Patriot Act: What's in it? (by one of its many authors)

One thing that I have learned, as a child of the Vietnam War and a refugee from totalitarian communism, is not to question blithely a person's love of country or fealty to its principles.

It was therefore with some dismay that I read UTA professor Jim Cornehls' thinly veiled accusation that I and others who are engaged in combating terrorists are unpatriotic liars because I characterized his rants against the USA Patriot Act as "absolutely false." (See "This is patriotic?," Arlington Star-Telegram, Feb. 2.)

For the record, I do not think Cornehls unpatriotic -- just wrong and misguided. I respond here to his mischaracterizations.

• Arrest and detention: Every arrest and detention by the Department of Justice since 9-11 in connection with that investigation has been based on an individualized charge, based on violations of either criminal or immigration law or pursuant to a judicially issued material witness warrant.

Cornehls is wrong in saying that the USA Patriot Act authorizes people to be "arrested and held without charges, virtually indefinitely."

• Delayed notice of search warrants: A judge who issues a search warrant has always had the authority to delay notice of its execution. So firmly established is this authority that the Supreme Court has labeled a contrary argument as frivolous.

In the Patriot Act, Congress adopted a uniform standard of reasonable cause for delays authorized for a reasonable period. A judge must still approve the delayed notice and only for specified reasons, such as to save lives or preserve evidence. The uniform "reasonable cause" standard is more restrictive than the prior standard, which allowed delay for any "good reason."

Cornehls is wrong in saying that "the FBI can enter anyone's home, search personal effects and remove items without previously notifying residents, sometimes not until months later."

• Business records: Grand juries for years have issued subpoenas for business records in criminal inquiries. The Patriot Act gives courts in national security investigations the same power to issue similar orders to businesses, from chemical makers to explosives dealers.

Like grand jury subpoenas, these judicial orders could issue to libraries, but the act does not single them out. The FBI can use this authority only to catch foreign terrorists and spies, and not to investigate ordinary crimes or even domestic terrorism.

A judge must issue and supervise the orders, while grand jury subpoenas are routinely issued by the court clerk. Every six months, Congress gets full information on their use.

The House Judiciary Committee has stated that its review "has not given rise to any concern that the authority is being misused or abused." This authority has not been used once since its passage, partly because ordinary grand jury subpoenas are more easily obtainable. The authority cannot be used to spy on the reading habits of ordinary Americans.

• Secret searches: The government can and should investigate terrorists. In cases in which public disclosure would threaten national security, investigators can take steps to prevent it, such as asking a court for a confidentiality order. Nothing in the Patriot Act affects these common-sense procedures.

Cornehls is wrong in saying that the act authorizes investigators secretly to "demand personal records" of law-abiding citizens or to "question fellow employees and supervisors" and threaten that "they may be prosecuted for telling you or anyone else that questions are being asked."

• Grand jury information: The Patriot Act allows government attorneys to disclose information relating to foreign intelligence or terrorism to law enforcement and counterterrorism officials to help them protect America. The receiving officials can only use the information to do their job and cannot pass it on to unauthorized persons.

Cornehls errs in saying that, under the act, the government can obtain and share with all other law enforcement agencies grand jury information "on a claim that it might be useful in an intelligence investigation."

The primary threat to American liberty and our way of life comes from al Qaeda and its international terrorist network, not the brave men and women who risk their lives every day here and abroad to protect the security of America and the safety of its people.

Their job is hard enough without baseless questions about their motives. And the national conversation about our security and our liberty is too important to be dragged down by confused facts and hyperventilating rhetoric.

A copy of the USA Patriot Act is available at www.lifeandliberty.gov. I suggest that Cornehls read it.

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Viet D. Dinh, a professor of law at Georgetown University, was assistant attorney general for legal policy from 2001 to 2003 and is considered to be the primary author of the USA Patriot Act.

....any chance you can help me refute this low lifes arguement against the Bush and the Patriot Act? She reports something in our local weekly every week against Bush and or the Republicans.

