BS: Got Rights? Not For Long!

Subject: BS: Got Rights? Not For Long!
From: saulgoldie
Date: 09 Feb 03 - 09:47 AM

Having not given up since the Nixon administration (and long before, really) "they" are now working furiously and cynically on a whole new effort to eradicate our individual rights. This is probably not 'zactly news. But the intensity and timing of it should make this issue numero uno for Americans (since it is clear that we cannot really stop the war at this point).

Don't fool yourselves, this issue would likely fall down more on those of us who are proudly left and humanistic. But it diminishes *everyone's* freedom, and could be used just as easily and devestatingly against non-Liberals, especially those who see themselves as free thinkers.

Imagine having to answer for each and every little thing you do! Yes I am using a bit of hysteria, but it is not that overstated, really. Those of you who were aware, think back to the Nixon days. Those of you who are too young, go read up on it.

The recent NOW with Bill Moyers explored this issue, and I am submitting the link so that those who care can act swiftly to try and thwart the effort. This was being planned within the bowls of the Justice Dept and likely planned for release to the public in the heat of the war so that is could sail through without critical review while everyone was more securutiy-minded. We only found out about it because of the courageous action of an insider who will likely now be pilloried.

Here (I hope) is the "blicky".
http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/lewis.html#docs

If not, then it is:
http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/lewis.html#docs

Subject: RE: BS: Got Rights? Not For Long!
From: Amos
Date: 09 Feb 03 - 11:26 AM

An excerpt of the conversation between Bill Moyers and Lewis concerniing the draft legislation:

[...snip...]
MOYERS: Including lawful permanent resident aliens. It would give the government the power to keep certain arrests secret until an indictment is found never in our history have we permitted secret arrests. It would give the government power to bypass courts and grand juries in order to conduct surveillance without a judge's permission. I mean these do really further upend the balance between liberty on the one hand and security on the other.


LEWIS: Well, they do. They reduce judicial oversight with the secret intelligence courts instead of saying the court may do this now it's the court will do this. They can have ex parte conversations where they go into the judge without anyone else around. In terms of information about detainees, not only can they detain anyone they'd like to detain, there is no public information about it.

Journalists cannot find out the names of ? we detained over a thousand people after September 11th because we thought they might all be terrorists. Not one of them was really found with any criminal charges to be a terrorist. And we don't know the names of almost all those people, still. And so it does appear that everything that folks might be concerned about with the Patriot Act, this is times five or times ten is what I look at it. I see it as very serious.

[..snip]

This is unnerving, I do declare. Unilateral, premeditated invasions of foreign nations,
and star courts... these popele have learned nothing!!

A

Subject: RE: BS: Got Rights? Not For Long!
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 09 Feb 03 - 11:33 AM

I thought you had a constitution that stopped this kind of thing happening.

But then the constitution they had under Stalin was pretty strong on human rights as well, on paper. I suppose it all depends on having judges who can be relied on to what they are told, and you can get away with anything.

Godbye America. Hello Amerika.

Subject: RE: BS: Got Rights? Not For Long!
From: saulgoldie
Date: 09 Feb 03 - 12:08 PM

Um, that should have been "...within the 'bowels' of the Justice Dept..." Silly proof-reader!

Yes, McGrath, we *do* have a constitution. Under this administration, however, it is under the fiercest attack I can remember or even imagine. As always, democracy must be protected and defended by each generation, and *never* taken for granted. And it is either for everyone, or it is for no one.

Subject: RE: BS: Got Rights? Not For Long!
From: Amos
Date: 09 Feb 03 - 02:14 PM

Wal, Saul, it was originally intended for those who qualified by literacy and landing. I agree we have done a lot to broaden it since those WASPY male chauvinisty years, but it was a democratic republic, a formative one at least, even before the improvements. It sure wassn't for none, even though it wasn't yet universal, if you see my point.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Got Rights? Not For Long!
From: gnu
Date: 09 Feb 03 - 02:56 PM

And I was considering moving to the US in a few years because of the increasing police state Canada is moving toward. Can't count on anything anymore. Oh well, at least you guys still have Mel Gibson.

Subject: RE: BS: Got Rights? Not For Long!
From: Ebbie
Date: 09 Feb 03 - 03:00 PM

From the link:

Proponents of Bush's kangaroo court say: Don't you soft-on-terror, due-process types know there's a war on? Have you forgotten our 5,000 civilian dead? In an emergency like this, aren't extraordinary security measures needed to save citizens' lives? If we step on a few toes, we can apologize to the civil libertarians later.

Those are the arguments of the phony-tough. At a time when even liberals are debating the ethics of torture of suspects — weighing the distaste for barbarism against the need to save innocent lives — it's time for conservative iconoclasts and card-carrying hard-liners to stand up for American values

And you know what, you-know-who-you-are? William Safire isn't even a liberal!

