Greg, Welcome to America's "New Era." Goebels, Himmler and the rest of the team are reincarnated. Welcome back to meatspace Gentlemen, it's been far too long! What organizations will be challenging the Constitutionality of at least sections of the soon to be recent Gestapo Act? Who has standing to challenge a law that has yet to be enforced? Where are $ best placed to get results? Don't get me wrong - I think we have to address the issues of terrorism on multiple fronts but what I read about the USA PATRIOT stuff makes leaving the coutry's name "USA" blatantly fraudulent. Truly nauseated, Mike Greg Broiles <gbroiles@well.com> wrote :

At 01:04 PM 10/25/2001 -0700, Onin wal-a bin Hakkin wrote:

...

if you are incarcerated for a fucked up deed you shouldnt expect to be put in the hilton. is this not a universal idea and accepted? jailprisontheklink is supposed to SUCK. [...] i ask you, am i a bad person for feeling this way?

What you seem to be missing is that the approx 1000 people now being held haven't been "incarcerated for a fucked up deed" - they're being held for what's probably a spectrum of reasons, ranging from "found in an airport with a one-way plane ticket, a boxcutter, and a forged passport on the morning of 9/11" to "gave a cop too much attitude while having a non-Western name". But we don't know who's being held, nor for how long, nor what the reasons are, or the evidence which establishes that the "reasons" have some relationship to reality.

We have a special process for deciding who's done fucked up deeds and thus deserving of punishment, and it's called a trial.

After these people have had one, then we can argue about what ought to happen to them. Until then - and/or at least until the evidence against these people has been made public and subjected to scrutiny - we don't know whether these people are Mother Teresa or Satan himself or somewhere in between.

If we're going to start beating and torturing and killing people pretrial (paying special attention to foreigners who may not fully agree with our culture or values), exactly how is the ruling regime in the US different from the ruling regime in Afghanistan? The only aspect left that I can see that's different would be a nominally secular vs religious basis, but I don't trust Ashcroft to respect that for long.

Pretrial detention is not supposed to suck, it's supposed to be minimally burdensome, to the extent that's compatible with making sure people show up for trial, don't commit further crimes, and don't cost an exorbitant amount of staff attention.

(* This isn't meant as a claim that what we had prior to 9/11 in terms of trials, pretrial detention, or any of the other criminal procedure features was what it's advertised to be, or that it was compatible with the Constitution - but I still regard the abandonment of even the pretense of complying with the Constitution as a significant step towards some very serious trouble.)

-- Greg Broiles gbroiles@well.com "We have found and closed the thing you watch us with." -- New Delhi street kids