Asymmetrical Information

Funny how that works, isn't it? Many (on both the Left and the Right) seem not to understand that empowering the government will result in the government doing thing that one doesn't want it to do.

Further, the overly dramatic response to Ashcroft really isn't a particularly productive way to argue about public policy.

Good news on this front: The wonderful Institute for Justice recently got New Jersey's civil asset forfeiture law declared unconstitutional by a Superior Court in the state.

Uhh, I beg to differ on one point: not all of the "right" has forgotten about the evils of forfeiture laws. Indeed, those on the conservative-libertarian border are at the forefront of trying to get rid of more of them, the aforementioned Institute for Justice being one such example.

Uhh, I beg to differ on one point: not all of the "right" has forgotten about the evils of forfeiture laws. Indeed, those on the conservative-libertarian border are at the forefront of trying to get rid of more of them, the aforementioned Institute for Justice being one such example.

Well, with some people saying that the mere dissent to our current foriegn policy constitutes "treason," is it really that far-fetched to think that should the war start to go badly, Sir John Ashcroft won't be diverting some "seditious" websites to the DOJ?

Asset forfeiture laws, like punitive damage awards, are designed to punish criminal behavior without the nasty necessity of proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. As such, both should be abolished or limited to cases where a defendant has been convicted of a criminal offense, and where such a punishment is provided for and concisely set out--including explicit limits on the amount of property that can be seized--in the statutes regulating the criminal activities in question. This would require rewriting many criminal laws and would undoubtedly arouse a great deal of controversy--this is as it should be.

How many times have I told college-level students that if a government agency is powerful enough to give you what you want, it is powerful to take same from you?

These forfeiture laws are horrible no matter who proposes them. In Oregon, we got rid of them by ballot initiative.

I do not believe that it is the upper echelon that is doing it because the same proposals seem to come up regardless of who is in power. It looks to me like the entrenched bureaucracy that comes up with them.

No one should propose powers to the Bush Administration that they would not like Hillary to have. Policies don't go away when the parties change places.

"Now it's shocked -- shocked! -- to find that these laws can be used against people it likes, while the right seems to have lost all interest in the matter."

I didn't have much interest in it in the first place, except to disapprove. I always thought that it was a misuse of authority, but I've always been interested in issues that I thought had a higher priority.

James

Well said. It is quite remarkable what people will overlook when it's "their guy" in power.

That being said, Ashcroft is appalling. I don't care about the guy's religious beliefs; I'm concerned that we have an Attorney General that doesn't seem interested is upholding and protecting the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. (Just look at that Hentoff piece on the proposed -gag- Patriot II bill, for example). He's a classic case of a prosecutor who's out to "get the bad guys" by any means necessary, rather than to do justice and uphold the rule of law.

Ashcroft is the reason I will vote for some Republicans, but I will never be a Republican.

My favorite line for my Republican friends is: Don't give Ashcroft any power you don't want President Hillary Clinton to have.

Well, with some people saying that the mere dissent to our current foriegn policy constitutes "treason,"....

Name one.

Freedom of expression doesn't extend to illegal transactions; a web site discussing self-stupificiation is quite a different animal than a fully operational drug fence.

The furious hyperbole baffles me. We're talking about drugs, not lemonade stands or paper stapled to telephone poles. Don't lose sight of principles when so arduously speaking out for "Principle." The use and sale of narcotics is illegal and police confiscation is wholly justified.

"Well, with some people saying that the mere dissent to our current foriegn policy constitutes "treason,"....

Name one."

Rush about Dashle, numerous occasions.

"I cant believe that there are no democrats standing up and speaking out about the lies and schemes that *Tom Daschle* is trying to convince the public are truths. His lies about Sept. 11 must be upsetting the wives, mothers and children more than the acts themselves. Why doesn't his party tell him that it is an act of *treason* to say these lies and cause the country to split further apart?" http://www.rushonline.com/visitors/daschle.htm

Barney, if you check the site you listed you would find that the quote calling Sen Daschle's statements treasonous was not by Rush, but one of the people commenting on his site. Still presumably from someone on the right, but doesn't quite carry the same weight, does it?

Well, Ann Coulter is about to publish a whole book called "Treason." I know I shouldn't jump to conclusions, but I have a feeling that her accusations are not aimed at either conservatives or Republicans....

While I don't doubt for a minute that Ann Coulter's word is law to John Ashcroft-- remember how he shut down the New York Times after reading Slander?-- I guess we'll have to wait for the new book to find out whether the accusation in the title is aimed at "mere dissent" or at something more specific.

MY problem with all the activity at the Justice Department over bong sellers is that THERE IS A WAR ON. Don't we have better things to do than worry about who might be selling bongs and roach clips over the 'net? I keep hearing that only one in a thousand cargo containers coming into this country is searched. That strikes me as a much better use of the DEA boys time and energy than busting head shops.

