The Post profiles Anthony Romero, the current head of the ACLU. Intriguing to note that the organization has grown by 33% (100,000 new members) in the past eighteen months. Even if I disagree strongly with the ACLU on campaign finance, I think most of the time they’re doing God’s work. So that membership stat may end up being Ashcroft’s only positive legacy.
Category: Censorship
More! More!
Like a junkie looking for another fix, Ashcroft takes time away from putting down gay pride events to beg Congress for increased powers in fighting terrorism. If the death penalty doesn’t even work as a deterrent in “normal” crime, why would it stop terrorists?
We only lock up the bad people.
The Justice Department gives its most detailed accounting yet of how its used its post-9/11 powers in the war on terror, although the vagueness of the report does little to satisfy congressional critics and civil liberties advocates. On a loosely related note, it must be some weird cosmic irony that the spokesperson for the Ashcroft Justice Dept. is named Comstock.
Stop me before I think again.
When times are this crazy, trust The Onion to come through in the clutch. “True patriots know that a price of freedom is periodic submission to the will of our leaders — especially when the liberties granted us by the Constitution are at stake. What good is our right to free speech if our soldiers are too demoralized to defend that right, thanks to disparaging remarks made about their commander-in-chief by the Dixie Chicks?” I should not be allowed to say the following things about America, especially during wartime.
Something up their sleeve…
Citing Cheney’s energy meetings, Ashcroft’s FOIA directives, the holding of the (Iran-Contra explaining?) Reagan papers, and a host of other Dubya decisions that seem unnecessarily marked private, the NY Times (quoting Alan Brinkley) finds the Bush fils administration the most secretive in American history. But whatever would they have to hide?
Was it Tuttle or Buttle?
Well, that’s that, then. Despite some historic raging against the bureaucratic behemoth by Sen. Robert Byrd, the Senate passes the Homeland Security Act 90-9. Nice to see Feingold voted against it, at any rate. Well, here’s hoping my extra history degree will find me a place in Information Adjustments (and well away from the careerists in Information Retrieval.) Hmm…speaking of which, I wonder what history books out there might suggest “patterns indicative of terrorist activity.” Guess I better buy them earlier rather than later…and in cash.