*Ø* Blogmanac | Attacks on "Threshold Rights" in America


From DUG:

Crossing the threshold
While we’re all fretting over the Patriot Act, John Ashcroft’s
Justice Department is after much bigger game
By Harvey A. Silverglate and Carl Takei

Excerpt:

Yet the hue and cry raised over the Patriot Act has distracted most of us from the Bush administration's far more dangerous assault on another class of liberties, which might be called "threshold rights."

After all, the Patriot Act can be rolled back if the people decide that the government has overreached or the emergency has receded, and some provisions of the act have automatic expiration dates.

But threshold rights — fair elections, open and publicly accountable government, judicial review of executive action, the right of the accused to a public jury trial, separation of powers among the three branches of government, and the rights to free expression and free association — are structural, and therefore changes to them are more enduring.

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