Originally posted by deldorado
How can you compare John Ashcroft and Bin Ladin? Like the man or not that is kind of an unpatriotic and unfair comparison. One ran planes into a building killing 3000 Americans the other is U.S. Attorney General. Please explain if you can, what Civil Liberties John Ashcroft has taken away from the United States that would cause a comparison of that Nature?
I did not compare the two men. What I did do is state that they are both working in their own way to harm this country and that Ashcroft is using the boogeyman of bin Laden as his primary tool for doing so. As for the civil liberties that Ashcroft is actively working to destroy, here is just a quick sample from a very, very long list:

1) Writ of Habeas Corpus - This was the second most important issue to the founding fathers after taxation without representation. Habeas Corpus was the only civil liberty listed directly in the Constitution itself (Article I, Section 9) - all the others were "left" for the Bill of Rights. Ashcroft's handling of the Jose Pedilla case is a blatant disregard for Habeas Corpus, with absolutely no precedence in American history whatsoever. Not only that, but it is made worse so by the extreme likelihood that it Pedilla is just a joke (the guy couldn't even hold down a job at McDonalds) and that should the facts of his case be aired in public as is his right as an American citizen, it would be a public embarassament for Ashcroft himself who so brazenly hyped his "capture" a full month after it occurred last year.

2) Nullification of the Fourth Amendment - The powers of the FISA court (a constitutionally questionable organization to start with) have been broadened to the point of being without restriction. Now the FBI can obtain a secret FISA ordered wiretap for any purpose whatsoever as long as they claim that terrorism is at least slightly involved (not predominately, not even a sizeable minority, just even a hint of terrorism is sufficient). Couple that with public statements by Ashcroft that anyone who questions his policies is aiding terrorists and you have a situation that is calling out for abuse far and above the kind of thing we've seen in the past with McCarthyism and the FBI's COINTELPRO campaign. Don't even get me started on the removal of the requirement that the NCIC and associated databases contain correct information - now its ok for someone to make up anything they want and file it on YOU in the NCIC with zero accountability for them.

3) Attacks on the First Amendment - The Justice Department had Vaenssa Leggett jailed for refusing to turn over notes for a book she was working on that covered a Texas murder. Under Ashcroft, the DoJ's official position was that only "legitimate" journalists or reporters are covered by the protections of the First Amendment. Leggett spent 181 days in jail, far longer than any other journalist has in such a situation, and the only reason she was released was because the term of the grand jury that wanted her notes expired. Meanwhile, just take a look at the way Ashcroft has summarily dismissed the Freedom of Information Act. Hello? Law passed by the will of congress to facilitate public accountability of the government, just dismissed by one lone autocrat.

4) There are PLENTY more where those came from. Most people in this country are sheeple, but it doesn't take much to break away from the heard, to see what is really going on around here, just open your eyes and do a little research. You'll probably be scared ****less by what you find out.

With work I spend a lot of time overseas and the Global Consensus that I hear and see is that America sucks, and people wish we were dead. Kind of glad our leaders to conform to the "GLOBAL CONSENSUS."
Well, it sounds like where you work nobody understands what global consensus means and the part that the USA played in its development. The USA was a founding member and strongest supporter for organizations like the League of Nations and then the United Nations that learned from the failures of the League. For the past 50+ years the USA has lead the world in building international accords that bring democracy, liberty and justice to countries would have probably never got there on their own. But at the same time the commercial interests of US corporations have eaten away at those goals, corrupting them for their own benefit. They want liberty in other countries too, liberty to do business, but nothing more. This conflict in the US foreign policy - the divergence between rhetoric and action, is what leads so many people outside of the US to distrust our country. Hell, it is what leads so many inside of our country to distrust our government. Now, the neocons seem to be intent on spending that political capital as fast they can in the name of American sovereignty.


Meanwhile, I'm not sure why you listed all these things, but they sure go a long way to help spell out many of the ways the current administration is driving our country over a cliff.

Should we torture our prisoners,
Already happening on a daily basis in the name of the war on terrorism, not to mention the treatment of "regular" prisoners. Although not unique to Ashcroft and company, but since when is sentence to death by AIDS not cruel and unusual? Ok, I guess it is pretty usual in our prison system nowadays, but that still doesn't make it right.

make our women 3rd class citizens
You should take a look at Ashcroft's history - he campaigned against the ERA, he is also a zealot on the abortion issue.

take away our voting rights
Never mind the games in Florida and (less publically) in other states for the last presidential election. Take a look at the responses to those follies - electronic voting with no audit tracking. Furthermore, every single one of the companies that sells electronic voting systems in the USA is run by crooks. I mean literal crooks with prison records and mafia connections. This is an issue that is flying way below the radar of most people in this country, but it is terribly serious. Since it is so far under most people's radar, here is a link to the site of a well-respected professor at Bryn Mawr who is focussed on the issue, she has testified before congress and is by no means some sort of knee-jerk kook:
http://www.notablesoftware.com/evote.html

go back 20 years in medical advances
Clone research, fetal stem cells and the study of sexual disease

quit feeding the poor and giving aid to others
Remember that little country up next to Pakistan? You know, the one we "bombed back into the stone age?" Did you know that Bush cares so much for that country's future that he just recently pledged $3B in aid? Well he did, but not because he cares. He made that pledge as part of the campaign to convince the UN that the US would be responsible for Iraq after taking it over. But after the Iraq war started, Bush released his federal budget for the next year. Guess how much money was allocated for aid to Afghanistan? THREE BILLION BIG FAT GOOSE EGGS. That's how much we care about feeding the poor and giving aid to others. But it looks like Cheney is going to get that trans-afghani pipeline he always wanted - it was one of the first official agreements that Karzai signed upon entering office.

live in a world where people don't like American Football
Hell, I don't like American, nor the other kind of football. Don't really know what kind of point you were trying to make with that one. But damn, the country would be better off without the corporatized, mind-numbing opiate that is professional sports in America.

take away our freedom of speech
I believe I've already hit on a couple of 1st Amendment attacks, there are plenty more going on today.

and live in constant jealousy of our neighbors?
If things keep going the way they have been recently, a lot of us are going to be jealous of Canada, that land of free-er than us.


[/i]Yep, that would be a "GLOBAL CONSENSUS" and what the world would really like to see.[/i]

I guess they are already seeing that and they still aren't happy about it. Maybe, just maybe, most people outside of America would just like to see her stop being a hypocrite? They'd like to see her bring her foreign policy actions in line with her foreign policy rhetoric. I'm willing to bet that would make an enormous difference to the rest of the world. Well, maybe not the upper echelons who benefit from the status quo, but the common man on the street? Yeah, I think that would be best thing for him. That would get him cheering FOR the USA instead of against us.

"The flag was still there...."

Screw the flag it is a tool that is to often used to manipulate the uncritical masses, the PEOPLE are what matter. American AND foreign, because, as the declaration of independence says, "All men are created equal."