FC: Helen Thomas: Pres. Bush, John Ashcroft have gone too far

[Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>]

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/editorial/1135558
                                                                         
Nov. 16, 2001, 6:04PM
Bush going too far curtailing our rights

   By HELEN THOMAS 
   
   The Bush administration is using the national trauma and state of
   emergency resulting from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to trample the
   Bill of Rights.
   
   Operating on fears and apparently sensing that the American people may
   be willing to forego many of their civil liberties in the name of
   national security, Attorney General John Ashcroft, in particular, is
   riding roughshod over individual rights.
   
   Let's hope the people are not willing to set aside key protections of
   the Constitution in the current crisis. Once taken away, those basic
   rights may be hard, if not impossible, to restore.
   
   To win confirmation for his Cabinet post, the right-wing Ashcroft
   overcame strong opposition to his controversial appointment by
   promising to carry out the law of the land even if he disagreed with
   it. And he has certainly done that on the issue of legal abortion
   rights.
   
   But he is now using the war in Afghanistan and on the home front to
   push his own ideology. An egregious example is his approval of a rule
   that permits the Justice Department to eavesdrop on the confidential
   conversations between lawyers and some clients in federal custody.
   These clients include suspects who have been detained but not charged
   with a crime whenever the government says such steps are necessary to
   prevent acts of terrorism.
   
   [...]

   On Tuesday night, after declaring an "extraordinary emergency,"
   President Bush announced he had issued a directive claiming the power
   to order military trials for suspected international terrorists and
   their collaborators. That directive, which applies to non-U.S.
   citizens arrested here or abroad, allows him to take the highly
   unusual step of bypassing the nation's criminal justice system with
   its rules of evidence and constitutional guarantees. I think that
   would be a mistake.

   [...]



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