My father, a retired career foreign service professional with more than 30 years of nonpartisan government service behind him, pointed out something a while back that took a little while to sink in here at Animal Control. He noted that, given the actions of the current administration and the political party to which it belongs, it becomes hard to call it on some of its activities and statements without sounding like you've gone off the deep end.
Ordinarily, anyone making the claim that the United States is slowly creeping toward becoming a police state would be expected to be seen wearing the latest in old holey garbage bags, surplus-store combat boots, and carrying a sign proclaiming the imminent demise of the planet. But when John Ashcroft is attorney general, these things aren't solely the province of the mentally ill. Much as this administration enjoys doing whatever it wishes, without the inconvenience of answering questions posed to it via regular presidential press conferences, the attorney general actually goes out and takes it to those who dare question him--albeit, like all the rest of the administration, in front of friendly audiences only. Leader of the "if you're not with us, you're with the terrorists" brigade, Attorney General Ashcroft has made selective prosecution something of an art form in recent years.
Just this week, the St. Petersburg, Fla., Times noted in an editorial that "Ashcroft has made it a centerpiece of his Justice Department to pursue capital charges against defendants in places where the death penalty is rarely invoked." Then there's the fact that, while the case of the outing of undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame slowly vanishes into the limbo of time, the Ashcroft Department of Justice uses an obscure, circa-1872 maritime law to dredge up a case, 15 months after the so-called crime, against the ecological activist group Greenpeace for a nonviolent protest.
As The Miami Herald noted in October, six activists participating in the protest off the Florida coast pleaded no contest to the federal charges levied against them in April '02, were sentenced to time served and fined, and that was that. But this Justice Department couldn't leave well enough alone when it comes to liberal activist groups that disagree with the Bush administration, especially when the activists do something as subversive as hang a sign on a boat saying president bush: stop illegal logging. So the marching orders come down, like a chant at a football game--"hit 'em again, harder." The local U.S. attorney got a grand jury to come at the protesters yet again, this time on the 19th-century charge of "sailor-mongering." Don't ask.
Yet when our nation's undercover assets are exposed for the reasons of political retribution, likely coordinated at the highest levels of the White House--possibly by a man, Karl Rove, who himself served as a political adviser to Ashcroft during his political campaigns--is there a concerted effort to track down and find the felons? In a word, no.
Another example? Take Brett Bursey, a Columbia, S.C., man who is being prosecuted by U.S. attorneys for protesting an October 2002 visit by the president to his town. State officials dropped their charges soon after arresting Bursey for not moving to the "designated free speech zone"--leading us to believe that wherever the president speaks is not a free-speech zone--but five months later the feds decided to press charges, and Bursey's case went to court in November. A U.S. magistrate is to decide on his case sometime this month.
Secret trials with no access to attorneys or the evidence against the charged? That's Jose Padilla, Ashcroft's Osama bin Laden proxy. Padilla, born in the Bronx, was arrested last year in Chicago for allegedly being part of a "dirty bomb" plot--yet official charges have never been filed, and he has sat in a South Carolina Navy brig ever since. The case against him, made in a 16-page memo by a Defense Department official, admits that sources aren't telling the whole story. But this is John Ashcroft's America, where--like under Reagan-era Attorney General Edwin Meese--if you weren't guilty, you wouldn't be a suspect. So despite being as American as you or me, for Padilla, constitutional rights do not apply.
Further, this is a Justice Department with a poor batting average on this issue: After Sept. 11, 2001, it locked up more than 700 foreign nationals on immigration charges, claiming they were "of interest" regarding the terrorist attacks. In the end, not a single detainee was charged with crimes pertaining to that day, and to date nearly every single one has been cleared by the FBI of any link to terrorism.
Under this bunch, some feel the wrath of the law and some don't. So when Republican supporters break the rules, like last month when GOP staffers broke into Democratic Senate committee computers and released the memos they found there to partisan Fox News Channel talk-show hosts, don't be surprised if the incident goes nowhere. John Ashcroft knows who his enemies are, and where he stands. After all, he is the law.
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