[quote author="jefa" date=1221813634]I don't like the indefinite detention in the Patriot Act. I do personally feel like it's evil to lose the right to a speedy trial, and lose the right to know the evidence against you. The very first case where the states secret acts was used (the first time evidence was not presented because of reasons of national security), was supposedly to protect secret information but was actually used to cover up government mismanagement and errors:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/congress/2008/012908loether.html
Since then, a very large majority of cases you'll find use "top secret" as a reason to settle grudges, get away with not having to do legwork to figure out if you have a criminal in custody (laziness, want to do the job later), and to protect the government from paying monetary awards when it's been incompetent. That's the problem with giving the government the ability to incarcarate people indefinitely and not present evidence. They don't use common sense, or put justice first. They put their time and money first. Just like anyone else.
And I do think, if you are one of the individuals who supports this stuff without pause, then you bear some of the responsibility for the wrongs that are caused. If you already knew of these wrongs and say that the people who have been harmed (some dead, some maimed, some destitute, loss of friends, family, good name) was worth it for the people who have been saved, then that's different. I personally don't feel like I can say my innocent life deserves to be spared at the expense of another innocent person's life. But I have discussed this topic with people who feel like it's a numbers game, and there are only so many innocent people that suffer at the hands of the government in exchange for hundreds more not being killed. I've never seen any evidence to back this up besides "the gut feeling" that it's true. As long as we are in agreement that the Patriot Act (and other legislation like it) will cause innocent people to suffer, then at least we're arguing on the basis of truth (using history, and what has actually occurred recently as a guide).
(This is a pre-Patriot act example from James Woolsey, who you probably know as an uber-hawk, uber-Republican
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middle_east/jan-june99/iraqi_6.21.html)
A side note: A few years ago a friend was forwarding me an email about an issue he was mad about at his film job. He said he felt like a "hired gun". He called me to read over the emailed letter to see what I thought. I hadn't gotten it. He emailed me a blank email to make sure there wasn't something wrong. It came through immediately. Over the course of 10 minutes he and I sent 50 various emails back and forth to different addresses, and discovered that specifically the yahoo servers were not sending any email with "hired gun" in it, though everything else came through instantly. Roughly 20 minutes after this all of the hired gun emails came through at the same time, all correctly time stamped and re-sorted timewise into the inbox.
We thought "Wow, I didn't know the government could do such a thing. That was interesting. I wonder if someone read that or not? I hope they aren't in the industry."</blockquote>
Too bad we don't have a Professor of Constitutional Law running for the office?
perhaps then the things that Cheney and Bush authorized will be corrected?