Say what?
The Patriot Act Is Your FriendSo says a "political pit bull" and "a foot soldier" for
Attorney General John Ashcroft . . . of course
Attorney General John Ashcroft . . . of course
Viet Dinh has been called a "political pit bull" and "a foot soldier" for Attorney General John Ashcroft. But the 36-year-old author of the Patriot Act prefers to be called an "attendant of freedom."Now, Viet Dinh is hardly a dumb man. Obviously from Vietnam, he got his law degree from Harvard, but I think he's kind of stuck on some sort of Southeast Asian concept of "freedom", a concept quite different from mine. This one best characterizes Dinh's denial:In May 2001, the professor of law at Georgetown University was tapped by the Justice Department to work for two years as an assistant attorney general, working primarily on judicial nominations for the department. But three months later the World Trade Center towers collapsed, and Dinh was drafted to work on the USA Patriot Act, a bill that would give the government some of its most controversial surveillance powers. The bill, coupled with the government's subsequent treatment of immigrants and native-born citizens, prompted critics to charge the administration with overthrowing "800 years of democratic tradition."
- To the claim that 5,000 people have been detained using the Patriot Act with only five being actually charged under it and only one conviction, he responds that the number is probably closer to 500. Wonderful. Apparently it is OK to arrest 100 people for each person actually charged. Viet Dinh justifies all of the rest of these as anticipatory fishing expeditions.
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