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Anti-Patriot Act Movement Expands
MFS! writes "Mount Shasta, California has become the latest city where the USA PATRIOT act is creating a controversy. This story at the Record-Searchlight describes petitioning by a local citizens' rights committee to order police to defy the PATRIOT act. To date, 3 states and 130 cities have passed legislation forbidding local authorities from cooperating with federal PATRIOT requests, not to mention the numerous businesses who are taking pains to hamper the Act's coverage."
Ok, so three states have passed anti-PA legislation?
What about California's (and others) medical pot legislations? Do the federal drug agents care when they storm into these people's "gardens" and prosecute them to the full extent of FEDERAL law?
Hell, do the Federal agents care when they destroy the Native American's HEMP fields (which were allowed under a law in the late 1800s?)
NO.
State's rights (which should be more important) aren't shit. Remember that.
I hope this rebellion that these states and cities shake up the US administration. From an outsiders point of view (I'm from the Netherlands) I find the actions taking by the US Administration very shocking. These movements taken by internal states and cities hopefully do them some good.
-- Cliff Albert
It is my understanding that the Supreme Court can't shoot it down unless there is a case presented to it that came to it through the appeals process. I don't believe they can dismiss any law as unconstitutional until it is challenged; I may be wrong though.
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The text of the Act is here, and there are explanations in regular English here and here.
I produce electronic music and write little games. Have a look.
One word: standing. The Supreme Court only hear cases where the parties have standing. That means, some damage has to be done to you as a result of the Patriot Act. The Supreme Court does not test laws for constitutionality without a plaintiff who has standing.
Here's the trick though: if you fall victim to the Patriot Act, you may not have access to the judicial system. That means, you will never get a chance to challenge it in court.
This is considerably different from many other republican systems where the highest court can often test laws for constitutionality based on a single complaint of a citizen or a branch/agency of the government.
"Light is faster than sound." - "Is that why people tend to look bright until you hear them speak?"
To date, 3 states and 130 cities have passed legislation forbidding local authorities from cooperating with federal PATRIOT requests, not to mention the numerous businesses who are taking pains to hamper the Act's coverage
How about mentioning some of the loudest critics- librarians. Most are madder than hell about the Patriot Act, and politicians are finding that going up against librarians(which are seen as by the public as incredibly smart, among other things) isn't very popular. From some of our youngest years, librarians have earned a place of respect as wise, intelligent, helpful, kind people.
Most libraries now display signs at checkout desks and computer workstations warning you they can be forced to turn over information about what you check out etc....and most also now destroy those records on a daily basis, paper or electronic.
And, as Peter Jennings pointed out with a smile on his face, your local library is a great place to sit down and read a copy of the Patriot Act. The librarians will be more than happy to assist.
Folks- libraries across the country are suffering from budget cutbacks just like everyone else. If you think it's awesome that librarians are on your side against the Patriot Act, might I suggest helping them back by volunteering? Think outside the (computer) box too- help reshelf books, read to kids in the children's library, etc...
Please help metamoderate.
Is a 10th Amendment movement. Too bad most states have sold out like whores for "federal" money.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
Doesn't the words Anti-Patriot scare the shit out of you?
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
Americans have constantly disobeyed laws they viewed as unjust. Starting in revolutionary times with the Boston Tea Party, then moving forward to Henry David Thoreau, prohibition, Eugene Debs running for president from jail in defiance of the Espionage Act, and more recently the civil rights movement (M. L. King,). In this view, disobedience of the Patriot Act is not unique but continuation of this theme in American history
Right down to the doublespeak name.
The Patriot Act is a symptom of a sick government
We need to play the knee-jerk public reaction game at least as well as the administration to have hope of fighting them. Calling their unconstitutional act the "Patriot Act" is simply brilliant. Calling efforts to protect the Bill of Rights "Anti-Patriot Act efforts" is so dumb that only a /. editor would do so ;)
read here: google search: nullification crisis
...by the same people that were responsible for the PATRIOT act. Or is it? It's certainly possible that, by posting sentiments of dissent here, one could attract an extra bit of attention from the people that monitor internet communications. Hope you aren't in the habit of downloading "questionable content"...
Losers choose to abuse the use of "loose".
I'll answer this troll.
The answer is: The future. Why open the door for abuse so that a future government can come along, and abuse its citizenry at will?
Only those who want to abuse others like this would even suggest such a thing.
Even if the local laws are easily overruled by federal mandates, a city-wide and state-wide act of civil disobedience sends a powerful message to the elected federal officials.
Keep in mind, most national senate/house members are profoundly out of touch with the communities they are supposed to represent. If, all of a sudden, the majority of your constituents demonstrate that they do not want the oppressive law you enacted to remain on the books, you might consider proposing a revocation, if you wish to be re-elected.
