Over the past few days Attorney General John Ashcroft has been on Capitol Hill trying to convince the Congress to grant enhanced powers to the FBI, the CIA and assorted other agencies opposed to villainy, to find terrorists and bring them to justice before they can carry out their wicked work.
A major feature the new legislation has to do with detaining, for an indeterminate amount of time, non-US citizens who are accused of being terrorists.
Another part of the bill would allow law enforcement agencies to get permission to intercept communications by targeting the individual they want to tap, rather than the specific gadget that person will be using, as is (more or less) the case now.
On MSNBC yesterday, Dan Abrams tried to get me and Julian Epstein to either disagree with each other (which we did not do) about whether this was an intolerable suspension of personal liberties; or agree with him (which we also did not do) that this was an intolerable suspension of personal liberties.
Dan said that the bill would allow the government to put non-US citizens away for 10 or 15 years without any access to a court. I said he was making it sound like a scene from Les Miserables. Julian who, until recently, was the Democratic staff director of the House Judiciary Committee said that the government already has the power to deport people using secret evidence which might NEVER be divulged to the defendant.
The Constitution of the United States has always had a certain amount of elasticity depending upon the specific needs of the period. Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the civil war. The internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II is well documented and appropriately regretted.
In times of war - and for the duration of the emergency - certain civil liberties must give way to the needs of the common good. At its most basic level, the protections of the criminal justice system are completely suspended on a battlefield: Individual soldiers are granted the powers of police, prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner.
Many of the people who have traveled by air since the resumption of commercial service have been aghast at the LACK of additional security evident at airports. People are going to the airport hours in advance and are willing - eager - to be subjected to a much more rigorous screening process than they would have put up with previously.
When the only additional security procedure seems to be having to show your picture ID at the x-ray machine, it doesn't seem like enough.
Similarly, if the FBI, the CIA, the DEA, the INS, and the other groups responsible for our safety say they need to - at a minimum - be able to talk to each other and share information, most of us are willing to let them have at it.
Three weeks ago there were many of us who were in something of a lather about the notion of having our faces scanned by a hidden camera, compared to a database, and authorities alerted to our presence.
Today, it doesn't seem like that bad an idea.
Three weeks ago the notion of having to present not just a picture ID, but maybe something with my fingerprints or retinal pattern to get on an airplane would have been fodder for a long (and possibly somewhat amusing) rant.
Today, it doesn't seem like such a bad idea, either.
For a short e-mail describing President Bush's visit to the Washington Hospital Center to visit the victims of the
Pentagon attack, a description of habeas corpus, and a Catchy Caption go to the
Secret Decoder Ring page.
There are a number of people in their 50's who are comparing this situation with the days of anti-war activities during the Viet Nam era when government agencies - notably the FBI - kept files on people for exercising their First Amendment rights.
No thinking person is in favor of stifling legitimate dissent. But no thinking person should confuse this era with that.
The House and the Senate will mark up a bill next week granting most of the expanded powers to locate and disable terrorists that the Administration is asking for.
Because it is what most of the American population is asking for.
As another sign we are getting back to normal. This was the lead from an AP story under the heading "Entertainment" on the Yahoo web page the other night:
"Conductor Kurt Masur is scheduled to undergo an organ transplant and
will miss several performances in his final season as New York
Philharmonic's music director."
One wonders if it would have been a simple outpatient procedure had he needed an oboe transplant, instead of an organ transplant.
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