The Heart Of Darkness

This op-ed piece ran in the morning paper. I stand convicted of Bush hatred. More than 900 young people have died in Iraq and the meter is running; thousands more troops wounded or maimed. Thousands of Iraqi civilians dead. The solution to our energy needs is to unleash big oil on a wildlife refuge in Alaska or the Carson National Forest near the Philmont Scout Ranch. We are hated around the world with an unprecedented intensity. We put forth a clownish dolt to represent us on the world stage. The smirking frat boy act may have played at Yale in 1968, but dumb as a doorknob (and damn proud of it) doesn't get the job done any longer. And the hypocritical piety that has made suckers of millions of born-again Protestants is as empty as W's head. He is a foul-mouthed (Read his f-bomb laden interview with Tucker Carlson while W was governor.) disgrace to the office of President of the United States. Unlike Senator John McCain or Rudolph Guiliani, I did not buy W's imitation of John Wayne at Ground Zero after 9/11 and it is no more charming today than it was then. W does not get a pass for all of the mischief he has authored (with the war criminals in his administration). I am not fatigued. I am angry. As for Ashcroft and his minions, Bring 'em on!. The village of Crawford, TX is missing an idiot. ALL of the facetious wrongs that James Lileks attributes to W ARE TRUE! If this is (fair & balanced) dissing, so be it.

[x Austin Fishwrap]
Fatigued by Bush hatred? You're not alone
by
James Lileks

Do you suffer from Sudden Bush Hatred Fatigue Syndrome?

It's easy to diagnose. It often strikes at a bookstore. You walk in looking for a breezy summer read, and piled near the door are stacks and stacks of angry tomes about the perfidy of Usurper Bush.

He's a tool of big oil, small minds. He's a scarily devout Jesus-freak Christian AND the dupe of Saudi Wahhabist puppetmasters. He led the country to war on bizarre and fabricated assumptions—sure, Clinton made Iraqi regime change standard American policy, but that was just a scarecrow to stick in the field. Plus, George W. Bush is Satan! Just look at the cover of Jim Hightower's book, where the author draws devil horns and scribbles a mustache and goatee on a Bush poster. Bush isn't just wrong. He's bad. Super-extra evil. Get it? GET IT? Oh, and buy this book.

You decline the opportunity. You wander over to periodicals and flip open the current Esquire. There's a story on stem cell research. The author's subtitle: "How the president is trying to kill my daughter."

Yes, of course, you think. (How weary your inner voice sounds.) That's precisely what he is trying to do. That is the president's specific objective in life: Kill sick people. It makes him happy. Every night he puts his cloven hooves up on the desk and thinks of the people he's offed today. Ahh. Life is good.

You put the magazine away. The bookstore almost feels like enemy territory, or perhaps the embassy of some neutral but vaguely brackish nation. Do you belong? You don't hate Bush. You may not love him, but your marrow doesn't bubble at the thought of his name.

Do you feel somewhat estranged when you enter a bookstore? Sudden Bush Hatred Fatigue Syndrome.

Of course, not everyone hates Bush.

One can understand why Southerners like him, since they're all two-toothed crackers with gun racks and Klan sheets neatly folded in the trunk in case they drive by a good ol' fashioned flaming cross. Right?

It's harder to understand why putatively normal people like him. These creatures are frankly incomprehensible to any right-thinking person. Maybe they're just so full of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh they don't understand that their drinking water is now composed ENTIRELY of arsenic, or that we have completely squandered the goodwill of several hundred chain-smoking French intellectuals.

But ponder for a moment those who neither love Bush nor loathe him. Consider how that stack of anti-Bush books looks to them, how tired they feel when Will Smith pops up in the German press insisting that Bush lied. How weary they feel when Bruce Springsteen—the Boss!—joins a musical caravan to cross the nation and warn against the looming horror of another Bush term. "Gee, Bruce can both sing and strum a guitar. He must know something I don't."

It's hard to tell how SBHFS will affect the vote. This group could go either way.

They could so weary of the incessant hysteria that they'll be willing to reward the frothers, if only to shut them up. If I vote for John Kerry, will you be happy? Will that do it?

