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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (446936)	8/24/2003 2:22:18 AM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769667

Message 19237751

To: tejek who wrote (446936)	8/24/2003 2:27:08 AM
From: laura_bush	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

Conservative backlash sunspot.net Originally published August 22, 2003 JOHN ASHCROFT must be sweating bullets. A grass-roots drive to resist the attorney general's broad expansion of police powers in the name of fighting terrorism has picked up so much support in the American heartland it threatens not only repeal of the legislation but political damage to President Bush as well. Try as he might, Mr. Ashcroft can no longer dismiss opponents of the USA Patriot Act as a small but whiny band of liberals. Some of the nation's top conservative groups as well as a huge majority of the Republican-led House of Representatives -- in other words, the Bush base -- are now leading the drive to eliminate portions of the law that allow secret spying on anyone. So the attorney general is out stumping in the presidential battleground states of Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan, as well as the first caucus state of Iowa, trying to sell the Patriot Act as vital to the war on terrorism while a Justice Department Web site seeks to dispel "myths" put out by critics. This spin control performance is offensive both in its message and its tactics. Mr. Ashcroft, who bullied Congress into granting law enforcement agencies sweeping new powers while the nation was still traumatized by the Sept. 11 attacks, is once again using fear to get his way. Most outrageously, he asserts that the nation is "safer" now because of the broader police powers and that "if we knew then what we know now, we would have passed the Patriot Act six months before Sept. 11." Well, perhaps -- if the FBI, so hidebound, so risk-averse and so technologically outmoded that it ignored many clues within its grasp, would somehow have been transformed. But the new police powers in the Patriot Act don't fix any of that. In his stump speech, Mr. Ashcroft doesn't address the concerns that have inspired three states and 154 local governments, including Baltimore, to pass resolutions in protest of the Patriot Act. Among these is the power granted to police to secretly obtain records of phone calls, Internet use, library visits and other personal information without probable cause of criminal activity. Lawmakers also worry about "sneak and peek" searches of homes and property, about which targets learn much later. The Justice Department's Patriot Act Web site (www.lifeandliberty.gov) maintains that "terrorism investigators have no interest in the library habits of ordinary Americans" and that searches must be secret so terrorist don't get tipped off. But Patriot Act powers are not limited to terrorism investigations. Mr. Ashcroft speaks only to selected audiences not open to the public. He wants U.S. attorneys in each state to take questions in town meetings, trying to use prosecutors as lobbyists. Thomas M. DiBiagio, the U.S. attorney for Maryland who considers himself politically independent, has no such plans. The Ashcroft road show seems likely to backfire, and actually fuel the drive for a thorough review by Congress of the Patriot Act to weed out its onerous parts. Mr. Ashcroft should be weeded out as well.