Report From The Badlands
kwoods@pinnaclenews.com

Protest: Buy Pickles in Small Jars

Did you know that if President Bush were to visit Hollister or Gilroy or Morgan Hill, and if you were to hold up a sign protesting the Iraq war, you probably would be thrown in jail?
Folks, this Patriot Act thing just gets better and better. I mean, Ashcroft and his ilk have this thing down to a slippery, sloping science. And I predicted its success!
First, they canned our right to a fair and speedy trial, representation by an attorney and due process. That’s not for just foreigners. It’s for American citizens, too. And with that edict came the first hit on our privacy: the feds can monitor your e-mails, the library books you check out and eavesdrop on your phone conversations.
But what are Gilroy’s city council and planning commission excited about? Soon, they will get to buy gallon-sized jars of pickles at the Wal-Mart Superstore. That’s freedom! That’s free enterprise!
(Dear Mr. Bark Flappa: Actually, I think it might be a violation of the Anti-Trust Act, enacted after the turn of the century to ensure fair market enterprise.)
But back to the murder of the First Amendment. My mom Jane tore up her library card. She had carried a card in her purse for 65 years.
“Bush and Ashcroft can put this where the sun don’t shine,” she offered the day they announced the enactment of Patriot Act I.
And here it comes ….a little drum roll, please…Ta-da! Under the guise of protecting America from terrorists, Ashcroft and company now have instructed the Secret Service to instruct local law enforcement in all the cities which ‘Lil Bush visits, to set aside – get a load of this – “free speech zones.” The free speech zones are usually several miles away from where Bush is scheduled to speak and blocks away from his motorcade route.
RIMSHOT. Some punchline, huh?
BUT…the same rules do not apply to people carrying signs denigrating the protesters or adulating the President. If you have a sign critical of the Bush monarchy and you step outside of the free speech zone, you get arrested. It happened to a retired steel worker named Bill Neel in Pittsburgh, Penn., who held up a sign saying, “The Bush family must surely love the poor, they made so many of us,” when Bush paid a visit to the city. Neel didn’t go to the designated free speech zone – a baseball field surrounded by cyclone fencing – so the cops, on orders from the Secret Service, arrested the oldster for disorderly conduct.
Since when are certain areas of this nation the only places where you can exert free speech? Would a real terrorist with dynamite strapped around him be stupid enough to hold up a sign criticizing Bush, before doing a suicide swan dive atop his limo?
Every Friday in Hollister, since just before Bush launched the war on Iraq, the Hollister in Black people have protested in silence on a busy downtown corner. On an opposite corner are the red, white and blue waving pro-war supporters who heckle and chide the silent protesters. Guess who would be thrown in jail for disorderly conduct if Bush were to come into town, and guess who would get to line the route of his motorcade?
I can understand how Karl Rove and all of ‘Lil Bush’s puppeteers would want to shield the maroon from those awful people carrying signs with big long words on them that he doesn’t understand. But I think the real purpose here is to keep the media from reporting on protesters.
And now Bush wants to change the U.S. Constitution to make sure it never really does guarantee equality for all people regardless of race, creed, color or sex. He wants to amend it to prohibit same sex marriages, essentially turning the Constitution into a tool for discrimination. If anyone standing in the long line to the city clerk-recorder’s office in San Francisco is reading this, I urge you to do one thing: Eat pickles from small jars. Not pickles from a WalMart Superstore. Wave your small pickle jars in protest of the Bush Era. Juggle pickles while you wait in line. Wave your pickle into the news cameras, and yell, “To hell with your fascism, Bush!”
Remember, in the words of our great former (Republican) Vice President Dan Quayle, “A very positive message.” He said that after listening to a sermon in which a Georgia minister condemned homosexuality as “satanic.” (Newsweek, 11/92). He really said that.

Can anyone help me with a counter attack on this woman who rants like this weekly.

Thanks, all comments are welcome. Of course a few letters to the GAY EDITOR"S of this RAG would help also!!!!

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