The Republicans are getting away with as much as they can while they can. Witness the recent Federal trial where the defense was constrained by the judge, with the result that some jurors said they wouldn't have voted to convict if they had been in possesion of the facts in the case.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/02/28/MN40941.DTL If this sort of thing is what people call John Ashcroft trampling the Constitution, please, Give me more of it! More! I want more!

But that's not the DEA's mandate. You can't just make them start searching cargo ships; they haven't the equipment or the experience. I'd love to see the drug laws repealed and the agency disbanded, but inflexibility is the nature of government.

Jane Galt wrote:

"Talkleft says it's as if they'd decided to grab ACLU.ORG, which is ridiculous; retailing drug paraphenelia is illegal, which, last time I looked, advocating for civil liberties wasn't."

See http://www.usdoj.gov/ndic/pubs/682/index.htm

where the DOJ says:

"Drugs and the Internet
An Overview of the Threat to America's Youth"

"A full strategic assessment addressing the Internet drug threat in greater depth will follow this overview report. In producing the strategic assessment, NDIC will coordinate with the Drug Enforcement Administration and other federal law enforcement agencies as appropriate.... Many websites, newsgroups, bulletin boards, and chat rooms promote the drug culture by providing a wide variety of information on drugs and drug paraphernalia. ... Young persons who use "club drugs" or are contemplating their use can readily access information about them on Internet websites, including explanations of drug terminology, methods of use, and dangers associated with use. Many of these websites popularize and glamorize drug use, and others implicitly promote use and experimentation."

Being concerned with "promote[ing] the drug culture" sounds mighty ideological to me. Notice that illegal sales aren't the primary concern, because "Drug offenders are increasingly taking advantage of sophisticated encryption and security technologies to hide their actions and identities, and much of the activity that can be discovered appears to be constitutionally protected as free speech."

Yep, we've got to find some way around that pesky First Amendment. It's a threat to America's youth.

Jane Galt wrote:

"A large part of the rest of the left blogs seem to think this is some evil innovation on the part of Ashcroft in his unceasing quest to strip us of our civil liberties and put us in camps."

A primary feature of drug paraphenalia prohibition laws is that what constitutes "drug paraphenalia" is defined by the eyes of the enforcer. I've defended drug cases, and in my experience whatever a cop concludes in his infinite wisdom as a physician, anthropologist, or economist, is what the courts uphold.

Prohibitionists, like communists, are never satisfied until they have purged the ideologically impure from the population. "Just Some Poor Schmuck" is right that "It looks to me like the entrenched bureaucracy that comes up with them." Prohibition is big government-funded business, constantly expanding its market by adding banned substances to the statutes, and reaping ever increased funding and legal power from politicians who know a good scam when they see one.

Would Ashcroft like "to strip us of our civil liberties and put us in camps"? Absolutely. So would every other prohibitionist politician or enforcer. I've never met one who wasn't either a raving nutcase, a political totalitarian, a pathological liar, an outright scammer, or all four.

"But that's not the DEA's mandate. You can't just make them start searching cargo ships; they haven't the equipment or the experience." So cargo ships are a safe way to smuggle drugs in because the DEA doesn't know how to search them???

I'll find the Leftie position on 'drug prohibition' a lot less hypocritical when they start opposing 'tobacco prohibition'.

Read these comments (especially FUB's) replacing DEA with FDA.

FWIW, I neither smoke nor use controlled substances.

"But that's not the DEA's mandate. You can't just make them start searching cargo ships; they haven't the equipment or the experience."

Note to self: start smuggling cocaine in cargo ships.

"The left thought civil asset forfeiture was just fine when the Clinton administration was going after people it didn't care for, like right wing nuts living in the woods and religious wackos."

Uh, do you have a source for this? While everyone in government seems to love the goddamn thing, regardless of party affiliation, otherwise I can't recall any liberals in favor of asset forfeiture.

M. Scott Eiland wrote:

“Asset forfeiture laws, like punitive damage awards, are designed to punish criminal behavior without the nasty necessity of proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Sort of like how punitive damages in a civil lawsuit are designed to punish without having to prove “guild beyond a reasonable doubt”?

"And there is no reason to doubt that the “anti-war” protesters — we prefer to call them protesters against freeing Iraq — are giving, at the very least, comfort to Saddam Hussein."

http://www.nysun.com/sunarticle.asp?artID=529

Or how about David Horowitz's Open Letter to the Anti-War Demonstrators, comparing today's anti-agression protestors to the treasonous peaceniks who "lost" the war in Vietnam...

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=4502

Andrew Sullivan has twice mentioned that dissenters to the methods we are using to prosecute this "war on terror" amount to a "fifth column" of subversives ans spies.

