Patriots vs. the Patriot Act

When Attorney General John Ashcroft felt obliged to go out campaigning in August in defense of the USA Patriot Act, his problem wasn't just what people were saying about the act. His real problem was who was saying it. Ashcroft and the Bush Administration could dismiss complaints coming from the people George W. Bush's father liked to call "card-carrying members of the ACLU." But the wave of objection to the Patriot Act--and its offspring, Patriot Act II--is also coming from people like John Coghill (Republican, North Pole).

Coghill, a construction worker and pastor's assistant, is majority leader of the Alaska House of Representatives (his North Pole is about fourteen miles northeast of Fairbanks) and calls himself a "constitutionalist and conservative Republican." He's also co-sponsor of a measure that overwhelmingly passed the Alaska legislature--one no vote in two GOP-controlled chambers--that urges Congress to fix violations of civil liberties under the Patriot Act and resist any others, and that calls on Alaska law-enforcement agencies not to cooperate with the Feds "in the absence of reasonable suspicion of criminal activity under Alaska State law." Explains Coghill about the act, "The definition of terrorism probably is the biggest concern. It's very broad in scope. You can drive almost any criminal activity, or suspected criminal activity, into that definition." Or as his congressman, Don Young--a hard-right, anti-environmental House power whose office greets visitors with a giant Kodiak bearskin--says about the Patriot Act: "Worst act we ever passed."

Anti-Patriot Act resolutions have been passed by two other states: Hawaii and Vermont--where the resolution went unanimously through the Senate and 101-23 through a Republican-controlled House. At the end of summer, the Oregon Senate joined them, 23-2, with conservative GOP Senator Gary George declaring, "Senators from all political persuasions joined with Oregon citizens to affirm again our defense of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, and to request that the federal government rescind those portions of the Patriot Act that assault our cherished liberties." Resolutions have been adopted by 150 counties and cities, including Philadelphia.

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