The answer would be Yes! That'll do it!

Well, that, and nationalized health care, tax hikes on small businesses, the Kyoto treaty, fealty to the United Nations, shipping nuclear fuel to the Iranians to make them act nice, leaving Iraq ASAP and ushering in what Kerry calls a more "sensitive" war on terrorism. (We will use marshmallow bullets, perhaps.) All that plus vast federally funded embryo farms, and they'll be happy. For a while. Then we'll have to do something about that "In God We Trust" nonsense on the coins.

On the other hand, SBHFS sufferers might hope that a vote for Bush would cap the geyser for good. His foes have said all they can say; could they possibly hate him any more?

Of course they could. If Bush takes out Iranian nuclear bomb facilities before the election, it'll be good for another 50 books. Now do you see how evil he is? First Iraq, then Iran — good Lord, is no one safe?

Copyright © 2004 The Austin American-Statesman

The Patriot Act (2001) & The Alien and Sedition Acts (1798)

Just yesterday, a chilling announcement proclaimed that INS (Border Patrol) agents would be empowered to deport aliens/non-citizens without due process of law. We are on a slippery slope. Adolf Hitler and the Nazis enforced the Nuremburg Decrees in the name of "national security" and "public safety." The Reichstag Fire was the pretext for rounding up Jews, Communists, homosexuals, gypsies, and other undesirables. W's minions deny legal standing to "terrorists" at Guantanamo, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and here in the United States of America. The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 were enacted in the name of "national security" and "public safety." Attorney General John Ashcroft would describe my rants as dangerous and giving aid and comfort to the "terrorists." The idiotic tool used by W's minions to make the people fearful and acquiescent is the Homeland Security Advisory System: Low (green), Guarded (blue), Elevated (yellow), High (orange), and Red (Severe). When I hear mention of Homeland, I am reminded of Fatherland, and my Anxiety Level goes to Red, Inevitably, I think of the words of Martin Niemoller:

Homeland Security? 

First they came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up, because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me.

If this is (fair & balanced) dread, so be it.

[x The Independent Institute]
Care About Civil Liberties this Election? You're in Trouble
by William J. Watkins, Jr.

In this election year, there are significant parallels between the USA Patriot Act of 2001 and the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. Enacted in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks, the Patriot Act has augmented the power of federal authorities to pry into the affairs of innocent Americans. In the summer of 1798, the United States Congress passed and President John Adams signed similar legislation. At base, the Alien and Sedition Acts prohibited criticism of the federal government and gave President Adams the power to deport any alien he viewed as suspicious. Americans found guilty of sedition faced prison terms of up to five years and hefty fines. In certain circumstances, aliens remaining in the United States could be imprisoned “so long as, in the opinion of the President, the public safety may require.”

This legislation made a mockery of the First Amendment and deprived aliens of basic due process of law. The Alien and Sedition Acts were the federal government’s first direct assault on American civil liberties. From this assault and the response, we can learn lessons relevant to our own time.

As is often the case with illiberal legislation, the Acts were a product of temporary Strum und Drang. In the 1790s, a number of Americans feared the democratic excesses of the French Revolution would be exported to the United States. They believed that French agents were plotting the destruction of the Constitution and the overthrow of the Adams administration. Rumors abounded in Philadelphia that Thomas Jefferson and James Madison planned to assist a French invasion force that was sailing across the Atlantic. Some expected a guillotine would be set up to deal with patriotic Americans. In this environment, Adams and the Federalists pushed for legislation that would secure the home front in the face of invasion and that would also, they hoped, secure Federalist political hegemony.

Fearing revolutionary France, many Americans at first supported the Alien and Sedition Acts. In Thomas Jefferson’s words, the people were “made for a moment to be willing instruments in forging chains for themselves.” But the Federalists' attacks on civil liberties were soon met with opposition. Local meetings were held throughout the union and the people affixed their signatures to sundry petitions. These public meetings were well attended and sparked much interest. In Lexington, Kentucky, for example, a meeting scheduled at a local church to consider the Acts had to be moved to the town square because 5,000 citizens -- twice Lexington’s population -- assembled.

