FBI “enemies list” — once was enough
July 28th, 2005
Last night, as part of my presentation at the Edina Library, entitled Nuclear 70’s, I laid out the similarities of our energy situation now and in the late 60’s and early 70’s, when we overbuilt power plants using overinflated projections, utilities seeking to unjustly reap the benefits of construction of infrastructure that is not needed. Here’s another “back to the 70’s” delusional leadership and policy nightmare:
Editorial: FBI snooping/Echoes of Nixonian abuses
For a long time, a wide range of groups at odds with Bush administration policies have believed they were subject to special attention from the FBI and other police agencies, especially after the post-9/11 Patriot Act loosened restraints on investigations. Greenpeace, the ACLU and several other organizations filed a lawsuit to find out if that was so.
This forced the FBI to acknowledge its files on these two groups, as well as the considerable attention its counterterrorism specialists paid to a coalition of small and seemingly innocuous antiwar outfits that planned to protest at the Republican and Democratic national conventions last summer. Parallels to the bad old days of the Nixon administration are plain, if inexact.
Examples of these acts against citizens are why we need to expose and stop governmental abuses — we need extreme sanctions of those using law “enforcement” to harass people who are exercising their rights or just trying to live their lives. We need to quash this repressive culture of fear. I strongly disagree with Colleen Rowley, who in a speech in Wabasha, said that she thinks that there are sufficient safeguards, for example inability of the government to use evidence gathered illegally. Mere inability to use illegally gathered evidence does nothing for citizens who have experienced this intrusion in their lives — it does nothing for those where they are under investigation and where there is nothing uncovered, where investigations leading to nothing continue on indefinately in search of “something,” where employers, neighbors, friends and relatives are interviewed, personal information uncovered. How does a person restore their sense of safety and their reputation? We have to stop these governmental abuses, not pat ourselves on the back, thinking “it’s not too bad, it doesn’t hurt much.” It’s inexcusable, it destroys our freedoms and our nation, it’s much worse than we admit. Turn off that TV and wake up!
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