Sequel to USA Patriot Act is pilloried by ACLU, New York Sun, and lawyer Nat Hentoff. THIS judgement looks rather unanimous--thumbs down. "Many of the new security measures proposed...are not temporary. They are permanent changes to our laws. --ACLU, Jan 29 "[T]he editorial page of the daily New York Sun, primarily a conservative newspaper, Errol Louis wrote: '[The] document is a catalog of authoritarianism that runs counter to the basic tenets of modern democracy.' "I have the entire draft of the bill. Section 201 would overturn a federal court decision that ordered the Bush administration to reveal the identities of those it has detained (imprisoned) since 9-11. This sequel to the USA Patriot Act states that 'the government need not disclose information about individuals detained in investigations of terrorism until . . . the initiation of criminal charges.' "Many of the prisoners caught in the Justice Department's initial dragnet were held for months without charges or contact with their families, who didn't know where they were. And these prisoners were often abused and out of reach of their lawyers—if they'd been able to find a lawyer before being shifted among various prisons. When, after much pressure, the Justice Department released the numbers of the imprisoned, there were no names attached, until a lower court decided otherwise. "Under the proposed Ashcroft bill reversing that court decision, for the first time in U.S. history, secret arrests will be specifically permitted." http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0310/hentoff.php --Orson
And to enforce the laws, an agency called the Kind Government Bureau (KGB for short) could be set up. I have no problem with democratic governments having extraordinary temporary emergency powers, with emphasis on temporary.