This is important. Even though the ill-concieved act was passed by a fear/power mad congress, it's critical to continue to publicly voice opposition to it, for as long as it takes to return the American fed to a sane level of checks and balance of power. If you are a freedom-loving American, it is your patriotic duty to publicly protest this foolish act before it does significant harm to our country and our culture.
Kremvax - Citizen, Patriot.
--- Little Atomo - The Amazing Thinking Robot from Atomocom! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIP9KisHi4k
Understandably people are taking a closer look at the provisions under the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT) Act now that the initial shock of 9/11 has worn off. The reaction to "do something" is not being governed by the climate of fear and the urgent feeling for a rapid response that followed the attacks, which also meant that many legislators didn't read or understand the entire bill. The fear of political opponents using a vote against a bill with the name "PATRIOT" didn't help.
Obviously many of those who are taking a sober second thought about the provisions don't like what they see, and this may be the start of a movement to let the sunset clause on the act take effect. It is set to expire at midnight (0h00) January 1, 2006.
Librarians are at the forefront of the movement and the American Library Association's USA PATRIOT Act campaign is one of many legislative and privacy issues that they address.
The July 4th weekend may be a good time to think about the USA PATRIOT act, argues the SJMC. Declan McCullagh offers his thoughts on the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003 AKA PATRIOT Act II. You can also read EPIC's view of the DSEA 2003 and the original USA PATRIOT Act. They also have links to the text of the legislation and other info.
When the government fears the people, its democracy.
When the people fear the government, its tyrrany.
"Some fight for law. Some fight for justice. What will you fight for? One day, you will see."
Two hundred years ago, revolutions were started over these things. Now the sad thing is, even by typing that sentence, I could be looked at by the authorities as subversive.
Good Grief. - Charles Brown
Is not PATRIOT II, as many here seem to think.
It's actually the JINGOISM ACT, proposed as a secret law by Ashcroft. Since secret laws are a provision of the PATRIOT act, you will never hear of the JINGOSIM ACT until after you're arrested.
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
I used [Megabank]'s services to pay my tuition bills at [esteemed UK university]. Today, I was called by [megabank] and was told that if I didn't tell them where the funds were coming from that I used to pay my tuition came from, that my accounts would be closed and my case referred to the federal government. While "my personal savings" was a good enough answer for them, good god, what shite.
In defense of [Megabank], they didn't seem to happy to have to make these phone calls, but told me that they were required to by the patriot act. in fact, the woman even spoke frankly that the company saw this as a waste of time and money too.
Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
-------------
However, in 1819, the Supreme Court ruled in McCollough vs. Maryland that federal laws supercede state laws. More information can be found here.
The ruling states
The States have no power, by taxation or otherwise, to retard, impede, burthen, or in any manner control the operations of the constitutional laws enacted by Congress to carry into effect the powers vested in the national Government.
There are no constitutional rights to privacy.
The word "privacy" might not be explicity used in the Constitution, but one could make a strong case that the 4th and 10th amendments to the Constitution establish the principle that privacy (at least from the Government itself) is guaranteed by the Constitution.
And even if the Constitution doesn't guarantee a right to privacy, that doesn't mean there isn't one. There are rights that are even more fundamental than those enumerated by the Constitution... those are the "self-evident truths" and "inalienable" rights spoken of in the Declaration of Independence. It would be easy to argue that the right to privacy is a fundamental right that doesn't need to be spelled out in the Constitution.
// TODO: Insert Cool Sig
I don't necessarily agree with that judicial set-up however. It allows for a crusading judiciary or petty suits tying up the system. (Can you imagine if corproations were able to challenge any law they wanted to? It would make the post-colonial Indian judicial system look like a model of efficiency.)
However, I think there should be a special provision in cases like this where the law itself takes any possible plantif to remove the law out of the regular judicial system by its very function.
PATRIOT is a scary, scary law.
"Enough of this wretched, whining monkey life." -- Marcus Aurelius, _Meditations_, Book 9, 37
According to the US Supreme Court interpretation of the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, and 9th amendments, there are constitutional rights to privacy. The Court found I think in Griswold v Connecticut that the right to privacy was constitutionally protected, and cited approvingly a definition of privacy from an 1890 law review article that called it "the right most valued by civilized man."
Germany is the only other system I'm familiar with in that regard. When a law passes parliament (Bundest and Bundesrat), there's usually two ways to get the Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) to rule on the law.
One way is to basically sue parliament for passing an unconstitutional law. Theoretically anybody can do this but it's usually some kind of interest group that will attempt this. Based on the merits of the case, the court will decide to hear it and make a ruling. The consequence, if the verdict is affirmative to the plaintiff's position, is usually that the law is nullified and parliament is instructed to pass a new one. This is what happened several times with the abortion law. It's important here to realize that the constitutional court does not usually say how the law should be although it might hint at some possible implementations. Specifically, the court didn't decide how abortion was to proceed in contrast to the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision.