Anne Coulter on Bill Maher said that the Democrat Congressmen and women who did not applaud during Prz. Bush II's SOTU speech were traitors, since they did not support his missile defense system

"“Asset forfeiture laws, like punitive damage awards, are designed to punish criminal behavior without the nasty necessity of proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Sort of like how punitive damages in a civil lawsuit are designed to punish without having to prove “guild beyond a reasonable doubt”?"

Hmmm. I'm not sure what you're asking, so I'll clarify. Asset forfeiture laws use the fiction that the action is directed at the property, not the person owning it, which the courts have ruled allows the government to actually force the owner to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that the property was *not* involved in the crime the government is alleging it was connected with. I view this as an appalling abuse of power, and certainly violative of the spirit of the Due Process clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution, as well as bypassing the owner's rights under the Sixth Amendment (right to a criminal trial).

One of the major policy arguments that is made on behalf of punitive damages is that it allows the people to punish activities that they disapprove of without having to go through all of the legal niceties of a criminal case, and without being limited by the statutory fines for the bad actions in question. This, in my view, is violative of the defendant's Sixth Amendment right to a criminal trial (with all of the appropriate protections associated with it), as well as the Eighth Amendments prohibition on excessive fines (since punitive damages are not under current law limited as fines under a criminal statute would be). In both cases, the laws should be rewritten (increasing criminal penalties if deemed appropriate), and the government should damned well meet its burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. I find it interesting that a substantial number of people who are screaming bloody murder at the supposed relaxation of criminal defendants' rights under the Patriot Act and similar legislation are the same ones who would also throw a fit if Congress passed legislation banning or seriously scaling back the availability of punitive damages in federal and state courts.

Good examples as far as they go, Thumper. I was actually looking for someone more along the lines of a policymaker-- someone whose belief in the inherent disloyalty of dissent (Sullivan, at least, has backed away from this position) would actually lend credence to the idea of Ashcroft taking steps to punish it.

How about John Ashcroft himself?

http://www.justice.gov/ag/speeches/2001/1206transcriptsenatejudiciarycommittee.htm

"We need honest, reasoned debate; not fearmongering. To those who pit Americans against immigrants, and citizens against non-citizens; to those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty; my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists - for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America's enemies, and pause to America's friends. They encourage people of good will to remain silent in the face of evil."

"The left thought civil asset forfeiture was just fine when the Clinton administration was going after people it didn't care for, like right wing nuts living in the woods and religious wackos..."

I think it's absurd to equate the venal Branch Davidians, who everyone hated and feared for good reason, with head shop owners and High Times subscribers. It wasn't just the left that thought that the religious nutjobs and extremist militias who were actively flaunting the law should have the whole kitchen sink of legal remedies thrown at them to capture their assets and shut them down for good. Those homegrown terrorists are not "all sorts of people."

However, it's one thing to reluctantly support civil asset forfeiture as an extreme remedy that should be exercised in a judicious, non-partisan manner (I mean--please, it's not like the Clinton Administration was going after the militias BECAUSE they were "right wing." They just happened to be part of fringe right wing, just like the KKK). It's another to criticize the dramatic expansion of the civil asset forfeiture power against a relatively harmless and marginal group of individuals--not great people, but not homegrown terrorists.

I've worked in the Brooklyn U.S. Attorney's civil litigation division, and they used the civil asset forfeiture law mainly against child porn rings and smugglers of large amounts of undeclared cash. I think that's the majority of cases, at least in New York City.

All I'm saying is it's perfectly consistent to support a limited use doctrine with regards to civil asset forfeiture and yet stridently oppose the current exercise of the law against headshops as boding ill for civil liberties.

The Ashcroft quote, however, will not serve; it does NOT equate "mere dissent" with treason.

> I think it's absurd to equate the venal Branch Davidians, who everyone hated and feared for good reason

Huh? The locals didn't hate or fear the Davidians. And, when said locals found it appropriate to arrest said Davidians, they sent out a deputy to do the deed.

Of course, the locals also seemed to be able to write search warrant requests without either lying or revealing extreme ignorance. (I'm referring to the section claiming that "Shotgun News" is somehow an secretive and subversive. FWIW, my local bookstore occasionally stacms it next to "High Times".)

Remind me - what parts of Patriot II aren't recycled Clinton proposals?

Paul,

Straw Man #1: My first post talks about "some people" equating "mere dissent with our foreign policy" with treason, not "the inherent disloyalty of dissent." So, you are asking for proof of a point never made, what we in the "business" call "a straw man."

You asked me to "name one" person who equated mere dissent on Iraq with treason and I named 4. You asked me to name a policymaker who equated mere dissent on Iraq with treason and I quoted John Ashcroft. Now you say it doesn't prove anything because he's not talking about Iraq.

Actually, my point is that it is not far-fetched, should the war go badly and protests start flaring up, that the DOJ might start diverting "seditious" web-sites and weblogs.

