Five Ways Bush's Era of Repression Has Stolen Your Liberties Since 9/11

[Hissyspit]

http://www.alternet.org/rights/57689

Five Ways Bush's Era of Repression Has Stolen Your Liberties Since 9/11

By Matthew Rothschild, The New Press. Posted July 24, 2007.

In his new book, Matt Rothschild examines how the Bush White House constructed the edifice of repression to brazenly access our private data and shred the judicial process.

The following is an excerpt of Matthew Rothschild's "You Have No Rights: Stories of America in an Age of Repression" (The New Press, 2007):

To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists. ... They give ammunition to America's enemies, and pause to America's friends.
-- former attorney general John Ashcroft

You're either with us or against us. -- George W. Bush

Today's America is a much less free place than the America of 2000. Following the attacks of September 11, 2001, the Bush administration has, by word and by deed, erected an edifice of repression here in the United States. We've been living in it ever since. And it's not a comfortable place. The government is monitoring your phone calls and can read your e-mails and open your snail mail. The government can access records of your large financial transactions, such as buying a house.

Law enforcement officers can bust into your home when you're not there, riffle through your belongings, plant a recording device on your computer, and leave without notifying you for at least thirty days -- and maybe a lot more.

You no longer have the right to protest where the president or vice president can see you, or at major public events when they aren't even present. Law enforcement officers can now monitor you in public if you are merely exercising your political rights.

- snip -

Under George W. Bush's interpretation of the president's powers during the so-called war on terror he can do just about whatever he wants. He cites the Authorization for Use of Military Force bill, which Congress passed on September 18, 2001, as the justification for this enormous leeway.

"Congress gave me the authority to use necessary force to protect the American people, but it didn't prescribe the tactics,"Bush said in a speech at Kansas State University on January 23, 2006. Those tactics, he presumes, are totally up to him. Under this rationale Bush could send F-16s to attack a residential area in, say, Indianapolis if he thought Al Qaeda suspects were there.

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[Hissyspit]

1. .

[ThomWV]

2. Well - what are the 5 ways?

[Hissyspit]

3. Um - click on the link?

1. The Ashcroft raids
2. Abuse of Material Witness Statute
3. Enemy combatants and "extraordinary renditions"
4. Watering down the Levi guidelines: A boon for domestic spying
5. Listening in on lawyer-prisoner conversations