Subject: RE: BS: Got Rights? Not For Long!
From: NicoleC
Date: 09 Feb 03 - 03:16 PM

Staunch conservatives are usually as fiercely protective of civil liberties as liberals; they believe no less strongly in the Constitution.

Subject: RE: BS: Got Rights? Not For Long!
From: GUEST
Date: 09 Feb 03 - 03:23 PM

Why dont all you bitching U.S. haters pack and move to
one of the mid east countries with their abundance of
freedom or the likes of China or Pakistan or India or
somewhere in south America...???

Why doncha? Of course, the reason is plain!

your conduct would have you all be in prison or DEAD
in a short period of time.

Subject: RE: BS: Got Rights? Not For Long!
From: DougR
Date: 09 Feb 03 - 03:24 PM

True, Nicole, but these are extraordinary times we live in today. Not the same world that we lived in prior to 9/11. In order to protect ourselves, some of the "rights" we as a people enjoyed prior to 9/11 may have to be "bent" a bit.

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: Got Rights? Not For Long!
From: Ebbie
Date: 09 Feb 03 - 03:27 PM

Do you feel safer, Doug?

Subject: RE: BS: Got Rights? Not For Long!
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 09 Feb 03 - 03:27 PM

True enough, anybody with any real grasp of what ought to be bedrock principles for any true conservative would be up in arms about these goings on. Probably more so than anyone else, because of a sense of betrayal by people they thought they could trust.

But a lot of the people who claim the term are not staunch anything. Just drawn to the smell of power and money.

Subject: RE: BS: Got Rights? Not For Long!
From: gnu
Date: 09 Feb 03 - 03:27 PM

Uh, gee, GUEST, I kinda thought that's what they're talking about preventing in the US. Perhaps I missed something.

Subject: RE: BS: Got Rights? Not For Long!
From: NicoleC
Date: 09 Feb 03 - 03:32 PM

No Doug, we don't live in a different world after 9/11, most people just weren't paying attention.

It's the same exact world except more people in the US are scared -- and that gives those who care nothing about liberty the chance to shred it and the Constitution under the feeble excuse of "protecting" liberty.

I don't call killing something protecting it, I don't care how much rhetoric you wrap it in.

Subject: RE: BS: Got Rights? Not For Long!
From: GUEST,Forum Lurker
Date: 09 Feb 03 - 03:53 PM

I can see how the right to privacy could stand beign reduced; after all, it's not actually a constitutional right. Due process is a very different thing. Any reduction of due process is a threat to the freedom of individuals, and indefinate incarceration without probable cause definately qualifies.

Subject: RE: BS: Got Rights? Not For Long!
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 09 Feb 03 - 08:01 PM

No right to privacy in the US Constitution?

Well, we're ahead of you on that anyway - the European Convention on Human Rights (which is incorporated into into the domestic law of the countries in the European Union) recognises that people have that right.

recognises - because you don't get a right like that from a constitution. You've got it start with, regardless of what any bit of paper like a constitution says or doesn't say.

Subject: RE: BS: Got Rights? Not For Long!
From: GUEST,Forum Lurker
Date: 09 Feb 03 - 09:01 PM

All rights come from a constitution. There is no force, other than human agreement, which provides any rights. It's a social contract, pure and simple.

Subject: RE: BS: Got Rights? Not For Long!
From: Cornflake
Date: 09 Feb 03 - 09:45 PM

Doug, civil liberties don't bend. If we allow them to bend, before long they break.

Subject: RE: BS: Got Rights? Not For Long!
From: BlueJay
Date: 10 Feb 03 - 02:55 AM

So Doug- All the time Bush and Ashcroft have been "bending" my rights, they have done virtually nothing to increase our national security. Tom Ridge, et al have not come up with much to protect American citizens other than a silly color scheme. After 9-11, Bush promised to help the states with homeland security. But the money has not been forthcoming, except to bail out the airlines. And the states and cities are exactly where the fictional added security is needed the most. We are absolutely no more secure now than before 9-11. In fact, we are in a much more dangerous condition, and more vulnerable to attack because of Bush's posturing. Right or wrong, if we invade Iraq, the Muslim extremists will become even more determined to attack our nation. The worst is yet to come, IMO. And now with the North Korea problem, it's even worse. How are we going to pay for all of this, Doug? Bush's new budget doesn't include a penny for fighting Iraq or a new war on the Korean peninsula. The Federal government can't afford to pay for the much needed security of airports and harbors. So how is knowing my library habits going to be any more than an infringement on my right to privacy, and another big Federal cash drain? Are the major benefactors of Bush's largesse stepping up to the plate? If so, I haven't seen it. Thanks, BlueJay

Subject: RE: BS: Got Rights? Not For Long!
From: NicoleC
Date: 10 Feb 03 - 12:25 PM

Kevin -- the word "privacy" does not appear in the Constitution. However, since the question came up in the 1800's, judges have been consistently upholding privacy as the de facto result of several explicitly declared rights, such as due process and the forbiding of unreasonable searches and seizures, among others.