Since the war has not yet started, and thus cannot have gone badly, it is unsurprising that there haven't yet been cries to lock up dissenters and protestors for treason. I'm merely stating a hypothetical, which you have to admit is a possibility, and then questioning whether the Ashcroft DOJ will perhaps bring its powers to bear against dissenters and protesters to the Bush Administration's war. There are disturbing murmurs in the right-wing of the peanut gallery that dissenters and protesters are inherently anti-American.

Can you argue that it is "not far-fetched" that in the hypothetical scenario I have drawn, where the war does not go cleanly, by rather drags on, and more and more protesters take to the streets and become more visible and more vocal, and the public begins to rally against the war, and Bush's approval rating plummets and Senators are calling for impeachment, and body bags start coming home... Is it that implausible that this Ashcroft DOJ might start to "investigate" the "leaders" of the anti-war movement? Given the way the Hoover FBI reacted during the Vietnam War, wouldn't you say that it would be foolish to not suspect that history might repeat itself?

This is all just a hypothetical, remember.

Straw Man #2: You assume that Ashcroft (or some policymaker) actually has to come out and say "dissent on Iraq is treasonous" to prove my point.

All I have to prove is that it is not "far-fetched" to be suspicious of Ashcroft and his DOJ, given his other statements regarding the role of dissent in the post-9/11 world. And it's not far-fetched to be suspicious of the partisan Republicans who are in power now, given that their media mouthpieces are spewing talking points that are very scornful of dissenters on Iraq.

Basically, his quote demonstrates his contempt for free speech. There's no line you can draw between "acceptable" and "unacceptable" political speech. Certainly, there's no line that the AG of the United States can or should be drawing regarding the propriety of dissent to administration policies. [On the other hand, if you're saying that "aiding terrorists" is not treason, then I can't help you.]

Can someone from the Right wing of this blog please step forward to claim Mr. Freeman, who seems to have lost his Militia troupe?

You don't need to be a militia member to think that what the Clinton justice department did in its persecution of the militias was abusive. My father, a yellow dog Democrat and an ardent civil libertarian, was outraged. The militia guys they were going after were mostly just quiet nuts hanging out in the woods by themselves -- I may find their philosophy repellent, but it doesn't justify what happened at Ruby Ridge, nor the collossal screw up that was Waco, in which Janet Reno seems to have decided that since they were dealing with an apocalyptic cult, the appropriate way to handle it was to bring on the apocalypse. Nothing that's happening right now is any different from what went on in the Clinton administration -- by arguing that the people you don't like are somehow specially less deserving of the right not to be deprived of property or liberty without the benefit of a trial, you're rather proving my point.

Jane

What do you think of child pornographers? Should they get their hard-drives back? With the pictures?

What do you think of smugglers of large amounts of undeclared cash carrying them overseas in honey jars? Should they get their money back?

What do you think about militia wackos who stockpile illegal and unregistered firearms and explosives? Should they get to keep it after trial?

What happened in Ruby Ridge and Waco had nothing or very little to do with the concept of civil asset forfeiture. As far as I know, both were examples of cops gone wild with enforcement, not with an overreaching law.

Prior to Osama Bin Laden, the Timothy McVeighs and Unabombers were the only examples of terrorism that had hit U.S. soil. Those homegrown terrorists were America's #1 security threat. I would argue that with the Sniper and the Unsolved Anthrax mystery, these enemies of the state remain our #1 security threat.

I fail to see how the Right can coddle neo-Nazis whose repellant philosophies and violent methods should be condemned with at least half the breath the Right spends on Saddam Hussein.

And it's not just people I don't like. It's people you shouldn't like either.

"What do you think of child pornographers? Should they get their hard-drives back? With the pictures?

What do you think of smugglers of large amounts of undeclared cash carrying them overseas in honey jars? Should they get their money back?"

There's no reason that those individuals can't be prosecuted in criminal court--if the statutes as written don't allow for confiscation of the contraband as part of the sentence, they should be rewritten. If child pornography is found on a hard drive, and for some bizarre reason a conviction is not obtained, it could be wiped from the hard drive, since the Supreme Court has ruled that there is no right to possess child pornography. If the guns are per se illegal to possess, they can be confiscated too even in the absence of a conviction. Money is not per se illegal to possess, so if the prosecutor can't convince a jury to convict, tough luck. You haven't made the case for why civil forfeiture statutes are needed to deal with these situations when the criminal courts exist, and when laws can be written to allow forfeiture as a penalty upon conviction predicated on a finding of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

Civil asset forfeiture tries the property in rem, when the owner can't be prosecuted. It allows the government to go after the fruits of the crime, contraband, and property that facilitates a crime.

The problem from a civil liberties standpoint is that unlike most defendants, most crime can't effectively mount a defense. And most owners of contraband property don't want to speak up for the seized property, which means that technically, there is a due process problem here.

