From an article1:
Tim Armstrong served with the 1st Air Mobile Cavalry Division in Vietnam, surviving a mortar barrage that left 33 pieces of shrapnel in his upper body.
He is a proud American who remembers the vow he made the day he joined the Army. "I took an oath, just like everyone else who serves in the military, to support and defend the Constitution of the United States," Armstrong said.
Today, the 56-year-old radio ad salesman says he is still defending the Constitution as he criticizes the USA Patriot Act and many of the security enhancements that accompany life in post-Sept. 11 America.
"I think the Patriot Act itself, it infringes on the rights that we swore to uphold and defend," Armstrong said recently as political leaders in Juneau debated -- and passed -- a resolution opposing the controversial law. "I didn't go to war to usurp the Constitution." (
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Kudos to all the Americans standing up for our country's founding principles.
Complete text of the article,
Liberty in the Balance -- Citizens across the U.S. speak out, by Sam Stanton and Emily Bazar
Tim Armstrong served with the 1st Air Mobile Cavalry Division in Vietnam, surviving a mortar barrage that left 33 pieces of shrapnel in his upper body.
He is a proud American who remembers the vow he made the day he joined the Army. "I took an oath, just like everyone else who serves in the military, to support and defend the Constitution of the United States," Armstrong said.
Today, the 56-year-old radio ad salesman says he is still defending the Constitution as he criticizes the USA Patriot Act and many of the security enhancements that accompany life in post-Sept. 11 America.
"I think the Patriot Act itself, it infringes on the rights that we swore to uphold and defend," Armstrong said recently as political leaders in Juneau debated -- and passed -- a resolution opposing the controversial law. "I didn't go to war to usurp the Constitution."
Concerned about the lengths to which the government has gone to defend the nation since Sept. 11, 2001, thousands of Americans like Armstrong are speaking out, fighting back and banding together in unusual political alliances against everything from enhanced government surveillance to increased airport security measures.
"I just don't think they need that type of power," Armstrong said. "I don't think people have to give up those types of rights in order to combat terrorism."
From Alaska to Florida, similar opinions are being expressed in town hall meetings, city council chambers and library conference rooms as citizens seek to put back what they say is some sorely needed balance in the equation between national security and civil liberties.
By Tuesday, 171 cities and counties across the country, joined by the states of Alaska, Hawaii and Vermont, had passed resolutions opposing provisions of the Patriot Act.
Some are major metropolitan areas, such as Detroit and Philadelphia. Some are tiny hamlets, including Dillon, Mont., and Newfane, Vt. Nearly 40 of the communities are in Northern California, and many others, including Sacramento, are expected to debate similar proposals very soon.
Some have passed the measures with little fanfare. Others have drawn attention because of efforts by federal officials to defeat the measures. Arcata's has sparked controversy for calling for strict disobedience to provisions of the act.
The politics of the communities involved run the gamut. In Alaska, where at least nine communities and the state government have approved anti-Patriot Act measures, the politics tend to run conservative to libertarian. Other communities, such as Salinas and Tucson, Ariz., are considered liberal.
But their alliance against the Patriot Act underscores the fact that Americans nationwide have emerged from the traumatic period after Sept. 11 and are beginning to question whether some of the security enhancements instituted by the Bush administration and Attorney General John Ashcroft might have gone too far.
"In evaluating what Ashcroft and Bush have done, it's important to give them the benefit of the doubt to a certain extent," said Michael Mello, a professor at the Vermont Law School who specializes in constitutional law, capital punishment and civil liberties.
Although Mello believes Ashcroft has overreached, he said he understands the administration's quandary.
"It is brand-new territory. They are making it up as they go along, out of necessity. And they're only human."
Federal officials say the backlash against their efforts is misguided and misinformed, and driven in large part by liberal groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union, which has been effective in using its mailing lists and media contacts to stir up opposition to the Patriot Act and other security measures.
"If you went out and just interviewed the average person on the street, there's probably a widely held perception that John Ashcroft woke up in the middle of the night and said, 'I'm going to make up the Patriot Act, and the Department of Justice is going to implement it,' " said McGregor Scott, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of California.
