BY DAN
KENNEDY
Serving the reality-based community since 2002.
Notes and observations on
the press, politics, culture, technology, and more. To sign up for
e-mail delivery, click
here. To send
an e-mail to Dan Kennedy, click
here.
For bio, published work, and links to other blogs, visit
www.dankennedy.net.
Thursday, September 11, 2003
A cynical way to honor the
dead. Leave it to George W. Bush to mark the second anniversary
of the terrorist attacks by seeking to take away more of our
liberties. In a speech yesterday, Bush read off a few items from his
Patriot Act II wish list -- shelved earlier this year because of
bipartisan outrage.
His desire for an expanded death
penalty is depressing but unsurprising. Withholding bail from
terrorism suspects may actually not be a bad idea, although
this
Washington Post story
warns that it could be abused to hold entirely non-violent
suspects.
The big enchilada, though, would
allow federal authorities to issue subpoenas without having to go to
the bother of explaining themselves to judges or grand
juries.
The New York Times quotes
Bush making a
characteristically ridiculous
analogy, noting that such
administrative subpoenas are used to investigate health-care fraud:
"If we can use these subpoenas to catch crooked doctors, the Congress
should allow law enforcement officials to use them in catching
terrorists."
What he fails to mention is that
the stakes are considerably higher for a terrorism suspect than for a
doctor who's been goosing up his invoices to Medicare. Dr. Feelgood
faces a fine, at worst; the terrorism suspect faces the death
penalty.
What is it about Bush and judges
anyway? You'd think he'd like them -- after all, five of them made
him president. Yet he continually seeks to cut the judiciary out of
any meaningful oversight role in his crusade against
terrorism.
New in this week's
Phoenix. Speaking of the Patriot Act, the Phoenix's
Camille Dodero and I took in Attorney General John Ashcroft's
protest-spiced appearance at Faneuil Hall on Tuesday. Click
here
for Dodero's story, and here
for mine.
posted at 10:54 AM |
|
link
MEDIA LOG ARCHIVES
Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