Lots of times civil asset forfeiture is necessary because there is no human principal to convict.

My main point is that this isn't a black-and-white issue. I think that civil asset forfeiture in drug possession and sale cases should be reined in, whereas in the context of child pornography and domestic terrorism, I think civil asset forfeiture laws are a necessary evil. Unlike Ms. Galt, and most of the libertarians on this issue, I believe that it is a necessary law enforcement tool in the right context, but that it is overused in the drug war context because it is used in a punitive, and not incapacitory, function.

Jane Galt wrote:

"You don't need to be a militia member to think that what the Clinton justice department did in its persecution of the militias was abusive. ... The militia guys they were going after were mostly just quiet nuts hanging out in the woods by themselves -- I may find their philosophy repellent, but it doesn't justify what happened at Ruby Ridge, nor the collossal screw up that was Waco,..."

Just for the record --

Ruby Ridge took place in August, 1992. GHW Bush was president.

The initial Waco BATF raid occurred in late Feb., 1993.

Clinton took office in late Jan, 1993.

Reno took office in March, 1993.

"Lots of times civil asset forfeiture is necessary because there is no human principal to convict."

I have no problem with its use in cases like that--it's cases where there is clearly someone who could be charged and where the property involved is not per se contraband (such as kiddy porn, illegal weapons, and illegal drugs, since no one can legally own such property) where I believe that normal criminal legal proceedings should be followed. On the other hand, if the property is seized and no one chooses to come forward to challenge the seizure, IMO that's their problem.

Jane, I don't quite get this "Clinton was bad on civil rights too" argument you're making. Yes. Yes he was. (See Hentoff again. . . he was about the only liberal that would talk much about it during the Clinton years).

And yet, there was not a war on back then. Here's the thing: we have an Attorney General who has demonstrated contempt for the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. And I'm afraid if the war goes badly, or there's another major terrorist attack, the pressure to push through something like the Patriot II Act would be irresistable. Secret arrests. Secret courts. American citizens detained in brigs for years without charges even filed, unable to talk to a lawyer or their family, and without any sort of judicial check on prosecutorial power. People having their citizenship stripped for behavior which "looks like" you intended to support terrorism. I'm not sure, has there ever been a time in our history where the prospect of losing your citizenship has even been a possibilitity? What happens when you lose your citizenship? That's when I start thinking about camps. . . maybe up in Alaska somewhere.

I would like an Attorney General who would resist the erosion of our civil liberties, not encourage it. Perhaps, regardless of party, that is too much to ask.

The troubling aspect about the redirection of websites is that although it's illegal to sell drug parapharnalia (however fuzzily defined), it's not illegal to own a web site. The definition of drug parapharnalia is pretty contextual--the primary intent must be to facilitate the drug trade. However, much drug parapharnalia is "dual-use," and if advertised on the right web site with enough innocuous, non-drug-trade items, it comes close to crossing the line with regard to trampling on 1st Amendment concerns. Regardless of whether you read it or not, think about how you would feel if the government shut down High Times.

Either way, it's pretty heavy-handed to redirect those web sites to the DEA. I think the drug war is retarded, but it is against the law to sell drug parapharnalia. So, seize the bongs, but leave the web sites alone.

Especially with the war on terror, I would think that AGs have better things to do with their time and resources.

However, much drug parapharnalia is "dual-use," and if advertised on the right web site with enough innocuous, non-drug-trade items, it comes close to crossing the line with regard to trampling on 1st Amendment concerns. Regardless of whether you read it or not, think about how you would feel if the government shut down High Times.

But isn't that just the problem here: the drug trade dolled up in free speech, playing a slick game of devil's advocate with constitutional rights. Your "right web site" has all the trimmings of a front; why shouldn't the bluff be called?

I'm unconvinced by the slippery slope/chilling effect/troubling precedent charges - that somehow the DEA's hardball with the drug culture will soon translate into a universal abridgment of free press. But I do agree with you in spirit, Thumper: the Constitution is certainly worth defending - especially against citizens' manipulative relentlessness not dreamed of at the document's creation.

Finally: the drug trade is not exactly unconnected to international terrorism!

M. Scott Eiland wrote:

“One of the major policy arguments that is made on behalf of punitive damages is that it allows the people to punish activities that they disapprove of without having to go through all of the legal niceties of a criminal case, and without being limited by the statutory fines for the bad actions in question. This, in my view, is violative of the defendant's Sixth Amendment right to a criminal trial (with all of the appropriate protections associated with it), as well as the Eighth Amendments prohibition on excessive fines (since punitive damages are not under current law limited as fines under a criminal statute would be). In both cases, the laws should be rewritten (increasing criminal penalties if deemed appropriate), and the government should damned well meet its burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt.”

