Keywords

Liberty

Law, Politics

As many of you may know, Ashcroft is running around promoting the Patriot Act and his new Victory Act as if it were snake oil. He also launched a new web site where he attempts to debunk the myths” about the Patriot Act. In particular, he attacks the ACLU. Well, the ACLU was quick to strike back:

Moreover, when the Attorney General makes the unsubstantiated claim that the PATRIOT Act would have definitively prevented the 9/11 attacks, he also obscures another key point: the USA PATRIOT Act isn’t just about terrorism.  As the New York Times reported, it’s been used — over the objections of the State Department — to seize funds stolen by American con artists and stashed in overseas accounts.

In fact,

Of the 56 terrorism cases filed by Justice in January and February, 2003, the agency concedes that 41 did not involve terrorism.

This post over at Riba Rambles debunks earlier misinformation about the patriot act which is still relevant to the claims being made on the web site. In addition, Riba has bought the rights to the domain lifeandliberty.info, with the aim of devoting the site to a critique of the government’s lifeandliberty.gov website.

There is also this excellent post over at Fables of the Reconstruction, which also takes apart many of the Justice Department’s claims.

Now, while Congress has already started rolling back some of the worst aspects of the Patriot Act, the new Victory Act is already treading on very dangerous ground by redefining drug crimes as Terrorism”!

I continue to stand by my claim that Ashcroft should be charged with conspiracy!

UPDATE: A new post from TalkLeft which compares the government’s and the ACLUs web sites.

Previous
Next