Kevin Drum says that Virginia Postrel is enabling the Republican Slime Machine:
The Washington Monthly: I have to admit that this sounds like a more subtle critique than the usual media bashing from the right ("They don't want us to know the truth!"), but it amounts to the same thing: Virginia is insisting that the media should figure out some way to report a smear story even though they know it's a smear story and there's no actual evidence to back it up.
Damned if I know why anyone who wants to maintain even the pretense of being a libertarian is not using all their strength to leverage George W. Bush out of the White House. To even pretend to be "even-handed" is to demonstrate that your commitment to liberty is of a summer soldier and a sunshine patriot kind. The presence in office of George W. Bush and his henchmen is a horror, as Michael Froomkin reminds us this morning:
Posted by DeLong at August 19, 2004 12:07 PM | TrackBack | | Other weblogs commenting on this postDiscourse.net: 'Free Country' Datum III--"Material Witness" Detentions:
The New York Times reports on the saga of Abdullah al Kidd.
1. Abdullah al Kidd is a US citizen;
2. Mr. Kidd was at no point charged with doing anything wrong, and the NYT reports nothing that suggests there was any reason to suspect him nor that any law enforcement officers ever had a reasonable suspicion he did anything illegal;
3. Mr. Kidd didn’t know much of importance;
4. What Mr. Kidd allegedly knew was about another guy who was aquitted of aiding alleged terrorists by working on a web site, and all he supposedly knew was something about the other guy having overstayed a visa;
5. The other guy’s prosecution was itself a disgrace—a complete stretch of the law that, had it succeeded, could have made any computer consultant a ‘terrorist’.Mr. Kidd was detained as a material witness for 16 months, some in jail and the rest forced to live with his in-laws where he had been staying temporarily prior to leaving for his scholarship in Saudi Arabia. During this period, he lost his graduate scholarship. The director of the FBI testified to Congress that Mr. Kidd’s arrest was a triumph of counterterrorism. Mr. Kidd had to work moving furniture. His wife left him and took his daughter. Now he finds he’s as unemployable as if he were a convicted felon.
I believe this abuse of the material witness statute to be incompatible with freedom. It is one more reason why not re-electing George W. Bush is essential to preserving our liberties. And if Congress had any guts, it would amend the material witness statute post haste. (Being something of a realist, I’d even settle for immediately post-election.)
For Post-9/11 Material Witness, It Is a Terror of a Different Kind: Abdullah al Kidd was on his way to Saudi Arabia to work on his doctorate in Islamic studies in March 2003 when he was arrested as a material witness in a terrorism investigation. An F.B.I. agent marched him across Dulles Airport in Washington in handcuffs.
“It was the most horrible, disgraceful, degrading moment in my life,” said Mr. Kidd, an American citizen …
The two weeks that followed his arrest, he said, were a terrifying and humiliating ordeal.
“I was made to sit in a small cell for hours and hours and hours buck naked,” he said. “I was treated worse than murderers.”
After that, a federal judge ordered him to move in with his in-laws in Las Vegas, where his wife was planning to stay until she joined him in Saudi Arabia.
Mr. Kidd, who described himself as “anti-bin Laden, anti-Taliban, anti-suicide bombing, anti-terrorism,” was never charged with a crime and never asked to testify as a witness. In June, 16 months after his arrest, the court said he was free to resume his life.
But at the kitchen table of his dumpy little bachelor flat here, with a television on the floor and incense in the air, Mr. Kidd said the experience had cost him dearly. He lost his scholarship, he now moves furniture for a living, and his marriage has fallen apart. About 60 other men have been held in terrorism investigations under the federal material witness law since the Sept. 11 attacks, according to a coming report by Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union…
Though the law requires that material witnesses be held “for a reasonable period of time until the deposition of the witness can be taken,” such sworn interviews are seldom used in terrorism investigations
…
The jury found Mr. Hussayen not guilty of the more serious charges and deadlocked on others. Not long after, the restrictions on Mr. Kidd’s travel were lifted and his passport was returned.
Norm Brown, an F.B.I. supervisor in charge of the joint terrorism task force in Spokane, Wash., said Mr. Kidd had information relevant to a minor charge - that Mr. Hussayen had violated the terms of his student visa.
You need a lay witness to establish that a person overstayed his visa???
Mr. Brown of the F.B.I. defended the decision to detain Mr. Kidd, citing what he called three red flags. Mr. Kidd had listed “jihad” among his interests on a Web site, which the F.B.I. interpreted, Mr. Brown said, as a reference not to “a personal struggle so much as a holy war.”
Second, Mr. Brown said, Mr. Kidd “sold tapes and books containing the teachings of radical sheiks” when he lived in Idaho. Third, Mr. Kidd’s possessions when he was arrested included a video of concern, Mr. Brown said. “It had to do with the hijacking and terrorist events on Sept. 11, 2001. At this point, I’ll leave it at that.”
Mr. Kidd responded that “jihad” has “a vast array of meanings”; that he never knowingly distributed radical works; and that the video documented terrorism, rather than promoting it.
