No More Mr. Nice Guy!

Cracking down on thoughtcrime

John Ash-hole claims that one of the most controversial sections of the "Patriot Act", Section 215, which allows the FBI to demand "any tangible thing" upon certifying to a secret court that it's relevant to a terrorism investigation, has never been used. He feels that this is a refutation of the "baseless hysteria" spread by civil rights protestors. In reality, it raises the question: why is this law on the books if it hasn't been used? Needless to say, it has in fact been used many times. Once again, Ash-hole is lying. But then, that's what politicians do instinctively.

Dr. Jerry Parkinson, dean of the University of Wyoming College of Law, says: "There is no question, regardless what you think of the act, that this is one of the most undemocratic breakdowns in our country's history of legislative process." However, he repeats the government's lie that concerned citizens have exaggerated the dangers of the act and "criticized it for things it does not do" - like giving government officials the right to look at library and Internet records on the mere hint that a person is related to terrorism. Tell that to Andrew O'Conner.

Mr. O'Conner was in a Santa Fe college library and made a remark to another patron that Bush was "out of control". His email inbox included a message from the Coalition for Peace and Justice in Palestine. Suddenly, he was handcuffed in the library and questioned for four hours by Secret Service agents. No wonder Albuquerque has joined a rapidly growing list of cities and states that have passed resolutions against the Act.

But Ash-hole's draconian legislation is having a chilling effect not only in libraries but also in universities, which are now burdened with requirements to surveil international students, and on the students themselves, who are saddled with vastly greater visa fees to pay for this surveillance, and must submit to intrusive Kafkaesque bureaucracy to get a student visa. The director of International Student Services at the University of Hawaii says: "instead of advisers, we are mandated by federal law to become enforcers."

The free flow of information is the common thread in libraries and universities, and it is a vital factor in improving international relations, advancing science and technology, and generally making the world a better place to live in. But Junior and Ash-hole shrink from information like a vampire from daylight. Armed with their fundamentalist certainty, they don't need information, and they don't want you to have it either.

In the context of the "Traitor Act", the words of Charles Austen Beard have never rung more true: "You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence." Another quote of his is apposite here: "Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad with power." All I can say is: "Okay, gods, they're mad with power, hurry up with the next step".