I’m in complete agreement that punitive damages are wrong in that they incorporate elements of the criminal justice system (which has a much higher burden of proof than the civil justice system) into the civil justice system (sorry for the confusion, computer difficulties).

“I find it interesting that a substantial number of people who are screaming bloody murder at the supposed relaxation of criminal defendants' rights under the Patriot Act and similar legislation are the same ones who would also throw a fit if Congress passed legislation banning or seriously scaling back the availability of punitive damages in federal and state courts.”

Something I’ve also found interesting is that a lot of the same people who were wailing the loudest at the prospect of trying terrorist suspects before military tribunals (which are constitutional) were also proponents of making American citizens subject to the International Criminal Court which does not afford accused persons a lot of the common law protections (e.g. ex post facto laws) enjoyed by Americans under our Constitution.

Indeed, I don't think that the Clinton justice department was the fount of all evil. I think it is the nature of organizations to try to increase their power; it is only natural for the guys in charge to look at all the bad guys they could catch if we'd just bend the rules a leetle bit and let them get those evildoers. It's our job to stand up and shout "NO!!!!" And it's hard to do when it turns out that half of the objection lies with the political party of the guy in power, not the fact that no one should be deprived of their property without due process. Including, yes, purveyors of Kiddie Porn. But for someone who worked for a US attorney, your examples are silly, Thumper: all of those items would be held as evidence pending trial, and confiscated if it turned out that they were illegally owned or obtained. Do I care if a kiddie pornographer gets back a hard drive that's been wiped clean so that he has the moral satisfaction of having it sit in his house while he does 10-25 in Attica? Not really. If we can't convict him, we shouldn't be taking the hard drive. It's not as if they're so expensive that seizing it is going to materially impair his ability to do business. The other items are just illegal. But most of the stuff Waco had, as I recall, wasn't -- it was the number of guns that everyone was concerned about, not their configuration. I know they'd allegedly converted some guns to full auto, and they had empty grenade shells; but they weren't, as far as I can tell, planning to shoot anyone until the FBI started shooting at them. And that was under Reno, not Bush.

All I was pointing out was that the statutory authorization to "confiscate the evidence" pending trial is the civil asset forfeiture law you deride as a horrible law. It is a powerful law enforcement tool and often abused, but there's a baby in that bathwater.

Quite frankly, I have no idea what civil asset forfeiture had to do with Waco, or why Waco is used as an example for any other reason than to tar Clinton. Especially since, as Fub points out, it pretty much happened on GHW Bush's watch.

Also, you are missing the point on the child pornography angle/power of civil asset forfeiture. EVEN IF YOU DON'T OBTAIN A CRIMINAL CONVICTION, you can still seize the hard drive.

Why? Lower burden of proof at civil trial.

I think your missing the point

Put the 55 arrests in the context of an increasing assault on marijuana by the administration on many different fronts.

> Prior to Osama Bin Laden, the Timothy McVeighs and Unabombers were the only examples of terrorism that had hit U.S. soil.

No one else seems to think that McVeigh or the Unabomber had anything to do with the truck bomb that blew up in the WTC about 10 years ago. And, since they must also have been responsible for the "anti-war" bombings, they must have started young. In fact, they managed to do the Puerto Rican liberation bombings before they were born.

I suppose that expecting accuracy from someone named after a cartoon rabbit is a bit much, but the vehemence is a bit surprising. Maybe it's an homage to Carter's rabbit.

Sorry, I meant to say that McVeigh et al were "pretty much" the only examples of terrorism to strike U.S. soil.

You're like a copy-editor, correcting my typos. Too bad you have nothing substantive to say.

And, let me add, that UBL was behind the 93 WTC attack, so I might be giving you way too much credit here...

You're also forgetting the terrorist movements of the sixties, MOVE, and any number of earlier events such as the JP Morgan bombing.

I am also forgetting the Boston Tea Party.

Any more nits on me you'd like to pick?

I don't think that qualifies on a number of levels, including the fact that the guy who owned the ship was, if I recall correctly, in on the raid.

If you're going to say that the militia persecutions were justified because of Tim McVeigh making the only strike on US soil, you can't really complain when people correct it.

Okay--this is the correct version:

"Militia persecution were justified because Timothy McVeigh et al were pretty much the only major terrrorist attacks (aside from Osama Bin Laden) in the 1990s to strike U.S. soil."

I'm not complaining that people are correcting me when I misspeak, which is often. It's that they take an omission of a qualifying word here and there to say indict my entire point and thus avoid debate.

For example, I still have no clue what any of this has to do with civil asset forfeiture.

You asked me to name a policymaker who equated mere dissent on Iraq with treason and I quoted John Ashcroft. Now you say it doesn't prove anything because he's not talking about Iraq.

