Administration unbound

[teach1st]

http://www.sptimes.com/2004/10/02/Opinion/Administration_unbound.shtml

St. Petersburg Times Editorial
Published October 2, 2004

The United States is a nation founded on the notion of limited government, individual rights and self-determination. As a people, we do not share a common ethnicity, religion or creed. It is an abiding set of principles that defines who we are. These include a separation of powers, respect for due process and the equal protection of law.

President Bush has little use for these ideas. He and his top officials, particularly Attorney General John Ashcroft and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, have shown an almost casual disregard for civil liberties and the rule of law. The result has been national policy unmoored from the Constitution. The mistreatment of foreign prisoners is approved through convoluted legalisms. Americans can be held without charge based on the whim of the executive, and hundreds of foreigners can be imprisoned without formal status in contravention of the Geneva Conventions.

Bush signaled early on that his administration would not revere the Bill of Rights by choosing Ashcroft as the nation's chief law enforcer. During his six years in the Senate, Ashcroft had supported no fewer than seven amendments to the Constitution, obviously believing the document needs a major overhaul.

As attorney general, Ashcroft used the terror attacks of Sept. 11 to browbeat a supplicant Congress into passing the USA Patriot Act with little deliberation or debate. He told Congress that anyone who raised civil liberties concerns was helping the terrorists. Now he and the president are pushing for the renewal of the worst aspects of the law - those that give the administration broad, secret search powers with little or no judicial oversight. And they want to make further inroads into our guarantees against unreasonable searches by pushing for passage of legislative initiatives that have been collectively dubbed the Patriot Act II.

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[ixion]

1. the unPATRIOTic Act is unconstitutional

and should be repealed immediately and reviled as the single most un-American piece of legislation to every be passed by Congress, IMO.

[bogey18]

2. Jeb Bush must love

this newspaper. I didn't know they allowed this kind of freedom of speech in Florida.

I feel for our country, and I feel for John Kerry. Despite the fact that no matter who wins the Rethugs will still control Congress, this is still the most important election of an American president in the last 50 years. People like Asscrack are just so, so scary...and Bush's stacking of the judicial system with fascists has been relentless.