Yes, we live in fictitious times.

****************************************************************** The government wants your rights
John Ashcroft thinks you still have too much freedom. He wants to take more of it away. It would be for your own good, of course. It always is.

The attorney general seems to believe that the terrorist threat justifies every power that the FBI and other federal law-enforcement people have ever thought might make their jobs easier.

Apparently it's not enough that, thanks to the "Patriot Act" passed during the panic after Sept. 11, they can spy on us.

Not enough that they can arrest foreigners without charging them with a crime and keep them locked up – in secret and without having access to a lawyer – until the FBI gets around to deciding they're not guilty.

Called before a worried Congress that nonetheless seems inclined to let the administration do pretty much what it wants, Mr. Ashcroft did not apologize for what the Justice Department's own inspector general found was the legal and physical mistreatment of more than 762 foreigners arrested on immigration charges but suspected of possible ties to terrorism.

Only one of those 762, Zacharias Moussaoui, has been charged with such a crime, and the government's case is looking anything but airtight. Most prisoners have been sent back home, where, no doubt, they will make new friends for America by telling everyone about the rule of law and the liberties that we hold dear.

Perhaps that failure to find terrorists is what motivated Mr. Ashcroft to confirm what had long been known – that the administration will push for new provisions to further unshackle the government.

The argument is that these radical measures will make us more secure. If terrorist attacks take place, the government won't conclude that giving up those freedoms didn't protect us; on the contrary, it will conclude that we hadn't given up enough. Either way, it will argue for more power over our lives and more power to lock us up.

A Republican congressman told Mr. Ashcroft that "short-term gains (against terrorism) … may cause long-term harm to the spirit of liberty and equality which animate the American character." A Democrat said, "We have the great traditions that … separate this country from our adversaries."

Or used to.

http://www.wilmingtonstar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20030609/EDITORIAL/3...