If you thought the PATRIOT act was bad, The Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003 should make you shudder. The Justice Department, under Ashcroft's direction, in a continuing effort to keep us from being spoiled by having too many civil rights, has drafted a kind of reverse bill of rights. The DSEA serves to make Big Brother even bigger and more knowledgeable about our business. In an article in the Washington Post, Charles Lane reports, "Under the draft, the government could declare individuals, not just groups, 'foreign powers' subject to clandestine surveillance under looser standards than would apply in criminal cases, and it would permit such surveillance against a U. S. citizen suspected of spying for a foreign power, even if the alleged suspicious conduct was not itself criminal." If you are a U. S. citizen of Middel Eastern descent, and you call your uncle back in the old country, heaven help you if Uncle is, for example, a functionary in his government's bureaucracy. Such a call could land you in jail without representation for an indefinite period. You disappear if Mr.Ashcroft decides that your questions about when you get the money Uncle owes you for "getting that information about how to get a visa" is an effort to smuggle evildoers into the country. [To read all of Lane's article, go to: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/02/08/MN206260.DTL]


In other good news about the strangulation of information (eminating from the administration while expanding its collection of information about citizens), the GAO has dropped its suit against VP Cheney to get him to fess up to who he courted in the oil industry to write legislation that is beneficial to the industry. If you or I fail to report our taxes on time, we get nailed. If Dick suppresses information, he gets an attaboy and pays no penalty. The corruption of this administration certainly rivals that of Nixon, I think, but let us not speak of that particular Dick, now. Things are too depressing as it is.