WSJ: Ashcroft Whips Leahy

[EveningStar]

The Wall Street Journal (http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=95001571)
December 7, 2001

Leahy's Rout
Ashcroft wins the "civil liberties" debate.


The stampede you heard out of Washington yesterday was the sound of Senate Democrats and other liberals abandoning their two-week attack on military tribunals and Attorney General John Ashcroft. There may be some mopping up left, but this debate is over. It's one more sign that the obligation to community is reasserting itself as a core value in American politics.

The scene was Judiciary Chairman Pat Leahy's long-awaited "oversight" of Mr. Ashcroft. This was supposed to be the culmination of what have been many days of elite liberal assaults on Mr. Ashcroft for supposedly imposing a new fascist night in America. Newspapers and TV networks pretended there was great "bipartisan" angst about all this, especially military tribunals, though the only conservative critics were libertarians they usually ignore.

But a surprising and hopeful thing has happened in the meantime: The American public has resisted the clamor. Poll after poll shows that, by more than two to one, Americans support the use of military commissions to try noncitizen terrorists. This support is no thanks to the Bush Administration, which was initially caught off guard by the criticism, or to Republicans in Congress, who until yesterday offered little public defense.

We attribute it instead to the public's common-sense understanding that wars require a change in rules. For years, rights-talk has been the trump card of American politics. But faced with the genuine terror threat that surfaced on September 11, the political left's rights-above-all rhetoric sounds naive at best, dangerous at worst. Thanks to the public's good sense, American political discourse has a chance to return to a better balance between rights and security, between the legal rights of the individual and the obligations to protect the broader American community.

This all helps explain yesterday's liberal Senate rout. Mr. Ashcroft started out on offense and never let up. We can't recall so complete a political rout since Ollie North ran circles around the Iran-Contra committee.
The most dramatic moment came when Mr. Ashcroft, in his opening remarks, held up a copy of the al Qaeda training manual. It's part of the evidence that prosecutors had to make public in an earlier terror trial. And it describes how terrorists have been instructed to use America's civil-rights protections to their own destructive advantage. (Excerpts are on the Justice Department Web site.)

Terrorists are "directed to take advantage of any contact with the outside world," Mr. Ashcroft said, "to 'communicate with brothers outside prison and exchange information that may be helpful to them in their work.'" No wonder Mr. Ashcroft has wanted the power to listen to the conversations of a mere 16 federal inmates and their attorneys, so investigators know what deadly messages might be passed along.

Mr. Ashcroft also broke with this Administration's usual pattern and carried his argument to his critics. He rightly noted that the over-the-top, hysterical charges of many ("shredding the Constitution") "only aids terrorists--for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America's enemies, and pause to America's friends."

Perhaps because they can also read polls, Democrats came on more softly than expected. Mr. Leahy mostly sparred about historical precedents for tribunals. This gave Republican Orrin Hatch, who finally found his voice on this subject, a chance to report that President Bush has actually taken more civil-rights care with his tribunal order than FDR did in World War II.
Roosevelt secretly told the War Department to start up tribunals, while Mr. Bush has done it publicly through an order as commander in chief. FDR also let the armed forces decide who would be tried by tribunal, while the Bush order says only the President will decide.

As these and other details have emerged about tribunals, grown-up Democrats have begun to speak out in favor. Senator Joe Lieberman now supports them and even New York's Chuck Schumer, usually a hyper-partisan, has offered a qualified endorsement. Zell Miller, the Georgia Democrat, has been the sharpest critic of his own colleagues, noting that, "These nit-pickers need to find another nit to pick. They need to stop protecting the rights of terrorists. This is about national security. This is about life and death."

A genuine debate over civil liberties is a healthy sign of America's democratic vitality. And vigilance is always called for in the face of expanding government power. But the assault on Mr. Ashcroft has been so arch, and so little based on fact, that it has obscured more truth than it's exposed. The Bush-Ashcroft measures are well within America's Constitutional tradition during time of war. Once again the public has figured this out before most of the politicians.

[Warlady]

I watched the hearing on Cspan and enjoyed every minute of Ashcroft kicking Leahy in the short hairs.

[Westbrook]

A couple of unsettling things.

