LIBERTIES UNDER ATTACK FROM WITHIN BORDERS

Editor, The Post-Crescent:

Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft and President Bush are a nightmare, using
our tragedy to advance their agenda of rolling back civil liberties
and attacking states' rights.

The new terrorism bill, worked out behind closed doors with House
Speaker Dennis Hastert, other Republicans and White House emissaries,
gives Ashcroft increased wiretapping and surveillance authority,
allows secret searches of homes and businesses and listening in on
lawyer-client communications, including the people who have been
"detained" by Bush but not charged with any crimes.

If the Justice Department thought lawyer-client communications might
involve criminal activity (they offer no examples of this), go to a
judge and ask permission to snoop. Instead, Ashcroft directly
violates the First, Fourth and Sixth Amendments, ignoring that
rolling wiretaps and increased surveillance were covered under the
1996 Antiterrorism Act. The new act expands the 1996 one even
further, eliminating provisions of due process and protections
against unreasonable search and seizure.

Ashcroft bizarrely sent federal officers to crack down on a
California medical marijuana clinic last month that legally provided
marijuana to AIDS and cancer patients suffering from severe nausea.

Ashcroft has also gone after an Oregon law regulating assisted
suicide by allowing doctors to provide, but not administer, a lethal
prescription requested by patients with less than six months to live
who are mentally competent. This law was passed in statewide
referendums twice and has been used only 70 times in the past four
years, most patients just finding comfort in knowing they had the
option. Now Ashcroft says doctors will lose their license to
prescribe drugs if they follow this law, making federal criminals out
of doctors obeying their state law.

Bush and Ashcroft are stripping our freedoms, attacking our
Constitution and promoting homeland terror, not fighting it.

Gwen Roberts,

Menasha