No, sir. Though he was not in fact talking about Iraq, the real reason it doesn't prove anything is that he was not talking about treason. Looking just at his words, Ashcroft was saying nothing more than "you guys aren't helping". (I think he's wrong on the facts; the tendency of the anti-war left to mistake their own persecution fantasies for actual persecution serves mostly to discredit them, and so to help the war effort.)Remember that civil-liberties alarmists were not the only people on his list; do you really think he was also accusing "those who pit Americans against immigrants, and citizens against non-citizens" of treason? Conversely, there is a respectable body of opinion which holds that Bush's foreign-policy moves have the effect of undermining the war against terrorism. Are these people accusing Bush of treason?

To be sure, you can still assume that there's a sinister hidden agenda behind Ashcroft's innocuous words. That will doubtless convince those who already believe that he's dying to put dissenters on trial (or investigate them or redirect their URLs-- the horribles keep shifting around.) I'm afraid it doesn't convince me. If that puts me beyond your help, I guess I can live with the off-chance that your help is actually worth something.

> For example, I still have no clue what any of this has to do with civil asset forfeiture.

That's a strange comment from someone who started that particular thread.

> It's that they take an omission of a qualifying word here and there to say indict my entire point and thus avoid debate.

Pointing out that your supporting evidence isn't true IS debate. As is pointing out that the suggested causal connections are somewhat "odd".

> in the 1990s to strike U.S. soil."

The seizure laws predate the 90s and the militia crackdown predates McVeigh. In this world, causes happen before effects.

Andy: "That's a strange comment from someone who started that particular thread."

Original Post by Ms Galt: "The left thought civil asset forfeiture was just fine when the Clinton administration was going after people it didn't care for, like right wing nuts living in the woods and religious wackos. Now it's shocked -- shocked! -- to find that these laws can be used against people it likes."

You, sir, are not paying attention.

"Pointing out that your supporting evidence isn't true IS debate."

No, you were just correcting my grammar.

"The seizure laws predate the 90s and the militia crackdown predates McVeigh."

Ahh... finally an argument.

Although the seizure laws predated the 1990s, the Clintons were not in the White House until 1992, last time I checked. So (again, I have this unnerving habit of actually trying to respond to the original post), since Jane's criticism related to the use of civil asset forfeiture under the Clintons, I was limiting my examples to the 1990s.

Your point about crackdowns of militias occurring under both Republican and Democrat administrations proves my point brilliantly, thank you, which, since you seem to have ADD, is that it wasn't just the Clinton Admnistration cracking down on militias, purportedly with civil asset forfeiture laws. The right only paid attention to it when Clinton was in office, however, which shows that Jane's point that the left is biased is laughable.

Paul,

If it helps you to sleep at night to cling to feeble, precatory pretexts, good for you. I can't help the delusional.

In the meantime, the rest of us live in a world where "aiding terrorists" is unsubtle code for "treason." That's a far cry from "you are not helping." Of course critics concerned about the civil liberty implications of anti-terrorism laws are not helping if they aren't falling into line behind the President like "good sheep." There's no duty to help, therefore there's nothing wrong with pointing out that people aren't helping. But to be "aiding terrorists" is going one step further.

C'mon, my b*s* detector is a little bit stronger than that.

One of the really nasty things about civil forfeiture laws in operation is how the government can use them to prevent the innocent from defending themselves. In the war against drugs it was, and maybe still is, common for the government to demand that the defense attorneys cough up any money paid to them by defendants accused of dealing in drugs because the attorneys "should have known" that such money was obtained as a result of illegal activity and therefore was subject to forfeiture. The result? People accused of such crimes were not allowed to hire attorneys, they had to make do with whomever the courts decided to appoint.

I do not defend child pornographers. I also do not believe that just because the government thinks that someone fits into this category that it necesarily makes it so. When the government seizes bank accounts, homes, and businesses prior to any criminal conviction it can often make any eventual acquital a Phyric (msp?) victory. Financial ruin often can be assured even in the absence of a conviction, and this really is at the rotten root of the matter.

John Marshall, the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, once wrote that "the power to tax is the power to destroy." The power to seize assets goes far beyond that; its like comparing an assault rifle to a nuclear warhead. It is a power that I do not trust the government to have in regard to items that are not contraband per se.

There may be, as Thumper says, people we should not like, but I am very dubious about ANYONE expecting me to hate a given group just because they say so, whether its the government or self-proclaimed "enlightened" people.

Tcobb:

My comment was more that there is not moral equivalency between the militia-type homegrown terrorists and High Times potheads. My other point is that civil forfeiture is a powerful, and sometimes suspect tool of law enforcement, that should be used only in limited circumstances and with discretion. Ashcroft's current crusade against headshops does not fall under my definition of "discretion."

