A Nation of Suspects
Hentoff, Nat
Bill of Rights Watch Nat Hentoff A Nation of Suspects Far more Americans know about the legal travailsof Michael Jackson and baseball star Barry Bonds than about the Intelligence Reform Act of...
...The press has sometimes gotten away with it, though, as in the cases of Barry Bonds and Michael Jackson.] The secrecy of grand jury proceedings has been enshrined in Anglo-American law for over 600 years...
...Clearly, the Bush team sees no need to review their successes in creating a nation of suspects...
...Just ask . . . Barry Bonds...
...Now, federal prosecutors . . . may lawfully leak...
...This gives the government a tool permitting enormous harm, since grand jury leaks can destroy a public figure's reputation...
...The 600-page statute, purportedly intended to efficiently reorganize the dysfunctional intelligence system, is actually-as Judge Andrew Napolitano, Fox News Channel's fiery constitutional analyst, says-"an addendum to the Patriot Act...
...If the government declares a defendant an alleged terrorist and a flight risk, the defendant must prove he is not a flight risk, rather than the government proving that he is," Judge Napolitano writes in an article in both the Baltimore Sun and the New London, Connecticut, newspaper The Day...
...Why aren't Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi saying that...
...Consider the expansion of the government's preventive detention power...
...As Charlie Mitchell, the ACLU's legislative counsel, says, these continuous incursions into the beleaguered Bill of Rights "are most troubling in terms of the trend they represent...
...The Republicans control Congress, and what passes for the Democratic leadership has yet to forcefully and persistently focus on the deterioration of individual liberties as a central way to make the Democratic Party meaningful to a wide range of Americans in both red and blue states...
...If," thunders Judge Napolitano, "we allow the President and Congress to treat our constitutional guarantees as if they were arbitrary gifts from government, we will be doing the terrorists' work for them...
...The new law also creates what is sure to become a national ID card through a federal mandate to establish national standards for driver licenses...
...Judge Napolitano indignantly flags another addition to the Patriot Act, about which no Congressional hearings were held: "Until [the Intelligence Reform Act], it was unlawful to leak federal grand jury testimony, regardless of how noble the leaker's purpose...
...Nat Hentoff is a columnist for The Village Voice, Free Inquiry, and The Progressive...
...Included will eventually be biometric information as well as radio frequency chips and other marvels of surveillance embedded in the license...
...He is the author of "The War on the Bill of Rights and the Gathering Resistance...
...This turns the presumption of innocence on its head, since in criminal cases, the Constitution requires that defendants don't have to prove anything in order to enjoy their freedom...
...Not anymore...
...The "reform" law also expands wiretapping powers, right in time for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to savor them...
...Your photo, smiling or not, will be digitalized and thereby swiftly linked to omnivorous government databases...
...They [Bush Administration officials] keep pushing and pushing without any attempt to review what they've done...
...Bill of Rights Watch Nat Hentoff A Nation of Suspects Far more Americans know about the legal travailsof Michael Jackson and baseball star Barry Bonds than about the Intelligence Reform Act of 2004-passedbyCongressinDecember, and celebratedbythe Presidentashesigned it into law...
...Until now, if a federal prosecutor moved to hold a defendant without bail, he or she had to demonstrate to a judge that the target is a flight risk...
...As James Plummer, a policy analyst at Consumer Alert, told The New York Times: "Basically, each state might have the name of the state written in a different font on the front [of the license]-but there will be a magnetic strip on the back containing virtually identical information...
Vol. 69 • March 2005 • No. 3
