This is from The San Antonio Current. While some play at the game of, "Repubicans are good Democrats are bad. Na,ah, Democrats are good, Republicans are bad" I just add to the archive of information so the Americans can make informed decisions why as to whether to support a 'Republicrat' or support those who will defend and uphold the Costitution.
ARTICLE BEGINS


With a Whisper, Not a Bang
By David Martin
The San Antonio Current

Wednesday 24 December 2003

Bush signs parts of Patriot Act II into law —
stealthily.

On December 13, when U.S. forces captured Saddam
Hussein, President George W. Bush not only celebrated
with his national security team, but also pulled out
his pen and signed into law a bill that grants the FBI
sweeping new powers. A White House spokesperson
explained the curious timing of the signing - on a
Saturday - as "the President signs bills seven days a
week." But the last time Bush signed a bill into law
on a Saturday happened more than a year ago - on a
spending bill that the President needed to sign, to
prevent shuttng down the federal government the
following Monday.

By signing the bill on the day of Hussein's
capture, Bush effectively consigned a dramatic
expansion of the USA Patriot Act to a mere footnote.
Consequently, while most Americans watched as Hussein
was probed for head lice, few were aware that the FBI
had just obtained the power to probe their financial
records, even if the feds don't suspect their
involvement in crime or terrorism.

The Bush Administration and its Congressional
allies tucked away these new executive powers in the
Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2004, a
legislative behemoth that funds all the intelligence
activities of the federal government. The Act included
a simple, yet insidious, redefinition of "financial
institution," which previously referred to banks, but
now includes stockbrokers, car dealerships, casinos,
credit card companies, insurance agencies, jewelers,
airlines, the U.S. Post Office, and any other business
"whose cash transactions have a high degree of
usefulness in criminal, tax, or regulatory matters."

Congress passed the legislation around
Thanksgiving. Except for U.S. Representative Charlie
Gonzalez, all San Antonio's House members voted for
the act. The Senate passed it with a voice vote to
avoid individual accountability. While broadening the
definition of "financial institution," the Bush
administration is ramping up provisions within the
2001 USA Patriot Act, which granted the FBI the
authority to obtain client records from banks by
merely requesting the records in a "National Security
Letter." To get the records, the FBI doesn't have to
appear before a judge, nor demonstrate "probable
cause" - reason to believe that the targeted client is
involved in criminal or terrorist activity. Moreover,
the National Security Letters are attached with a gag
order, preventing any financial institution from
informing its clients that their records have been
surrendered to the FBI. If a financial institution
breaches the gag order, it faces criminal penalties.
And finally, the FBI will no longer be required to
report to Congress how often they have used the
National Security Letters.

Supporters of expanding the Patriot Act claim
that the new law is necessary to prevent future
terrorist attacks on the U.S. The FBI needs these new
powers to be "expeditious and efficient" in its
response to these new threats. Robert Summers,
professor of international law and director of the new
Center for Terrorism Law at St. Mary's University,
explains, "We don't go to war with the terrorists as
we went to war with the Germans or the North
Vietnamese. If we apply old methods of following the
money, we will not be successful. We need to meet them
on an even playing field to avoid another disaster."

Opponents of the PATRIOT Act and its expansion
claim that safeguards like judicial oversight and the
Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable search
and seizure, are essential to prevent abuses of power.
"There's a reason these protections were put into
place," says Chip Berlet, senior analyst at Political
Research Associates, and a historian of U.S. political
repression. "It has been shown that if you give [these
agencies] this power they will abuse it. For any
investigative agency, once you tell them that they
must make sure that they protect the country from
subversives, it inevitably gets translated into a
program to silence dissent."

Opponents claim the FBI already has all the
tools to stop crime and terrorism. Moreover, explains
Patrick Filyk, an attorney and vice president of the
local chapter of the ACLU, "The only thing the act
accomplishes is the removal of judicial oversight and
the transfer of more power to law enforcements
agents."

This broadening of the Patriot Act represents a
political victory for the Bush Administration's
stealth legislative strategy to increase executive
power. Last February, shortly before Bush launched the
war on Iraq, the Center for Public Integrity obtained
a draft of a comprehensive expansion of the Patriot
Act, nicknamed Patriot Act II, written by Attorney
General John Ashcroft's staff. Again, the timing was
suspicious; it appeared that the Bush Administration
was waiting for the start of the Iraq war to introduce
Patriot Act II, and then exploit the crisis to ram it
through Congress with little public debate.

The leak and ensuing public backlash frustrated
the Bush administration's strategy, so Ashcroft and
Co. disassembled Patriot Act II, then reassembled its
parts into other legislation. By attaching the
redefinition of "financial institution" to an
Intelligence Authorization Act, the Bush
Administration and its Congressional allies avoided
public hearings and floor debates for the expansion of
the Patriot Act.

Even proponents of this expansion have expressed
concern about these legislative tactics. "It's a
problem that some of these riders that are added on
may not receive the scrutiny that we would like to
see," says St. Mary's Professor Robert Summers.

The Bush Administration has yet to answer
pivotal questions about its latest constitutional
coup: If these new executive powers are necessary to
protect United States citizens, then why would the
legislation not withstand the test of public debate?
If the new act's provisions are in the public
interest, why use stealth in ramming them through the
legislative process?