A second way is through somewhat called a "Normenkontrollklage". The term is typical of German legalese and means literally "norm control suit". The purpose of it is to challenge whether a unit of the government has violated the constitution in its actions. If, for example, one of the house of parliament votes on a bill and that vote is invalid for whatever reason but the president of the parliament at the time of the vote determined it to be valid, a Normenkontrollklage can be filed with the constitutional court to determine if the parliament followed the rules correctly.
In the case in question two years ago, an immigration law was before the Federal Council (similar to the US Senate as it is a body representing the states). The German constitution says that all delegates of a state have to vote the same for the vote to be valid. Well, during row call, the "governor" of one of the states answered in the name of the state with yes, the deputy governor asnwers with no. The Federal Council president asks again to clarify. The governor again says yes and the deputy says something like "you know my vote on this". The Federal Council president then counted the votes of that state as yes which led to quite a stir in the council chambers. The Christian Democrats (in the opposition at that time) filed a suit with the constitutional court challenging the outcome of the vote and won. The immigration law was thus nullified and had to go through the parliamentary process again. It's now sitting in conference committee, if I remember correctly.
"Light is faster than sound." - "Is that why people tend to look bright until you hear them speak?"
"We" don't make the laws. "They" do with the assumption we actually want them to. Do they ask us? no.
While I think that may be true sometimes, I think many times they make laws because
1. Corporations asked ($$) for them.
2. It makes them sound like they're actually doing something for us so they can get re-elected. ("I passed a new law to protect our children.")
Clinton not telling the truth in a civil case totally unrelated to carrying out the duties of the office of President pales in comparison to Nixon's crimes:
I think to this day it burns up the 'Publicans that they didn't get anything on Clinton, unless their aim was to drag his name through the mud-- and they can't really claim any credit for that. Clinton's mistakes in his private life are his own. That they ever became grounds for impeachment is totally ludicrous. Nixon, on the other hand, failed to do what Bushie is attempting to do: subvert our democracy. Bushie found a convenient excuse: the "war of Scare-orism". Only a diligent citizenry will keep him from succeeding.
Always look on the briight side of life! (whistle, whistle)
I know lots of good Americans, and lots of Americans that oppose these laws, but there's still plenty of people in the US who need to realize that perhaps it's time to spend a bit more time worrying about having a mass murdering (see, the death penalty is considered barbaric in most of the civilized world) fascist wannabe (who have done more to take away your rights, and those of anyone unfortunate enough to be in areas under US occupation?) in the White house than trying to police the rest of the world (who, incidentally, would be much more likely to be friendly to Americans if US governments didn't keep on installing and overthrowing murderous dictators on a regular basis, depending on who they prefer today)
And what is to stop the next gov. from attaining the sad state of affairs we currently have? And the next one? Yeah, "the price of freedom is eternal vigilance". That sounds like eternal slavery to me. Given that the Constitution was written in a very different frame of reference then we are currently in, it might be a good idea to start re-evaluating the Constitution, and chart a new direction entirely. Given that armed militias don't really have the resources to combat a limited nuclear exchange (humor) or implement the best technologies, or the abuses shown by corporations; a strong federal government is going to be an evil necessity. Don't want them Canadians getting ideas. But the terms of that arrangement should be renegotiated. I still like trying public servants who abuse their position for treason. Flat tax, strong State's rights, and perhaps even the right to cede from the Union should the entanglements become too much to bear (if you join an organization, you should have the right to unjoin, as it were, or the Gov. is nothing better than an armed gang. Even the Mafia has better terms). I digress. Anyway, the point is (without sounding to Pollyanna) we already have most of the ideas and knowledge to make the US a better place than it currently is. We lack political will. It becomes a question of do you want to sacrifice now for something better, or continue the sacrifices you're currently making for...
"3 states and 130 cities have passed legislation forbidding local local authorities from cooperating with federal PATRIOT requests"
Cite one reputable news organization reporting that information. To my knowledge, only *1* city (Arcata, California) has passed an anti-Patriot Act law. The numbers you cite are cities and states expressing their displeasure with the Patriot Act. Those cities have said, "We don't like the Patriot Act." Arcata has said, "It is illegal for you to comply with the Patriot Act." BIG DIFFERENCE.
Arcata City Council passes "Anti-Patriot Act" ordinance
Golly, that must be why Canada (and most industrialized nations with nationalized health care systems) have lower infant mortality, longer median lifespan - better health by most metrics - than the good ole' US of A.