1. On National Pagan Radio, they played a clip from the hearings where Ted "Krispy Kreme" Kennedy gave Ashcroft a bad time about background checks at gun shows. images/icons/rolleyes.gif I musta missed something, but I don't remember any of the terrorists that killed 5000 people on 9-11 being armed with guns they purchased at gun shows.

2. I share some of Mule's trepidation over the diminution of rights for foreign nationals. Consider. If rights are not transcendent, then we are merely the beneficiaries of the good intents of government to bestow upon us our "rights". However, if Rights are unalienable and endowed to us by our Creator, then even foreign nationals have those same rights, including the right to arm themselves and defend themselves.

If a special case arises whereby a police agency can demonstrate to a court that a detainee is a flight risk or that he will continue to manage terrorist operations in interviews with his lawyer and other visitors, then indeed the judge has the authority to curtail these rights.

However such curtailment of rights would be on a case-by-case basis whereby the more important rights of others, particularly the rights to life and liberty, can be shown to a judge to be endangered by honoring the communication and/or habaeus corpus rights of the detainee.

Nevertheless, the rights of the prisoner remain intact. They are inalienable (eternal). They are transcendent. They cannot be taken away.

They can be justly curtailed, if it can be shown that honoring such rights endangers the more important rights to life and liberty of others.

Only tyrants believe that they can bestow or rescind rights.

[Warlady]

Westbrook you must have missed Ashcrofts testimony. He covered all of your concerns. You can view it at cspan.org

[Westbrook]

Like I said, WL, I only heard that little snippet from National Pagan Radio, one of the biggest bastions of totalitarian statism.

Are the detainees' rights being curtailed on a case-by-case basis by judges who have seen evidence that the lives and liberties of others will be endangered otherwise?

[Warlady]

From what I understand. They are getting counsel if they request it. Like Zell Miller said "You have to stop protecting the rights of terrorists. They want to kill you". [paraphrasing]

[Westbrook]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Warlady:
From what I understand. They are getting counsel if they request it. Like Zell Miller said "You have to stop protecting the rights of terrorists. They want to kill you". [paraphrasing]<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>Thanks for the update, dear lady.

And I agree that individuals whose malignant intent to threaten the lives and liberties of others must be detained, even before they can be convicted in a court of law. And I also agree that "technicalities" must not be employed to set free such malevolent actors.

However, I am concerned that the "broad-brush" approach taken by the current administration could have undesirable ramifications for Christian Homeschoolers and other non-conformists when an administration hostile to us inherits the reins of a government having these broad powers.

Be not deceived. A Klintoon or other Totalitarian Leftist will vigorously employ these very powers, designed to "protect" us, against us.

"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
-- William Pitt, 18 Nov 1783

[Warlady]

These powers have been used in past wars and went away and will go away again. I see no correlation between detaining mid-eastern terror suspects and attacking the rights of home schoolers. Bush is very pro school choice.

[Westbrook]

I trust Bush. I don't think he would use these powers to make political hay or to punish those with ideologies he considers unfavorably.

However, I cannot extend that confidence to other administrations, particularly one composed of the disloyal opposition.

Consider a Hitlary Klintoon administration.

I'll wait till you're done retching.

There.

Now consider a Hitlary Klintoon administration. It is not beyond such a conniving, scheming traitor to deliberately foster the terrorist demolition of a Federal building, blame it on "right-wing Christian" militias and declare war on them, invoking all the same emergency executive powers that the infinitely more benevolent Bush has.

Or, she could call upon BATF, Delta Forces and FBI HRTs to attack a church because some of the members are accused of neglecting to pay tax stamps for Class III weapons which they may or may not have.

Or she might call in a cadre of ninja-suited US Marshalls backed by an FBI HRT to spy on sovereign citizens having ideas that are unpopular with certain "victim" groups.

I fear that persons with fundamentalist religious convictions who teach their children at home and have a linear, apocalyptic view of history may be considered "terrorists" by things like Hitlary and her sycophant supporters.

[**DONOTDELETE**]

I did not see the testimony, I did not hear it on Public Radio. Like most Americans I just do not care, it is Christmas time, other things to worry about. Bush is in charge he is getting results that is all I care to know and I think I speak for millions of Americans.

Lady, you know me and know that I do pay attention to things but most Americans do not and could not care less about these hearings or what Leahy has to say. In short, the demoncraps are in deep shit and they know it and this is their only way to make noise. They are toast and I am just loving this.

