Saturday 29 May 2004

Attorney General Ashcroft

I have little doubt that John Ashcroft is well-intentioned, and sincerely believes that he acts on profoundly moral principles, but unless he quickly comes to understand that many other profoundly moral individuals are being profoundly screwed by policies that he has engineered, his remaining in power creates a danger to the foundation of our Democracy.

It is a sufficient indictment of his policies to show that many entirely innocent people are being hurt by them, but I am especially looking for compelling stories of people whose good works are being stopped or interrupted by legal or other action from this justice department. Send me some links! [End of Post]

2 comments:

Walker said...
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Walker said...

There appears to be some evidence that I may have overstated this one. At least one other person who was looking in particular for abuses of civil liberties under the Patriot Act conceded that there appeared to be scant evidence of gross abuses particularly attributable to its measures as of May 2004. I'm certainly not going to make the case that Jose Padilla is "profoundly moral", though holding someone over a year without charges is more than unsettling. The current dearth of known anecdotes doesn't much diminish my distaste for creating the mechanism for potential abuse, or for extending its provisions, and I still worry about what we might not ever know about.