Reuters wrong

Published 7/22/05

Goes the lede from a Reuters story:

The House of Representatives, ignoring protests from civil liberties groups, renewed the USA Patriot Act on Thursday mostly along party lines, to make permanent the government’s unprecedented powers to investigate suspected terrorists.

What’s wrong? The Patriot Act is not designed for investigating suspected terrorists. It’s being used for whatever law enforcement wants to.

A perfect example comes from the Las Vegas Review Journal, which reported on one Michael Galardi, a strip club owner, who was investigated under the Patriot Act for racketeering and bribery.

The beauty of the Act is that there are lots of cases where authorities don’t need a warrant to do their searches. They just need to … well, to want to.

You would think that simply repealing the 4th Amendment would have been easier.

What happened to the Republican Party that I used to be a member of — the one that believed in limiting, not expanding, the power of government?

The Fray

4 responses (add yours)

Julie says:

You said : What happened to the Republican Party that I used to be a member of — the one that believed in limiting, not expanding, the power of government?

They’re all in favor of limiting the government! They’re just going about that by, um…. doing whatever their perfect president says. Duh.

See? It makes perfect sense -rolls eyes- morons…

July 23rd, 2005 at 1:07 AM

Scott Aaron says:

I had a couple more examples of how the Patriot Act has been used on my blog (http://dr_saaron.blogspot.com/2005/06/renewing-patriot-act.html). To be fair, I got an email from my congressman (Ryan) saying

“It also includes improvements that strengthen the law’s civil liberties protections and provide for congressional and judicial oversight. Guarding the constitutional rights of citizens must be our highest priority, and the use of this law should continue to be carefully monitored by Congress. It has been applied responsibly so far, and we must see to it that Americans’ rights and freedoms remain secure.”

So maybe they are at least trying to address this flaw.

July 23rd, 2005 at 8:29 AM

Jason Lockhart says:

[rant]
There’s an old saying, ‘Absolute power corrupts absolutely.’ It is EVERY citizen’s duty in a democracy to question authority, educate himself/herself with the facts (NOT HEARSAY!) and draw their own individual conclusion. Here’s mine. If anyone believes that the Patriot Act is going to be used responsibly they’re out of their minds. If you believe any politician at his word, in this day and age, you are also out of your mind. What has become disturbing is the blind faith of the American populous in its elected officials and law enforcement organizations. We are rapidly becoming an oligarchy and destroying the country our Founding Fathers sought to create. Whose fault is it? The American people, for being so ignorant and gullible to the soothing words of men ambitiously seeking power.

Portions of the Patriot Act are in direct contradiction to the 4th Amendment (http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/amendment04/) and are a threat to ANYONE that some power hungry (or deranged) government official (or law enforcement officer) chooses to harass. I cannot believe that hysteria and fear have been leveraged so far as to dull the wits of the collective populous and drive us to create a police state in the cradle of modern democracy. It’s pathetic.

[/rant]

Sorry Andrew, you struck a chord with that one.

July 29th, 2005 at 10:13 PM