"The reality is that this thing was passed by overwhelming majorities, bipartisan majorities, and virtually every aspect of it is subject to judicial review."
Justice Department officials, frustrated in their efforts to quell the opposition, have begun organizing responses to questions about the law, including a 14-page paper titled "Ten Myths About the USA Patriot Act," written by Mary Beth Buchanan, U.S. attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania.
But that has not dampened efforts by community activists, who have seized upon the Patriot Act and Ashcroft as symbols of a government they believe has exceeded what is appropriate or necessary to defend the nation from attack.
The backlash has not been limited to town hall meetings or largely symbolic votes in City Hall.
Conservative and liberal groups have joined together to condemn what they see as overzealous efforts to restrict civil liberties. Last spring, panelists from such disparate groups as the ACLU, the American Conservative Union and Phyllis Schlafly's conservative women's group, the Eagle Forum, joined together to condemn the breadth of the Patriot Act.
The ACLU, in conjunction with immigrant groups, sued Ashcroft in July, contending the Patriot Act has been used unfairly to target community groups based on the ethnicity, religion and politics of their members.
Congress also has moved to scale back some provisions, with the House recently approving a measure to limit the use of "sneak-and-peek" warrants that allow FBI agents to conduct searches without a suspect's knowledge.
Since Ann Arbor, Mich., passed the first anti-Patriot Act resolution Jan. 7, 2002, a slow but steady procession of communities has been following suit. Denver passed its resolution March 18, 2002, Seattle approved one Feb. 18, and the East Bay city of Richmond passed one Feb. 25.
Many other communities have expressed concerns over excessive government power, holding meetings that have ended up as anti-Patriot Act rallies.
In Grass Valley in March, more than 100 people showed up for a town hall session and debated -- loudly at times -- with a panel that included area police chiefs and sheriffs, the Nevada County librarian and Michael Mason, who at the time headed up the Sacramento region's FBI office.
Mason did his best to convince the locals that the FBI has little interest in depriving people of their liberties, that there are checks and balances to prevent such abuses.
"An agent brought a case to me," Mason told them. "He said he had informant information that this individual was Muslim, hard-core Muslim, and always in possession of a Quran. And he looked at me. And I stopped and I looked at him, and I said is that anything like a devout Catholic always in possession of a Bible?
"So, it takes people. There is no Mr. FBI. It takes people to make intelligent decisions about how we're going to carry out our duties."
But the message officials tried to convey, that average American citizens would never feel the impact of the Patriot Act, was a hard sell to the crowd.
"I'm not average," said Chamba Lane, who hosts a local radio show called "Rabble Rousing." "My fear is that their idea of average is shut up and trust us."
Salinas residents mulled over the same concerns two months later, contending there was more chance of the Patriot Act's being used to oppress their neighbors than protect them.
"We're not a logical target for terrorists," said Salinas Mayor Anna Caballero. "In fact, in terms of homeland security concerns, Salinas in particular does not have any high-profile facilities. With the exception of food production, there's not much else that would interest a terrorist."
The farming community is home to many undocumented Latino immigrants, however, and concerns over how they might fare under the government's security crackdown prompted the City Council to vote to become the 106th community nationwide to oppose the Patriot Act.
"We have a large community of immigrants," Caballero said. "We believe it's really important to be fair to all immigrants."
But the drive to pass the resolution didn't simply evolve from local citizens' concerns. The idea didn't even start there.
Instead, the campaign was the brainchild of a newly formed group called the Monterey County Community Alliance to Protect Civil Liberties that decided to focus its attention on persuading area governments to pass resolutions opposing the Patriot Act. Salinas was targeted because it is the largest city in the county and because the City Council has a reputation for adopting liberal causes.
"If we were going to start anywhere, we were going to be assertive," said Sue Sutton, 47, chairwoman of the alliance. "We thought this could be the community that needs us the most."