My two physician friends from the UK who've spent time working in the US laugh themselves silly about the state of clinical medicine here. They laugh about the lack of preventative medicine, they laugh about the overuse of absurdly expensive diagnostics that are not substantially better (gotta justify the expense of that new MRI machine), they laugh at the procedure-based pay system, where an MD's income is directly tied to the number and types of procedures performed. You're gonna have that lower back surgery whether it is likely to help you or not - the doc has payments on an 8-series beemer and a cottage in the Hamptons. Or maybe she's a young doctor just scraping by and she's choosing between bankruptcy and $250,000 in student loans.
Either way, you lose.
Repressive anti-freedom legilation has its roots in liberal philosophy. America is strong because the people are empowered, not the federal government. A government only becomes strong at the expense of the people. This has always and will always be true. A strong Federal government results in a week America.
As a Libertarian leaning Republican, I strongly appose the PATRIOT Act. One only need to study the history of the events leading up to WWII and the subsequent invasion of France, to understand the problem with it.
Civil liberties in the US are under fire now than perhaps any point since the McCarthy era. The Patriot Act serves as a frightening visage of what power-hungry legislators may serve up to placate scared populations. What frightens me more, and what I have not seen mentioned here yet, is the precedent such an act sets. This precedent is carried into this new Domestic Security Enhancement Act which would allow for government-controlled wiretapping, secret arrests, and DNA bank construction on ordinary US citizens without our permission!
The balance between security and freedom is a tenuous one, with increased freedom permitting greater criminal activity and increased security quashing intellectual exploration and constructive criticism. Any criticism of our government is branded un-patriotic in many places (and even unofficially in the press) and may cause arguments or fights. Would the Patriot Act II, or DSEA, allow for political opposition to become targets of investigation by the ruling party? Our intellectual freedom is one of our strengths but what will happen to American society if we start to strangle it?
There are even those who get incensed about questioning the leadership of respective parties, whether G W Bush or H R Clinton is concerned. The actions of our government of late have divided this nation moreso than any I can ever remember. We have factionalized over new attempts of the current leadership in the federal government to expand their powers to those normally resevred for wartime status. However, without a Congressional declaration of war, can these be justified? Would US citizens be forced to turn to military courts under the new DSEA legislation where appeals may not exist and due process is a formality at best?
The first Patriot Act nearly bankrupted several states and forced reductions in education, law enforcement, education, and other areas. Another one may well bankrupt these states and damage the financial strength behind many others. Kentucky released 600 prisoners, while other states have taken more drastic measures. Thus, financially, socially, legally, and intellectually, we can ill afford this new legislation.
If the federal government is going to continue to impose on the rights of the people and states behind them, it sets up some of the same fears and mentality that lead to the Civil War. Any government that instills fear in its own people while being unable to properly manage its resources inevitably collapses, like the USSR. We appear to be on track to a similar fate if we enact these bills so blindly. Even the original Patriot Act divides local governments to the points that the police chiefs are willing to buck the local government to answer to the federal one. There must be better ways to protect the people of the US from the (rare) terrorist event without subjecting us to such loss of liberty and rights.
As long as there is a Second Amendment, there will always be a First Amendment.
Just as you would have been then. Don't make a mistake, our founding fathers were England's anarchists.
Sounds like good ol' fashioned McCarthyism arresting people who we suspect to be Terrorists.
It also is reminiscent of the witch hunts. It also sounds similar to the start of Nazi Germany with the secret police.
Meanwhile, numerous interest groups are taking aim at the Domestic Security Enhancement Act, which would strengthen the Patriot Act by allowing the government to make secret arrests, place unrestricted wiretaps and create DNA databases on ordinary Americans.
We need to protect our privacy or we will no longer be a free nation we will be no better than old Communist Russia where you can't make a move without the government knowing.
How many cities passed legislation against the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act that Bill Clinton signed into law after the Oklahoma City bombing? Being the precursor to PATRIOT you'd think that some of these civil libertarians would have noticed it.
Read this article by Robert Bork. Summary: you have probably been seriously mislead about the PATRIOT Act.
I watch Brit Hume on Fox News
You might want to brush up on your Constitutional reading there, buddy. There are four paths for an amendment to be ratified -- granted, only two of them have been used, but all four are possible:
1) Passed by 2/3 of Congress -> Ratified by 3/4 of states' legislatures
2) Introduced by 2/3 of states -> Ratified by 3/4 of states' legislatures
3) Passed by 2/3 of Congress -> Constutional Convention, 3/4 of states' delegations
4) Introduced by 2/3 of states -> Constitutional Convention, 3/4 of states' delegations.
So, there are two methods of dissolving the federal government where the federal government isn't even involved. Plus, remember -- Congress is voted from the people, so if it got to the point where the feds were so bad that the public would support government dissolution, the public could (and would) vote in people who felt the same way.
When the laws get you down, find ways to work with them.
Of note: Five technically legal signs for your library.
Kevin Fox