These are all First Amendment activities. Or, at least, they were.
I hope John Ashcroft and George Bush are real, real proud of how they are defending America. If this is “steady leadership” I’ll take wobbly any day.
This, and similar items, such as the Bush arguments in the Padilla case, should be required reading for all so-called libertarians who support Bush.
The fact is that there is no infringement of liberty that Bush and Ashcroft will not stoop to.
Posted by: Bernard Yomtov on August 19, 2004 12:23 PMBesides:
And if Congress had any guts, it would amend the material witness statute post haste.
Congress should also make it possible to recover damages in such a case. You broke it, you bought it.
Posted by: Appalled on August 19, 2004 01:18 PMIt's a laugh that Virginia Postrel is asking the media to investigate these things.
Think if moveon.org ran an ad that said Bush never answered questions about his drug abuse, and had someone on who attended Yale who said Bush was a coke dealer.
I'd advise the media to look into the number of coke users and dealers Bush put into jail in Texas, as well as the long-term mental and emotional effects of cocaine abuse, as well as how Bush's nose looks like that of a heavy coke abuser, and how the military instituted drug tests right at the time that Bush skipped (or did not pass?) a military physical.
I'm sure Virginia Postrel would be just screaming that the long-rumored cocaine abuse (and possible drug sales) by George W. Bush would be thoroughly covered.
After all, Postrel could use it to make the libertarian argument that drug use should be decriminalized. It's a twofer for her.
Keef
Posted by: keef on August 19, 2004 01:25 PMThe worst slime-per-word ratio in GOP history:
Statement by Ed Rogers:
"The Kerry people are hoping for a terror attack with no warning so they can say I told you so." [CNN, 8/4/04]
Democratic press release http://www.democrats.org/security/news/200408050004.html also in my blog http://tinyurl.com/566v8
Posted by: Tom Parmenter on August 19, 2004 01:49 PMThe worst slime-per-word ratio in GOP history:
Statement by Ed Rogers:
"The Kerry people are hoping for a terror attack with no warning so they can say I told you so." [CNN, 8/4/04]
Democratic press release http://www.democrats.org/security/news/200408050004.html also in my blog http://tinyurl.com/566v8
Posted by: Tom Parmenter on August 19, 2004 01:55 PMA friend asked me to check out this link (I am a Libertarian) and then if I was planning on voting for Kerry.
My answer is no, for the time being- I'm still planning on voting for Badnarik, but that doesn't mean that I like Bush any better than Kerry (in fact, I think Bush is more destructive of liberty than Kerry is).
On the other hand, I have decided to focus some of my resources toward libertarian campaigns in conservative areas of battleground states. The nice thing here (CSE got rightly raked over the coals for pushing for Nader to get ballot access) is that I actually support Badnarik, and if the campaigns I support are successful, they are most likely to take votes from Bush.
As far as Postrel's involvement in any of this- she did add a footnote to the linked post which is a quite reasonable explanation of the Cambodia stuff (to wit: Kerry "misremembered" and all this took place During Tet of 1969)
Posted by: Irrational Robot on August 19, 2004 01:58 PMA friend asked me to check out this link (I am a Libertarian) and then if I was planning on voting for Kerry.
My answer is no, for the time being- I'm still planning on voting for Badnarik, but that doesn't mean that I like Bush any better than Kerry (in fact, I think Bush is more destructive of liberty than Kerry is).
On the other hand, I have decided to focus some of my resources toward libertarian campaigns in conservative areas of battleground states. The nice thing here (CSE got rightly raked over the coals for pushing for Nader to get ballot access) is that I actually support Badnarik, and if the campaigns I support are successful, they are most likely to take votes from Bush.
As far as Postrel's involvement in any of this- she did add a footnote to the linked post which is a quite reasonable explanation of the Cambodia stuff (to wit: Kerry "misremembered" and all this took place During Tet of 1969)
Posted by: Irrational Robot on August 19, 2004 01:59 PMProfessors-
Perhaps Postrel is one of those "fibbertarians" I keep hearing about. They say they're pro-liberty, but all they really want is tax-free weed.
Posted by: praktike on August 19, 2004 02:22 PMI'm going to keep saying this until it catches on.
"Libertarians are anarchists who want police protection from their slaves."
its useless to pretend that libertarians are anything other than this.
Posted by: CalDem on August 19, 2004 02:41 PMBut most libertarians are in fact feudalists---they believe that private entities have government-granted monopoly rights to scarce natural resources, and for which rights the private entities (often called "landowners") owe the government little or nothing:
http://members.aol.com/_ht_a/tma68/geo-faq.htm
(This is a feudalist position, because the right of ownership importantly means the right to deny others use of the resource, or to extort them for its use.)
I call them limousine libertarians if they support Bush and his policies. Neil Boortz is another one. True Libertarians do not support foreign intervention like Iraq. They do not support the loss of civil liberties through the likes of the patriot act. And lastly they do not support the Bush deficits. They are hypocrites and will never receive more than a nominal half million votes. Banarik will be lucky to receive 150,000 votes. I am afraid praktike is right.
