Alterman: Unvarnished truth

[dArKeR]

There is something bracing about reading an unvarnished truth in the New York Times, even if it is in a Paul Krugman column. 

“No question: John Ashcroft is the worst attorney general in history.” 

The thing is, even this understates the case.  Remember John Ashcroft is the man who claims to have it in his power to arrest you, Mr. American Citizen, and hold you incommunicado in prison forever if he wants.  He has apparently passed along a memo to the president claiming the right to torture and kill you as well. 

Meanwhile, under Homeland Security orders, journalists from England, Sweden, Holland and other friendly countries are being detained at U.S. airports, strip-searched and deported as well.  The most pathetic thing is, for all their police-state tactics, they are doing a terrible job of protecting us, and terrorism is a greater threat than ever. Just ask the newly corrected State Department report (though it was buried everywhere but “The Daily Show.”  I ask you, have we ever faced as great an internal peril to our most fundamental freedom since the heyday of J. Edgar Hoover?

Tom Curley, President and CEO of the Associated Press gave a scathing interview to Bill Moyers last week on NOW based on a speech he gave sounding the alarm about the intense addiction to government-enforced secrecy...

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3449870/

[drfemoe]

1. How can this be explained or justified?

Reporters in chains
Under Homeland Security orders, journalists from England, Sweden, Holland and other friendly countries are being detained at U.S. airports, strip-searched and deported.
...
June 15, 2004 | The Department of Homeland Security has started enforcing an obscure provision in immigration law requiring foreign journalists to seek special visas before entering the United States, even though their nonreporting countrymen can enter without any visa at all. ...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=103&topic_id=56792&mesg_id=56792

Rewind and rewrite .. this is not the history we want to create, JMO.

[ronatchig]

2. Alterman misses the point

in that these "people" are not out to protect us from terrorists but to terrorize us into submission to a theocratic fuedal prison nation.

Can you say "Zeig Heil" like ya mean it?