[DesertFox]

What the Max said.

[Warlady]

What Max said too.

[**DONOTDELETE**]

Westbrook,

One of the annoying aspects of this debate is has been the minimal appreciation of the difference between securing the rights of Americans vs. that of aliens and non-domestic foriegners.

While it may be true that "everyone" has unalienable rights (and thus some derivative procedural rights), it is equally true that "in order to secure those rights" people form a protective association (i.e. a state and social compact) of its members.

Thus, we probably both agree that the state has a duty to secure the rights of its members within is domain. And I would also suggest that the state has a duty to secure the rights of its members when threatened by foriegn individuals, associations, and states (for example, by opposing unfair or unreliable trails of Americans in foriegn courts or the siezure of property in foriegn states that are owned by Americans).

However, what duty do we have in secureing the rights of those not in the social compact ? What duty do we have to those outside of our compact and to those that have rejected the very notion of natural rights ?

I believe we have NO moral obligation to non-citizins to extend them those rights. We only have an ethical imperative to use our own principals of justice, BUT only IF it does NOT materially reduce our security (our rights) and will provide a just result.

I think that is the crux of the debate.

[**DONOTDELETE**]

I share Westbrook's concerns. While I agree with Max and others here that it is apparently not the INTENT of this administration to expand the Federal government's powers in an undue way, I do not see safeguards in place to stop a later administration from abusing them (the next Dimocratic one).

I find two things troubling; first is the observation that it is not that difficult for the government to strip you of your citizenry; anyone remember Demjanjuk? This distinction between citizen and non-citizen is at best a fig-leaf before the modern Leviathon. Secondly, I am familiar with the US Federal government's record on staying within its prescribed boundaries. It is dismal to say the least.

Does anyone remember reading what the original proponents of the income tax said about who and how much taxes would be taken after passage of the Act? It was claimed to be "only" for the wealthiest 2% of the nations population and would have many exemptions for debt interest, state and local taxes, charitable contributions, etc. I think it safe to say that those assurances about the income tax have proven false over time.

When the nation was in the very dangerous and troublesome time of the pre-WWII era, Congress gave the President the War Powers Act, IIRC, that authorized the use of Executive Orders to take effective and immediate action to protect the security of the US. This effectively meant that the President could simply sign something into law, by-passing Congress, but the proponents of the Act stated that no political opposition worth its salt would let a tyrant do such a thing and get away with it. This says much about our former President Clinton and the gaggle of ineffectual clowns sometimes described as the loyal opposition, i.e. the Republican Party.

There is no need to delve into the other total fiascos of the "War on Drugs", property forfeiture laws, the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and the 1968 gun "reform" laws. The first two are quite enough to show that the intentions of the authors, when it comes to the expansion of government power, are totally and completely IRRELEVANT later down the road.

These precedents give me pause, especially since I know that the primary killer of innocent civilian life throughout the history of mankind is not the enemy threatening to invade, or the brigand in the hills, no, not at all, it is that victims OWN GOVERNMENT. More civilians have been murdered by their own governments than by ANY OTHER GROUP or cause in mankind's history. That is more than wars of religion, more than civil wars, more than man-made plague and famine. To look at the historical record, one cannot escape the conclusion that if there is any *one* group the moral and law abiding should fear to fear, that group would have to be one's own native government.

Our government began as a different kind of government. It began as a governemnt that celebrated the freedom and prosperity of it's own citizens. But our government moves away from such respect when the wrong crowd is in control, and it is that crowd that concerns me most. I trust, to some degree, the current President to excersize wide powers, but I almost tremble at the thought of what a President Schumer, a President Hilary Clinton, or a President Jesse Jackson might do instead with such sweeping power.

Farfetched? How farfetched was it thought that some might do what happened last September?

[The_RANDy_Corporation]

My concern over this is not with this administration but how it can be warped and mutilated by a future demonrat administration to attack the rights of American citizens.

As it stands now, things are fine and Leahy sucks.

[Warlady]

Everyone of the terrorist bills has a sunset clause. The longest one "The Patriot Act" dies in 4 years. It is my understanding that the CIC tribunal directive would expire when Bush leaves office. A new CIC would have to write his own. Correct?

