Patriot Act

I don’t get this: Liberals are in opposition to the Patriot Act because it puts national security above personal freedoms. And then conservatives are saying that liberals object to it because of the name. That’s the weakest argument I’ve ever heard in my life. It’s insane to put national security ahead of personal freedoms. National security doesn’t matter at ALL if you don’t have personal freedoms. If we lose our constitutional rights, we won’t have to worry about foreign terrorist governments threatening our safety… we’ll have to worry about OUR government threatening our safety. This is America. You don’t get to ignore due process or take away Americans’ rights just because they are suspected of having something to do with terrorism. As it stands now, all it takes is a committee to tell a judge that they think Joe Akbar Mohammed is a terrorist and Joe can say goodbye to all of his American freedoms. Habeas Corpus doesn’t matter. 1,000 people have been imprisoned under the Patriot Act without being charged with a terrorism crime. Their personal information and medical records are fair game if you don’t smell right to some overzealous committee.

The Patriot Act is a misnamed, unconstitutional shoddy piece of legislation. Can you imagine what the Clinton administration would have done if they had this power? They had the Secret Service harass a woman for months for yelling out “You suck!” to president Clinton at a parade. Can you imagine what they would have been allowed to do if they could just say that “You suck!” qualified as a terrorist threat? That woman would be rotting in jail right now for exercising her First Amendment rights. Right now there is a “Patriot Act II” in progress that aims to take away the forced judicial rubber stamp so that an independent judiciary would not even get a chance to look at the case before action was taken. And people are shouting “Yay for America! The way to get terrorists is to sacrifice our rights! It’s worth it!”

No… it isn’t worth it.