommunicado, not ordinary citizens.

[Zeebadee]

Your attitude is exactly what the government is counting on to begin the process of arrests for whatever reason the Attorney General sees fit. When ordinary citizens are ready and willing to give up the rights of someone else, the camel has it's nose inside the tent. I wonder, if you were the victim of some mistaken identity, would you be quite so willing to give the state the power to lock you up for two years without any evidence of a crime even being committed?

[rmnunez]

Zee, you think "the government" is about to start brandishing this Patriot Act to lock up dissidents. You think of yourself as a dissident and therefore anticipate the government is coming after you too. I think the Patriot Act is aimed at terrorist interdiction so as long as dissidence falls short of terrorism it does not apply. If you are getting a bunch of people together to plot a bombing, kidnapping or murder so as to advance some political goal, you'd probably fall within the scope of the Act, but if you were gathering to promote a write-in candidate, to raise money for some social program, to express support for one policy or another, then the Act is inapplicable.

You think I've been 'duped' by the media which is somehow working together on "the government's" orders. I've actually studied the Act with a bit of care, it really doesn't apply to political dissent.

The Nethercott case looks close. The fellow is hosting some sort of "militia" convention. Presumably there will be a bunch of people getting together in Arizona, and many (most) will be carrying duly-licensed firearms. But we can also expect some out-of-staters whose arms are licensed differently (and possibly in a manner inconsistent with Arizona's laws).

As in any gathering of like-minded people, merchants among them likely will seek to sell their wares and here we mean firearms (the aim of the meeting is to form a militia). Doesn't the state of Arizona have an interest in regulating, monitoring and controlling the possession, use and sale of firearms? Why resort to the Patriot Act for this?

If Napalitano arrested Nethercott to interfere with this militia-forming convention I wonder why not just bust the guy on other than the Patriot Act on the eve of the convention? Now if they arrested Nethercott for any other reason the Act might be applicable, I know nothing of what Nethercott has done or planned to do, don't know what the government suspects him of being involved in.

If Nethercott is neither a terrorist under the Patriot Act nor some unlawful gun merchant under whatever pertinent Arizona law, he has been unfairly treated and ought to be released. Though it is terrible that an innocent person could be held for years without any recourse, fortunately this is rare and the law does anticipate some sort of remedy.

[Zeebadee]

You are making a lot of assumptions that have no basis in fact. I don't think of myself as any kind of "dissident". I don't fear the government is going to come after me. I don't even think you have been "duped" by the media.

I do see the Patriot Act as a continuing and dangerous process of erosion of our Constitutional rights. You say the Act doesn't apply to political dissent, but you aren't the one making those decisions. As it stands now, Ashcroft has the power to decide when and where it applies. Think about it, an unelected person literally has the power to lock up a citizen for any reason he wants. You tell us not to worry because he won't use it except for terrorists, but you really don't know, do you? If he can summarily lock up Padilla, he can lock up any citizen.

"Why not just bust the guy on other than the Patriot Act..."? because without the Act, the government has to show evidence of a crime, and allow due process. No such bothersome details stand in the way of the Act. Just declare the guy a combatant and throw him in jail.

"Though it is terrible that an innocent person could be held for years without any recourse, fortunately this is rare and the law does anticipate some sort of remedy. "

This is totally contradictory. Which is it, "without recourse" or "..some sort of remedy"? What remedy is there? And the fact that's it's "rare" is no consolation at all if you're the one locked up.

There are people that are actively working to bring down our form of government. You can't protect and defend the Constitution by ceding the rights it guarantees. The Constitution IS our form of government, suspend it and those people win.

[gecko]

</span><blockquote><span class="smallfont">Quote:</span><hr size="1" />Originally Posted by (Sodfather,)
What are you getting at? There was footage of the first plane hitting...I&#39;m quite sure.

And you say he continued reading to the children like it was a crime...Maybe he didn&#39;t want to scare the shit out of anyone by sprinting out of the room or something...

Weird topic. :?<hr size="1" /></blockquote><span class='postcolor'>

we call this just looking to attack bush

[gecko]

</span><blockquote><span class="smallfont">Quote:</span><hr size="1" />Originally Posted by (Zeebadee,)
You are making a lot of assumptions that have no basis in fact. I don&#39;t think of myself as any kind of "dissident". I don&#39;t fear the government is going to come after me. I don&#39;t even think you have been "duped" by the media.

I do see the Patriot Act as a continuing and dangerous process of erosion of our Constitutional rights. You say the Act doesn&#39;t apply to political dissent, but you aren&#39;t the one making those decisions. As it stands now, Ashcroft has the power to decide when and where it applies. Think about it, an unelected person literally has the power to lock up a citizen for any reason he wants. You tell us not to worry because he won&#39;t use it except for terrorists, but you really don&#39;t know, do you? If he can summarily lock up Padilla, he can lock up any citizen.

"Why not just bust the guy on other than the Patriot Act..."? because without the Act, the government has to show evidence of a crime, and allow due process. No such bothersome details stand in the way of the Act. Just declare the guy a combatant and throw him in jail.

"Though it is terrible that an innocent person could be held for years without any recourse, fortunately this is rare and the law does anticipate some sort of remedy. "

This is totally contradictory. Which is it, "without recourse" or "..some sort of remedy"? What remedy is there? And the fact that&#39;s it&#39;s "rare" is no consolation at all if you&#39;re the one locked up.

There are people that are actively working to bring down our form of government. You can&#39;t protect and defend the Constitution by ceding the rights it guarantees. The Constitution IS our form of government, suspend it and those people win.<hr size="1" /></blockquote><span class='postcolor'>

you foget the most powerful tool at the publics hands

the media

they start using the patriot act wrongly
make a news conference
youd be surprised how much it can help

[dotcoma]

</span><blockquote><span class="smallfont">Quote:</span><hr size="1" />Originally Posted by (gecko,)
</span><blockquote><span class="smallfont">Quote:</span><hr size="1" />Originally Posted by (Sodfather,)
What are you getting at? There was footage of the first plane hitting...I&#39;m quite sure.

And you say he continued reading to the children like it was a crime...Maybe he didn&#39;t want to scare the shit out of anyone by sprinting out of the room or something...

Weird topic. :?<hr size="1" /></blockquote><span class='postcolor'>

we call this just looking to attack bush<hr size="1" /></blockquote><span class='postcolor'>

We call this no concept of context...

[gecko]

hmm? i just saw this topic and posted as i read

i hope that sokay with you

thank god you were here to put me in my place

[Zeebadee]

"You foget the most powerful tool at the publics hands

the media

they start using the patriot act wrongly
make a news conference
youd be surprised how much it can help"

Unfortunately, the media isn&#39;t in the public&#39;s hands. And considering the fact that there are at least two American citizens sitting in military jails right now without access to any Constitutional rights, the media has been deafeningly silent. I wouldn&#39;t count on the media for any help.

If the government really has a case against them, what is your problem with simply trying, convicting, and sentencing them? There&#39;s an old saying in sports, "what got you here is going to keep you here". If we want to continue to live in a free society, we are going to have to use the tools the Constitution provides to protect ourselves. It&#39;s difficult to believe that Americans are so terrified that they are willing, even eager to give up rights that they won&#39;t ever get back in order to gain a perceived sense of "security", but I guess it&#39;s true. The day will come when politicians will use the Patriot Act to stifle opposition, all in the name of something like "public order", and they&#39;ll be using the power that we willingly gave them.