[Vision2020] Patriot Act

[Tbertruss at aol.com]

All:

As the media focuses on the earth shattering implications of the Michael 
Jackson trial, our Fourth Amendment constitutional protections are being 
rewritten.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/06/07/patriot.act.ap/index.html

But don't worry.  The Bush administration focuses on keeping government out 
of people's lives, unlike those intrusive democrats, who want the government to 
regulate everything.  The courts are just another liberal regulatory 
bureaucracy that must be marginalized.  Just ask that bastion of true American values, 
Representative Tom Delay.  Why should the government have to present evidence 
to a court of a crime being or about to be committed to justify snooping 
through private records?  We have ample evidence of the accuracy and rigorous fact 
checking of the intelligence and law enforcement activities of the Bush 
administration in the claims of WMDs in Iraq, facts used to justify taking this 
nation to war, to spill the blood of tens of thousands of human beings.

For more on the Patriot Act as it actually has been used to abuse the rights 
of US citizens,  
consider the case of Portland lawyer Brandon Mayfield, who was arrested, held 
in custody, his law practice disrupted and damaged, etc., all based on an 
erroneous finger print identification, quoted below.

Quotes below from these links:

http://www.osbar.org/publications/bulletin/04jul/security.html

http://www.masnet.org/news.asp?id=1240

"During my incarceration I was often manacled and chained," he said,
mentioning that, initially, he was held in solitary confinement and then in
the jail's mental ward.

He declined to say if FBI agents became physical with him when he was
arrested, reports Reuters news agency.

Mayfield said he feared for his safety when inmates began to recognize him
on the nightly news. In jail, a prison guard told him: "You should watch
your back."

"People should wake up. We need to start protecting our civil liberties," he
said, also blasting the Patriot Act. "The material witness statute obviously
gives the government too much power and must be amended, if not repealed,"
he said.

Mayfield's defense team is asking the courts to investigate leaks by U.S. 
government authorities and asking the government to preserve the fingerprint 
information, but Mayfield declined to say if he would bring legal action against 
the government, reports Reuters. 

The fiasco has "blown my [law] practice completely apart," Mayfield said, 
because of negative publicity and the fact that agents had access to confidential 
legal files in his single practitioner office, the news agency reports. 

Mayfield expressed concern about others "languishing away" under the material 
witness law 

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"Nothing I’ve seen in the last 32 months leads me to believe that my vote 
against the Patriot Act was misguided," U.S. Representative Earl Blumenauer said 
at the bar’s forum in April. "I don’t trust this administration with these 
tools. I wouldn’t trust the Clinton administration. I wouldn’t trust what I 
hope will be the Kerry administration. The history of expanding the powers of 
government at the expense of our fundamental rights is a sorry one."    

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V2020 Post by Ted Moffett











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