[**DONOTDELETE**]

Everyone makes great points here, but here is as simple and short as I can be. Either President Bush and the Justice Department take these actions or we allow terrorist groups to use our civil liberties against us.

Can it backfire and be used against us in the future? Sure, and that is something that will have to be guarded against. However, at present our nation remains a target to some very motivated indivduals, and most likely the number of them is increasing due in part to Middle East events. This thing is far from over.

I loath the idea of government having increased powers, or doing things secretly, but, these are exceptional times. We are all a part of history, let's ensure that our grandchildren will be able to say we did the right thing by them.

Sorry so short and non-specific, but I have to go Christmas shopping. I can feel my wife's breath on the back of my neck now.
images/icons/shocked.gif

[Venus]

WL, not all aspects of the PATRIOT Act have sunset clauses, unfortunately, and it should be noted that Ashcroft was agin sunset clauses at all.

I see the left is already making hay out of the ACT by using it as a rationale for extending their own slippery-slope creation, NICS, to serve as a tool of the FBI in discovering who bought which guns.

[**DONOTDELETE**]

Luciano, I agree. It is better to act successfully now, and sow the seeds of future problems, than to not act now and perish. But that is a false dichotomy. We *can* have both, and the sunset clauses WL points out are a step in the right direction. I would just like to see more publicity on these clauses so that the public knows what to expect; termination of the security measures when the crisis is over.

[Warlady]

Which part of the act doesn't expire? And it speaks volumes for Ashcroft that he is resisting them don't you think?

[Venus]

WL, I was just fixin' to logoff and go do some things, and I disremember which provisions have 'em and which don't. I've been meaning for some time to undertake the whole issue of the PATRIOT ACT, but have been too busy, had too many interruptions, too many distractions -- pertaining to that event we discussed -- to get at it.

But maybe I can find something late tonight that addresses just the sunset issue so I can give you an accurate answer rather than my sketchy recollections from my reading of it a month or more ago. But I seem to keep pondering why Ashcroft is so gung ho to get these powers, yet he marches with lead feet on the subject of the INS, etc., and preventing these people from entering our country to begin with. I'm having a lot of trouble reconciling the disparity of his positions.....and Bush's apparent agreement with them.

[Warlady]

I think Ashcroft needs some new laws to clamp down on the INS the way we need it to be done and Kyle sp? is getting ready to introduce that new legislation. I saw an interview on Fox just yesterday. And they are rounding up expired Visas thousands of them. They aren't sitting on the INS issue.

[Venus]

Yep, I posted the proposed Kyl-Feinstein bill a while back. I can find it again tonight.

I'm aware they're rounding up the expired visa people, and damn glad of it. But what is he doing about the policies that let them in to begin with, and failed to track them? Relying on the possibility of some legislation from Kyl-Feinstein, certain to be watered down, especially now that the 'rats are having a fine time challenging and raising doubts about the administrations Military Order (tribunals) and so forth, shows much less enthusiasm for changing the rules and policies about visas, etc., and INS regs than they showed in getting the PATRIOT ACT passed so swiftly in the heat of the enthusiastic support for action against the bad guys.

Gotta go -- later.

[**DONOTDELETE**]

I understand that the Patriot Act has a sunset clause. I don't however know what they are. So I would concur that they should be given more press.

Therefore I did a quick search to find some info.
Below is the sunset clause for the USA PATRIOT ACT. Beneath that is a link to the entire bill as passed.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><HR> SEC. 224. SUNSET.

(a) IN GENERAL- Except as provided in subsection (b), this title and the amendments made by this title (other than sections 203(a), 203(c), 205, 208, 210, 211, 213, 216, 219, 221, and 222, and the amendments made by those sections) shall cease to have effect on December 31, 2005.

(b) EXCEPTION- With respect to any particular foreign intelligence investigation that began before the date on which the provisions referred to in subsection (a) cease to have effect, or with respect to any particular offense or potential offense that began or occurred before the date on which such provisions cease to have effect, such provisions shall continue in effect.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

link to USA PATRIOT ACT (http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c107:4:./temp/~c107ZqVIVS::)

[DesertFox]

Ashcroft faces two sets of adversaries here: One is connected in political minds with terrorism (Patriot Act), but the other with Mexican illegals (the INS). If he gets zealous with the INS, he gets accused of anti-Hispanic racism.