Author bites Blogger's Lines
To think that this could have been a book if I were inclined to unnecessary verbiage.
Anyway…
Erosion of Rights a Long U.S. War Tradition-Author
Mon Nov 29, 2004 06:25 PM ET
By Ellen Wulfhorst
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Bush administration uses "Gestapo tactics" to clip civil liberties in its war on terror but the author of a new book said on Monday that today's climate pales compared to other times of war in U.S. history.
While prisoner detentions or the Patriot Act may spark criticism about an erosion of constitutional rights, the United States has seen far more worrisome violations practically since its inception, said Geoffrey Stone, author of "Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime."
Nonetheless, he notes, some actions of the administration are "shameful," such as holding prisoners incommunicado without access to an attorney, Stone said in an interview on Monday.
"I don't throw the words 'Gestapo tactics' around loosely, but that is what it is," he said. "It's breathtaking in its excess."
Also troubling, he said, are government infiltration and surveillance and government actions cloaked in secrecy, such as the untold hundreds of closed deportation hearings held in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
"No administration has been as effective at clamping down on access to information as this one has," said Stone, a professor of law at the University of Chicago. "Part of it is chutzpah. Closing deportation proceedings takes a lot of nerve."
