Baltimore City Paper Online December 3 -
December 9, 2003
L'Etat, C'est Moi
By Brian Morton
To read the complete article, click here-- http://www.citypaper.com/2003-12-03/animal.html [This link was found on the Baltimore City Paper's website through a Google search on
3/19/04]
... 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. ... 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. ...
Secret trials with no access to attorneys or the evidence against the charged? That's Jose Padilla, Ashcroft's
Osama bin Laden proxy. ... \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. 
http://www.citypaper.com/2003-12-03/animal.html