We're under common law, just like Britain, so the precedent of those court decisions carries as much if not more weight than the Constitution itself. It doesn't have to be literally inthe Constitution to be a "constitutional" right.

There are, of course, those who will insist we should follow a literal interpretation of the Constitution, but in general I don't think they realize what a revolutionary change would have to happen to our entire legal system before this would become legal. In fact, it could be argued that we'd have to write the whole Constitution -- since the courts are charged with interpretting the law, to remove the responsibility of interpretation and force a judgement based on the literal words of the legislature would completely upend the 3-cornered system of checks and balances that have kept us out of a lot of trouble in the past.

I dunno, most of Eutope gets along fine with literal interpretation, but considering the insults the same advocates of literal interpretation toss at Europe, I'm not sure what they really want.

Subject: RE: BS: Got Rights? Not For Long!
From: Neighmond
Date: 10 Feb 03 - 07:00 PM

I'll take my medicine from the word according to Ben Franklin

(Paraphrase)

He who would give up his liberties for some security deserves neither.

Chaz

Subject: RE: BS: Got Rights? Not For Long!
From: Amos
Date: 10 Feb 03 - 07:02 PM

From Politech (Declan McCullough):


http://news.com.com/2010-1071-983921.html
   
   Perspectives: Ashcroft's worrisome spy plans
   By Declan McCullagh
   February 10, 2003, 4:00 AM PT

   WASHINGTON--Attorney General John Ashcroft wants even more power to
   snoop on the Internet, spy on private conversations and install secret
   microphones, spyware and keystroke loggers.
   
   Ashcroft's Justice Department has quietly crafted a whopping 120-page
   proposal that represents the boldest attack yet on our electronic
   privacy in the name of thwarting future terrorist attacks. The
   nonpartisan Center for Public Integrity posted the draft legislation,
   which reads like J. Edgar Hoover's wish list, on its Web site Friday.
   
   Called the Domestic Security Enhancement Act (DSEA), the legislation
   has not been formally introduced in Congress, and a representative for
   Ashcroft indicated on Friday that it's a work in progress. But the
   fact that the legislation is under consideration already, before we
   know the effects of its USA Patriot Act predecessor, should make us
   realize that the Bush administration thinks "homeland security" is the
   root password to the Constitution.
                                                                        
   Don't believe me? Keep reading and peruse some of DSEA's highlights:
   
   o The FBI and state police would be able to eavesdrop on what Web
   sites you visit, what you search for with Google and with whom you
   chat through e-mail and instant messaging--all without a court order
   for up to 48 hours. That's if you're suspected of what would become a
   new offense of "activities threatening the national security
   interest."
   
   o Currently police can seek a warrant to "require the disclosure by a
   provider of electronic communication service of the contents of an
   electronic communication." Under existing law, police must notify the
   target of an investigation except in rare cases such as when witnesses
   may be intimidated or a prospective defendant might flee. DSEA allows
   police to delay notification for three months simply by citing
   "national security."

   [...]

A

Subject: RE: BS: Got Rights? Not For Long!
From: BlueJay
Date: 11 Feb 03 - 04:31 AM

So where's the "conservative" response? I don't think their is one because Bush's positions on basic rights are indefensible, except for labelling criticism of Bush/Ashcroft "evil" and "unpatriotic", and "tired old liberal rhetoric". Funny, as a middle of the road type guy, I always thought the Republican party claimed to be the party in favor of individual rights.

Like I've said before, the NRA is way off base. You don't need to worry about your guns, folks. It'll be the BOOKS the jack-booted thugs are coming after. Thanks, BlueJay

Subject: RE: BS: Got Rights? Not For Long!
From: Genie
Date: 11 Feb 03 - 06:24 AM

Amos, ([The US Constitution] was originally intended for those who qualified by literacy and landing. I agree we have done a lot to broaden it since those WASPY male chauvinisty years...)

Although it was only white males who were initially given the franchise, many constitutional rights were, even in the original Bill Of Rights, granted to all "persons." Except during the period in which SCOTUS declared blacks as 3/4 (?) of a person, protections such as habeas corpus, due process, and the prohibitions against double jeopardy, unreasonable search and seizure, and cruel or unusual punishment were supposed to apply to all people -- presumably even to non-citizens visiting from other countries.

Yes, courts martial had different standards for military people and prisoners of war were in a different category. But the internment of Japanese-Americans and the confiscation of their property during WWII was clearly unconstitutional, because they were not citizens of a nation with which we were at war. And detaining people indefinitely now without due process is also hard to justify on the basis of our being "at war," since we do not have a clearly defined enemy, except, perhaps Al Quaeda.

The Bush administration's willingness to toss aside our Constitution during this vaguely defined and possibly indefinite period of "war on terror," is really scary.

Genie

Subject: RE: BS: Got Rights? Not For Long!
From: Teribus
Date: 11 Feb 03 - 06:48 AM

Seems to me that as the technology exists to do all that Amos refers to, there is nothing to stop them doing it all now, or no indications that they haven't done so in the past. It would only ever come to light if they tried to produce evidence acquired by such illiegal" methods before a court of law.

Kevin quoted a rather good poem about King Alfred in another thread. Here is one, by James Hogg, that sums up your (American) situation at present:

"Why dae ye smile? Noble Elliot of Lauriston,
Why does the joy candle gleam in yer eye?
Yer bold Border Ranger, beware o' yer danger
Yer foes are relentless, determined, and nigh."

The circumstances and occasion referred to in the poem centres round a large raid across the Anglo-Scots border by a large number of English riding families. Jock Elliot, knows that attack is imminent, but smile at the prospect because he has taken the necessary precautions to thwart the attack and protect his people.

In the UK, immediately after the IRA started it's mainland bombing campaign, anti-terrorist legislation was introduced, to counter terrorist attacks and to protect the public. At the time, they were decried as draconian infringements of our civil liberties by many. I personally at no time felt that my civil liberties were being abused. The biggest impact visually was the increase in litter - because litter bins were removed to prevent IRA terrorists from placing bombs in them.

Whatever ammendments are introduced by the current administration are, I am sure, not introduced vicariously, or as part of some great plot against the American people. They are being introduced to assist the efforts and efficiency of thosed tasked with your protection. If events prove that such measures are not necessary then they can be repealled, either by the current administration or its successor.

Subject: RE: BS: Got Rights? Not For Long!
From: saulgoldie
Date: 11 Feb 03 - 08:13 AM

BlueJay:
I have always been confused by the Republican take on rights. On the one hand, they seem to be unwilling to grant individuals any rights over their own bodies with regard to sexual activity and birth control, as well as what substances one ingests. However, they also *don't* seem to have any trouble allowing corporate entities to infuse citizens with whatever chemicals they will under the guise of a free unimpeded market.

They also seem pretty free insisting that religious freedom means freedom for fundamentalist Christians, but not so much for other religious entities. And they also assert their tortured and irrelevant --in the current era--version of the second ammendment over the publics right to be safer from gun violence. And having once insured at least a sizable percentage of the public *is* armed, they want to eliminate rights to due process and dissemination of information that would insure that that freedom actually means something.

IMHO,when we respond to these trying situtions by reigning in our freedoms, those who would destroy our way of life have won, and they need not even do anything else. We have done their work for them.

Subject: RE: BS: Got Rights? Not For Long!
From: DougR
Date: 12 Feb 03 - 01:45 AM

Teribus: evidently you feel as I do. Do nothing wrong, and you have nothing to fear! A difficult concept for some here on the Mudcat to comprehend. The fact that we live in a time much different than what we have all been use to escapes them entirely.

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: Got Rights? Not For Long!
From: Coyote Breath
Date: 12 Feb 03 - 03:43 AM

Please, remember these words: "An injury to one is an injury to all."

In the coming months (as in the last year and a half) "others" will be targeted as terrorists. Dealt with because they represent a threat to the security of the "homeland". God how I hate that compound word; "homeland". It bothers me that homeland is being used in place of "America", in place of "the USA". There is something about that word which reminds me of the "Nurenburg Laws" of Germany in the 1930s. "Gestapo" was derived from Government State Police or Geheim Stats Polizei. "Heim" means 'home'. Homeland would have been (and IS) 'Heimat'.

Canada and Germany are moving to declare the Hells Angels a terrorist organization. The US is encourageing this because they wish to destroy the Angels and haven't been able to do it through "legitimate" legal means. You probably don't care if the Hells Angels get destroyed. Who needs them? right? BUT if we use laws supposedly designed to protect us from Al Quieda to rid ourselves of a biker gang then those laws will be applied to OTHER organizations and individuals as well. It should NEVER be OK for law enforcement organizations to act outside the constitution, not even against Osama Bin Laden.

I fear that we are in grave peril of losing our constitutionally guaranteed freedoms and our protection under the Bill of Rights.

An injury to one is an injury to all!

CB