Things haven't gone as smoothly in other communities. As Tucson's City Council was about to take up an anti-Patriot Act measure, it received a letter from U.S. Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., warning that "America remains vulnerable to terrorism." Kyl urged the council not to follow the lead of a "minuscule minority" of other cities that have opposed the act.
The council rejected his advice, passing a resolution three days later.
In Juneau, the U.S. attorney for Alaska, Tim Burgess, appeared before some members of the city assembly to speak about the act before the panel voted.
"I'm not taking a position on that particular or any resolution," he said afterward by phone. "That's obviously a decision they need to make. I tried to address some of what I thought were misconceptions about the Patriot Act that are out there and answer some of the questions folks had."
But at least one member of the panel found it odd that Alaska's top federal law enforcement officer had shown up at the session.
"If you didn't think this would do anything, why would the U.S. attorney come to our town?" said Jim Powell, who supported the measure that passed 6-1. "I've never seen him before."
"There's a lot of talk about patriotism," Powell added. "I think this is a way to demonstrate patriotism."
Others agree, and the efforts to bring attention to their cause range from lobbying to lawsuits to coffee house debates featuring unlikely participants.
Arturo Venegas Jr. is one of those.
As Sacramento's police chief until his retirement this year, his job at times included helping advise Ashcroft and others on such laws, and he said he told the attorney general the law was a mistake.
Venegas spoke passionately about the issue during a town hall meeting in Sacramento in July, contending the Patriot Act undercut efforts he made as chief to convince immigrant groups that law enforcement is there to protect rather than target them.
"Listen to the power that is being given now that has been affirmed by the Supreme Court of this nation," he told the more than 250 people gathered to discuss the Patriot Act. "It allows law enforcement now to be able to pry into your lives, to seek information on you and even to hold you incommunicado if they believe it is in the interests of national security.
"You know what? We did that to Americans of Japanese descent. We have done that in our history, and by God, we should have learned from it that nothing good comes from it."
Benjamin Sher is another evangelist speaking out about the threat to civil liberties.
A Carmichael businessman and community activist, Sher grew up in a political household as the son of state Sen. Byron Sher, a Palo Alto Democrat.
Now he is planning to lead a cross-country caravan to draw attention to issues such as the Patriot Act.
"Our national security depends on having a strong democracy," Sher said. "The Patriot Act weakens our democracy. We're going down the wrong track if we think we're going to inhibit terrorism by infringing our own civil liberties."
On Oct. 1, Sher will kick off his "Democracy Caravan," hauling a 40-foot trailer that doubles as an Internet cafe and stopping in shopping center parking lots across America. He plans to end the journey in Washington, D.C., in January, when the president will deliver his State of the Union speech.
While critics cite such efforts as proof the backlash is building against the government's new powers, the Bush administration is pressing ahead.
President Bush this month called for substantially broadening the scope of the Patriot Act, and observers say efforts to give law enforcement more power already are under way.
Early this year, a draft of the Justice Department's "Domestic Security Enhancement Act," known informally as "Patriot Act II," was leaked.
Though it hasn't been introduced in Congress, the draft's sweeping scope unleashed a torrent of protest.
One section would allow the attorney general to strip Americans of their citizenship for providing support to any group that has been designated a terrorist organization, even if they had no knowledge of any alleged links to terrorism.
Another would expand home searches and wiretaps without a warrant.
Although federal officials say much of the draft will never see the light of day, civil libertarians say pieces of it already have appeared in various legislative proposals.
One such proposal circulating in draft form on Capitol Hill, dubbed the Victory Act, contains many provisions sought by Justice Department prosecutors, such as increased wiretap and subpoena powers, said Timothy Edgar, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union.
"The battle over civil liberties is not necessarily going to come in a neat package," Edgar said.
"Instead, this is going to be a continuing battle in Congress, and that's going to require constant oversight on the part of the American people demanding answers as to what their legislators are up to."
reference=http://www.sacbee.com/content/news/projects/liberty/story/7473568p-8415954c.html
The Clipboard: Liberty in the Balance, Part IV