04/15/05

Memo to Congress: Whenever Attorney General Alberto Gonzales starts talking like a, you know, sort of likably dodgy teenager confronted with dings on the family car, it's time to pay close attention. In the first round of Congressional hearings into the Patriot Act, the normally precise Gonzales took on the oily grammar of evasion whenever he was pressed on a core civil liberties issue: 'Let me, kind of, reassure the committee and the American people' (on snooping into library and medical records). 'That's a difficult question that requires, sort of, a case-by-case analysis' (on rendition of prisoners to regimes with a record of torture). ... The sunset review of the Patriot Act marks a singular opportunity for Congress to catalogue abuses and rethink the Administration's rights-shredding approach to security. The Administration's obsession with secrecy makes a proper evaluation difficult, but the limited evidence so far available is alarming...

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050502&s=editors

from The Nation, by staff


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp