KERRY'S SILENCE
Hentoff, Nat
Ashcroft Watch Nat Hentoff Kerry's Silence In the closing months .of Hubert Humphrey's 1968 Presidential campaign, I told one of his advisers that the candidate had not been emphasizing the effect...
...However the election turns out, Democrats should pay attention in the battles ahead to the significant and deep concern with civil liberties around the nation...
...This continuing insurgency, largely ignored also by the media, includes college towns and conservative rural enclaves...
...He didn't...
...Testifying there for the resolution was Bob Nat Hentoff is a columnistfor The Village Voice, Free Inquiry, and The Progressive...
...Barr of the American Conservative Union...
...But there was not a word from Kerry, who could have reminded a sizable part of the electorate of how the "new" FBI has morphed into J. Edgar Hoover's COINTELPRO operatives...
...The FBI's coercive visits to young Americans suspected of planning protests at the Republican and Democratic conventions were widely documented...
...The media was focused on the disheveled dictator the day Bush signed the law, so most Americans have no idea of what National Security Letters are...
...Win or lose, the leadership of the Democratic Party should take a remedial course on how hard it's been to keep the Bill of Rights alive...
...In September, Lincoln, Nebraska, joined the resistance...
...Barr has been actively exposing the Administration's undermining of the First and Fourth Amendments in speeches and in such stinging assaults as his recent article on the FBI in findlaw.com, a prestigious resource for commentary on legal issues...
...This time around, while John Kerry has made minimal critical references to John Ashcroft, the Patriot Act, and our other diminishing liberties, the Bill of Rights has been far from a major issue in his campaign...
...And nearly all of its members will be from those agencies and departments that are already abusing our civil liberties...
...So much for the Fourth Amendment and checks and balances...
...Kerry could have enlightened a good many undecided—as well as decided—voters on this wholesale disappearance of their privacy...
...There was a glancing reference to the court by Humphrey in the last weeks, but if he had focused on the court before then, it might have energized the sharply divided Democratic Party enough to make a difference...
...He is the author of "The War on the Bill of Rights and the Gathering Resistance...
...There are, of course, no independent constitutional law experts from outside the government, and the board has no subpoena powers, nor need it hold public hearings...
...By mid-September, 356 cities and counties and four state legislatures (Alaska, Hawaii, Maine, and Vermont) had passed strong Bill of Rights resolutions directing their members of Congress to undo the most dangerous sections of the Patriot Act and subsequent Bush Administration executive orders...
...As Justice William Brennan once told me: "We've always known—the Framers knew—liberty is a fragile thing...
...Nixon's victory margin was narrow...
...Ashcroft Watch Nat Hentoff Kerry's Silence In the closing months .of Hubert Humphrey's 1968 Presidential campaign, I told one of his advisers that the candidate had not been emphasizing the effect on the Supreme Court if Richard Nixon were to be elected...
...To assure ours are being protected, the board is based in John Ashcroft's Department of Justice...
...Another missed opportunity by Kerry to expose George W Bush's covert raids on the Bill of Rights was Bush's signing—on the day Saddam Hussein was extricated from his spider hole—ofthe 2004 Intelligence Authorization Act...
...Nor did he tell us about Bush's grand August 27 "Executive Order Establishing the President's Board on Safeguarding Americans' Civil Liberties...
...All they need to do is to draw up their own National Security Letters, which take the place of subpoenas...
...Said Barr: "Such tactics usher in an era of . . . fear that has no place in American politics...
...He is also a card-carrying member of the ACLU, for which he is an adviser on privacy...
...Jay Leno or David Letterman might have savored this Bush version of a Potemkin Village, but Kerry let it go by...
...This law allows a huge expansion of National Security Letters allowing the FBI and other federal agencies to get an extensive array of personal records—medical, financial, educational, travel, etc.—without going to a judge...
...His headline was: "The FBI's Preemptive Interrogation of 'Possible' Demonstrators: Chilling Political Speech...
Vol. 68 • November 2004 • No. 11
