4/26/2004
Do We Need the Patriot Act?
Last week, President George W. Bush launched his “Protecting the Homeland” re-election campaign tour by lauding the USA Patriot Act and calling for its renewal and enhancement.
The USA Patriot Act is the anti-terrorism legislation that Congress passed just six weeks after the 9/11 tragedy, with very little debate and almost no media coverage. As a result, the American public was slow to find out about the Patriot Act and even slower to learn about and understand the changes to our existing laws that the legislation ushered in. However, that’s hardly surprising, considering the fact that many of those in Congress who voted for the Patriot Act had not even bothered to read it. In the days and months following 9/11, given the mood of the country at the time and Attorney General John Ashcroft’s aggressive promotion of new legislation, almost any kind of anti-terrorism legislation would have easily passed. Still, many of the provisions in the Patriot Act were worrisome to certain members of Congress (so much so that a condition of its swift passage was the insertion of a conditional ‘sunset’ clause, which called for a congressional review of the Patriot Act in five years).
Today, while almost everyone knows about the Patriot Act, few know what it really means. Some have gone so far as to call it an assault on our Bill of Rights, while others say it’s simply an adjustment of existing laws that make it easier for law enforcement to catch terrorists. Now President Bush has decided to play re-election politics with the law.
“There’s only one path to safety,” the President said during remarks at a campaign stop in Pennsylvania. “…and that’s the path of action. Congress must act with the Patriot Act. We must continue to stay on the offense when it comes to chasing these killers down and bringing them to justice—and we will. We’ve got to be strong and resolute and determined,” Bush continued. “We will never show weakness in the face of these people who have no soul, who have no conscience, who care less about the life of a man or a woman or a child. We’ve got to do everything we can here at home. And there’s no doubt in my mind that, with the Almighty’s blessings and hard work, that we will succeed in our mission.”
Though you wouldn’t know it from listening to the President, during the almost three years since its passage, the Patriot Act has generated enormous controversy. It has come under fire from members of Congress, the media and watchdog organizations such as The Rutherford Institute, the ACLU and the Center for Democracy and Technology. Many people felt the legislation had been pushed through Congress too hastily and that it amounted to a power grab by the federal government, a blanket approval of laws and provisions that had been previously proposed and rejected over concerns about civil liberties. In fact, columnist Nat Hentoff went so far as to say that it amounted to a war on the Bill of Rights. Over 230 cities, towns and counties have passed resolutions against the Patriot Act, representing more than 30 million Americans. Even one of the Patriot Act’s principal authors, the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Policy in the Justice Department, Viet Dinh, has advocated caution in crafting new terrorism law. “We have a common set of values that are under attack,” Dinh said during an address at a 2002 Federal Library and Information Center Committee forum. “But if we lose these values [in the process of crafting security policy] the terrorists will have won.”
Strong defenses of the Patriot Act have dismissed the hysteria over ‘lost liberties’ and ‘threats to freedom’ by pointing out that the legislation merely streamlines a dysfunctional bureaucracy and applies a more common sense approach to crime fighting. In a November 2003 article in the National Review, Andrew C. McCarthy writes:
Patriot is far more about applying common sense than addressing the Constitution, which is why support for passage was almost plenary. Reversing it would endanger national security, and Americans would not stand for the consequences. Imagine trying to explain to them that a bomber was acquitted because the prosecutor refrained from proving a thumbprint on a bomb manual lest some libertarian solipsist be “chilled” from borrowing the latest Harry Potter from the library. Patriot will be lauded, not reduced to agitprop, if it is better explained.
However, in January 2003, when a top-secret Justice Department memo and draft of the “Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003” (or Patriot Act II, as it is referred to) was leaked to the Washington-based Center for Public Integrity, there was renewed skepticism about the Patriot Act and the motives of the Justice Department and the Bush Administration. The proposed legislation, which in its secrecy and content disturbed both Democrats and Republicans in Congress, sought to grant the government even greater powers to conduct searches and seize the property of U.S. citizens suspected of terrorist activity.
Last September, the controversy surrounding the Patriot Act and the proposed Patriot Act II was so great that it prompted Attorney General John Ashcroft, acting more like someone on the campaign trail than the nation’s top prosecutor, to organize a nationwide tour and put up a website to defend and promote the Patriot Act. Much like President Bush would do seven months later, Ashcroft dramatically defended the Patriot Act by wrapping it in the tragedy of 9/11. Ashcroft suggested that critics of the Patriot Act had forgotten their duty to America. “Only two years have passed…yet some Americans have forgotten how we felt that day. And it was only yesterday that the 343rd firefighter to die in the World Trade Center attack was buried. A vial of Michael Ragusa’s blood…all that his family had…was wrapped and placed in a coffin for burial. We mourn again the loss of a young hero…and we remember.”
If the Patriot Act were simply a way to make it easier to catch terrorists and in no way threatened the civil liberties of Americans, then why the predisposition toward secrecy? Why these nationwide tours and dramatic promotions of the law?
And if the Patriot Act does not infringe on the Bill of Rights and does not give our government more power than the Constitution allows, then why do we even need the Patriot Act? Why make it an election year issue?
Since the Patriot Act was passed in October 2001, The Rutherford Institute has closely monitored its evolution in the Operation Eroding Freedom section of our website. TRI was also one of the first legal organizations to produce an extensive analysis of the Patriot Act, entitled Forfeiting “Enduring Freedom” for “Homeland Security”: A Constitutional Analysis of the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 (PDF). In addition, when Attorney General Ashcroft launched his tour and Life and Liberty website defending the Patriot Act, TRI offered a point-by-point response to Ashcroft’s statements called Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Terrorists: A Rutherford Institute Response to Attorney General John Ashcroft’s “Patriot Act” Tour and Website(PDF) And finally, Rutherford Institute President John W. Whitehead offers a blunt assessment of the Patriot Act in his recent commentary,
The President Is Wrong: The USA Patriot Act Should Be Terminated.
Since President Bush plans to make this controversial legislation an important part of his re-election campaign, we urge you to take the time to learn more about how the Patriot Act has affected your freedoms and how it might impact them in the future.
Poll Question: Do you support Bush's proposal to strengthen and expand the PATRIOT Act?
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