Posted by: me on August 19, 2004 04:17 PMI think that the Kidd prosecution and the other Idaho prosecution are what happens when there's much more vigilence than threat. I suspect that authorities in places where there are a lot of Muslims set their thresholds higher.
I'm of the opinion that it's time to give the pro-Bush Libertarians and "moderate Republicans" a very loud what-for. They should know that if they actively support Bush this year they will be disgraced for life (or, just as bad, condemned in the future to spend their time exclusively with real Rrepublicans like DeLay, Gingrich, and Lott).
Posted by: zizka / John Emerson on August 19, 2004 04:44 PMHave the Yanks never heard of John Lackland, the Magna Carta, and Habeas Corpus? I did think there was one of the original copies of the Great Charta, in the USA.
Posted by: big al on August 19, 2004 04:58 PMPS Don't give me a line about special circumstances, that is when you need those safeguards, the most.
Posted by: big al on August 19, 2004 05:02 PMMost of stories are based around a Muslim and their family. I sometimes think people are subconciously racists even though they don't want to be. Stories of injustice like this (due to war on terror) gets ignored by a lot of Americans because a lot of Americans equate Muslims with terrorism.
However, Americans overlook the fact that it's not just Muslims who are getting locked up on weak suspicions of Terror. I've heard local news of non-Muslim, Southeast Asian families who have been here 6-7 years in USA and whose kids have plans for college getting deported. More close to me, I know a man who has been in USA for 10 years, married to an American for 4 years, but did not bother to get his citizenship after the process of getting a green card. He was locked up for 6 months because he went to pick up his daughter from his ex-wife in Philipines and came back too quickly to cause USCIS suspicions. Thankfully, he was released because the judge couldn't find anything on him. But, his wife told me they just have to start over now because so much money was spent on a lawyer.
Personally, I am a citizen, but I worry about other non-citizens --those on visas or even permanent resident status-- getting locked up just because another person don't like you for stupid reason, or just because a low-paid, under-educated customs officer hates you for your long hair, tie, breath or your sexy girlfriend.
My guess is that these kinds of rollback of liberty will grow until people wake up and hits them close to their own home. I am hoping, however, that a story about a anti-terror detention center and a non-Muslim man in it gets played out big as the atrocities found in Iraq prison to wake people up.
Posted by: ebodevo on August 19, 2004 06:56 PMBig al: Yes, we keep it in the same room as the Constitution, and other neglected documents (in the National Archives in Washington, D.C.).
Posted by: Walt Pohl on August 19, 2004 07:18 PMAdrian spittle is your brother in law. OH lucky you
Posted by: little alex on August 19, 2004 09:45 PM'I'm going to keep saying this until it catches on.
"Libertarians are anarchists who want police protection from their slaves."'
What does that even mean? A libertarian, by definition, is not an anarchist. Furthermore, I am pretty sure that you and 90% of the people commenting on this blog have more money than I do. I must not be driving my slaves hard enough.
Posted by: Ryan on August 19, 2004 10:17 PMI rarely disagree with this zizka guy (what kinda name is that anyway buddy?) except of course when he is "shrill." And I was shocked, horrified and disillusioned when I first realized he could be shrill. I had lost a hero. However, I did disagree with this:
"I think that the Kidd prosecution and the other Idaho prosecution are what happens when there's much more vigilence than threat. I suspect that authorities in places where there are a lot of Muslims set their thresholds higher."
I am not sure that there is more vigilance than threat. I think there is arrogance, bullying, violations of civial rights and general harassment. But I am not sure that there is vigilance. Vigilance is difficult. It might call for good careful, discreet police work, cultivating truly good relationships with communities which could provide timely, valuable and accurate information, etc. What they have done is to conduct clumsy dragnets and harassments , and called it vigilance. The threat might still be quite high. much higher than the US admins poor excuses for vigilance. And now that they probably have alienated most of the Muslim and Middle Eastern (and South Asian, and anybody who looks even remotely that way at 100 yards), true vigilance will be even harder.
I read someplace that a US admin official gravely announced that they have uncovered evidence that A-Q is recruiting people who may not fit the ethnic/cultural stereotype(!) They had to wait for evidence!!?? That this would be a strategy sooner or later (and probably sooner) should have been obvious from 9/12. And now they gravely announce evidence. People like this are incapable of true vigilance. Just like people who can't understand that once in awhile Air Marshalls need to wear shorts and Hawaiian shirts and let their hair grow a little.
Being from Idaho, I am fairly familiar with the stories to the two individuals, Sami and Kidd. I was honestly shocked that the Jury found Sami al Hussayen innocent for assisting in the funding of terrorists. He clearly was, but that is not the outcome the DOJ or I expected. And Kidd is just your average muslim football player. Cute wife, long beard. But he shouldn't want his football scholarship back. Few people are more backwards than roided out 19 yr old Idahoans.
Posted by: crabb on August 20, 2004 09:39 AM