To combat the Acts, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison drafted the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions. In these Resolutions, Madison and Jefferson accused Congress of exceeding its powers and declared the Alien and Sedition Acts void. Times were so tense that Madison and Jefferson hid their authorship because they feared prosecutions under the dreaded Sedition Act. The Acts were seen as such a danger to liberty that there was also some discussion of resisting the measures by force and secession.

Fortunately, drastic measures were not needed because the people had a very powerful weapon at their disposal: the ballot box. In addition, Jefferson and the Republican Party posed quite a contrast to Adams and the Federalist Party. In the so-called “Revolution of 1800," the Republicans won a 24-seat majority in the House of Representatives and Jefferson was elected to the presidency. Upon taking office, Jefferson suspended all pending prosecutions under the Sedition Act and pardoned those convicted under the unconstitutional Act. Jefferson would later boast how this revolution was brought about not by the sword, “but by the rational and peaceable instrument of reform, the suffrage of the people.”

Under today’s Patriot Act, government investigators can more easily eavesdrop on Internet activity, FBI agents are charged with gathering domestic intelligence, Treasury Department officials are charged with creating a financial intelligence-gathering system for use by the CIA, and the CIA, banished from the field of domestic intelligence because of abuses in the Vietnam era, is permitted to resume domestic operations. Separate from the Patriot Act, the Bush administration unsuccessfully argued to the Supreme Court that it could detain American citizens and foreign nationals on U.S. soil indefinitely and without access to legal counsel -- all when the writ of habeas corpus has not even been suspended. Even John Adams only claimed such a power over aliens, not citizens.

Civil libertarians have been very critical of the Patriot Act, believing that the balance between liberty and power has tipped too far toward the latter. But, with an election around the corner, the American people can have the final say on this question. Well, not quite.

Unlike 1800, the people are given no meaningful choice. Senator John Kerry, the president’s only real challenger, voted in favor of the Patriot Act and authored some of its provisions. According to the Kerry campaign, the problem is not with the Patriot Act itself, but with those enforcing it, i.e., Attorney General John Ashcroft. His message for Americans is to keep the powers in place and to trust him with these powers that he admits have been abused.

The ballot box is a powerful weapon in the people’s hands when they have real choices. With the franchise the people can defend their liberties and reform the government. To paraphrase Jefferson, they can effect a bloodless revolution. However, when both parties offer the people candidates with indistinguishable views on issues relating to fundamental liberties, the franchise is an impotent weapon. And if democracy so falters, the people are left with few attractive options in defense of their freedoms.

William J. Watkins, Jr. is a Research Fellow at The Independent Institute and a legal scholar specializing in constitutional law and health law. He received his J.D. cum laude from the University of South Carolina School of Law and is a former law clerk to Judge William B. Traxler, Jr. of the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.

Reprinted with permission. © Copyright 2004, The Independent Institute

Alien and Sedition Acts Redux

We are nearing the day when my criticism of W will land me in the slammer. Move over Matthew Lyon, I will be your spiritual cellmate. The calumny heaped on John Kerry by W's minions is an echo of the vituperative aimed at Thomas Jefferson by John Adams' Federalist supporters. Now, federal law enforcement (the Secret Service) accosts Michael Moore near the Saudi embassy in Washington, DC and demands that Moore explain the presence of his camera crew. Why is police protection provided for Prince Bandar—aka Bandar Bush—the Saudi ambassador to the United States? We are getting stiffed in the exchange of police protection. The Saudi government allows al Qaeda operatives to run free (and bomb and maim and kill U. S. citizens in the Kingdom) and the Secret Service attempts to intimidate Michael Moore on the streets of Washington, DC. If this is (fair & balanced) sedition, so be it.

[x The New York Times]
Tyranny in the Name of Freedom
By DAHLIA LITHWICK

So it has come down to this: You are at liberty to exercise your First Amendment right to assemble and to protest, so long as you do so from behind chain-link fences and razor wire, or miles from the audience you seek to address.

The largely ignored "free-speech zone" at the Democratic convention in Boston last month was an affront to the spirit of the Constitution. The situation will be only slightly better when the Republicans gather this month in New York, where indiscriminate searches and the use of glorified veal cages for protesters have been limited by a federal judge. So far, the only protesters with access to the area next to Madison Square Garden are some anti-abortion Christians. High-fiving delegates evidently fosters little risk of violence.

It's easy to forget that as passionate and violent as opposition to the Iraq war may be, it pales in comparison with the often bloody dissent of the Vietnam era, when much of the city of Washington was nevertheless a free-speech zone.

It's tempting to say the difference this time lies in the perils of the post-9/11 world, but that argument assumes some meaningful link between domestic political protest and terrorism. There is no such link, except in the eyes of the Bush administration, which conflates the two both as a matter of law and of policy.

It started with Attorney General John Ashcroft's declaration, shortly after 9/11: "To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists." This was an early attempt to couple disagreeing on civil liberties with abetting terrorists. And while I'm not reflexively opposed to the entire Patriot Act, two provisions do serve more to quell protest than terrorism.

One section invented a broad new crime called "domestic terrorism" - punishing activities that "involve acts dangerous to human life" if a person's intent is to "influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion." If that sounds as if it's directed more toward effigy-burning, or Greenpeace activity, than international terror, it's because it is. International terror was already illegal.

A second provision, already deemed unconstitutional in one federal court, was used to prosecute Sami Omar al-Hussayen, a Muslim graduate student at the University of Idaho who was charged with using the Internet to offer "expert advice or assistance" to terrorists by posting fatwahs and hyperlinks to a Hamas Web site. He was acquitted by a jury this summer, partly because the judge warned jurors that speech - even speech advocating the use of force or the breaking of laws - is constitutionally protected, unless directed toward inciting imminent lawless action.

An even more pernicious use of the federal law enforcement power to quash protest has been observed at presidential speeches, where the Bush team has used the Secret Service at public events to create "free-speech zones" that keep dissenters away from the president.

In 2002 Brett Bursey, a South Carolinian, was arrested for holding a "No War for Oil" sign near a hangar where Bush was speaking. The West Virginia police reported that the Secret Service had directed them to arrest a couple sporting anti-Bush T-shirts at a public speech this year. And an account by Justin Rood in Salon last week revealed that at a recent rally in Duluth, Minn., Secret Service checkpoints were festooned with photos of men posing some ostensible physical danger to the president: one was a professor active in the Green Party, another a pacifist homeless activist. Both had plans to protest the war during Mr. Bush's visit.

Michael Moore's cookie-wielding Fresno peace activists look almost dangerous in comparison. Without evidence that pacifist protesters plan to violate their own credos and bludgeon the president with their Birkenstocks, the use of the Secret Service to silence them is an abuse of executive power.

Enormous national events will inevitably be terror targets. So will the president. But before we single out the anarchists and the environmentalists and the puppet-guys for diminished constitutional protections - before we herd them into what are speech-free zones - we might question whether they represent the real danger. If we don't recognize the distinction between passionate political speech and terrorism now, it may be too late to protest later.


Dahlia Lithwick 
Ms. Lithwick, 37, a senior editor and legal correspondent for Slate, writes the column "Supreme Court Dispatches" and has covered the Microsoft trial and other legal issues.

Before joining Slate, she worked for a family law firm in Reno, Nev., and clerked for Procter Hug, chief justice of the ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in 1996. Her work has appeared in the New Republic, Commentary, The New York Times, The Washington Post,Elle, and on CNN.com. She is a weekly legal commentator for the NPR show, "Day to Day."

She is co-author of Me v. Everybody: Absurd Contracts for an Absurd World (Workman Publishing, 2003), a legal humor book, and I Will Sing Life: Voices from the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp (Little, Brown & Co., 1992), a book about seven children from Paul Newman's camp who have life-threatening illnesses.

Ms. Lithwick was awarded the Online News Association's award for online commentary in 2001. She received a B.A degree in English from Yale University in 1990 and a J.D degree from Stanford Law School in 1996.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company