More grist for Thumper's secret decoder ring: "I gave money to a terrorist training camp in a foreign country" (from one of Arianna Huffington's anti-SUV ads). Bill Maher has a book out called *When You Ride Alone, You Ride With bin Laden*. We've already heard about the government's rather absurd attempt to get us to believe that drug users, every man jack of them, are supporting terrorism. That world where "aiding terrorists" is a code word for "treason" doesn't show up in my telecope, but here on Earth the phrase seems to have a less settled meaning.

Watch closely, as I administer the deft coup d'grace on Mr. Zrimsek.

The crowd is going crazy.... I am climbing to the top rope.

The world where "giving aid to terrorists" = code for "treason"... drum roll pLEASE!

The United States Constitution
Section 3. Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.

"adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort."

Ahem. Might want to take that lens cap off your telescope.

> The right only paid attention to it when Clinton was in office, however, which shows that Jane's point that the left is biased is laughable.

Huh? The "right only paid attention" argument supports an accusation that the right is biased. It does not refute an accusation that the left is biased.

I suppose now is as good a time as any to repeat my question about Patriot I and Patriot II - which provisions are not recycled from the Clinton era? (Yes, Clinton may have recycled some from Bush I or Reagan.)

When we know the answer to that question, we can look at how the supporter/opponent lineups have changed. We might find, horrors, both Dems and Repubs who have switched sides.

Amen, Jane.

Civil asset forfeiture -- what you said.

Run for Congress on that ticket and I'll vote for you. It's bad law that both the left and the right should be able to agree on.

Thumper--

And my point was, and is, that the government should not have this power at all. If you are going to seize property which is not intrinsicaly contraband from an individual it should only be after they have been convicted in a criminal prosecution and the property in question is directly related to the commission of the crime or was obviously acquired as a result of the offense. Period. No exceptions allowed.

I mean no personal offense by this remark, but I do not trust you or anyone else to make "exceptions" for persons or groups that are deemed to be repulsive by any segment of society, no matter how large that segment may be. I have no doubt that most Nazis were sincere in their belief that Jews were evil, or that priests at the time of Galileo believed that the sun orbited around the earth. But they were all wrong.

We have standards in this country that are imposed by the Constitution. We should follow them. I think it is despicable to turn a "crime" into a "civil matter" so as to avoid having to apply the constitutional protections granted in criminal prosecutions. Those guarrantees are there for a purpose, and I am deeply hostile and suspicious toward anyone who thinks that they should be dispensed with when the "greater good" comes into play. There is no functional difference between the government seizing my property as a criminal "fine" as opposed to them seizing it as a "civil" matter. In either case my property has been taken, its gone. When the basis of the "civil" seizure is predicated upon the belief that I have committed a criminal offense for which I might not even be indicted, let alone convicted, this is nothing more than an end run around the Constitution.

At this point, Thumper, your beef with Ashcroft seems to be that he doesn't follow you in broadening the definition of treason by palming and swallowing the words "adhering to". (Without them, it becomes possible to commit treason without any intention of doing so-- say, by selling Mohammed Atta a plane ticket.) As witness the complete lack of prosecutions.

The latest nest of terrorist-abetting traitors to be flushed into the open: the eight majority Justices in NOW v. Scheidler (scroll down to the last sentence).

TCobb:

I'm not with you on the notion that this is a Constitutional end-run. Individual rights are simply more deserving of higher protections than property rights.

I agree that the civil asset forfeiture law should only be a gap-filler, but you seem to believe that it shouldn't even fill the gaps. You are therefore willing to accept that the law will be unable to act until it obtains a criminal prosecution against a person, or unless the property involved is "intrinsically contraband."

So, a bank account held in the United States by an overseas entity that funnels/launders money to terrorists cannot be closed down by US authorities until the principal is caught, charged, indicted, and convicted of money laundering.

Or, ask yourself this: without civil forfeiture, how do we enforce the requirement that people traveling into our country from overseas declare large amounts of cash?

It would pay for people who want to hide the source or amount of cash to not declare, pay the fine, and thus skirt the law. It is not practical to put the fine so high or arrest and jail them so as to punish merely negligent travellers.

Bulk cash smuggling is a problem and a reality. Couriers will gladly trade the risk of forfeiture for a few days in the clink. Law enforcement will be seriously undermined.

I respect your principled stand--and while I believe that there are not easy answers to the above questions--I do not think that there is no place for civil asset forfeiture.

Paul:

And you are palming and swallowing Ashcroft's words when he says that those who raise civil liberty concerns are "giv[ing] ammunition to our enemies."

The unmistakeable message is that those who oppose increasing federal power in the war on terror are adhering to the will of the enemy by voicing their opposition on the "phantoms of lost liberty." Many other kindred spirits on the right believe they should be called traitors, or at least "bad Americans."

The rhetoric cannot be written off as mere allegory or coincidence. He knows what the Constitution says. He knows what effect that statement will have, in the media, and with Congress. It was a clear warning shot across the bow of the ACLU to "back off."

My point is not that prosecutions will happen on these grounds. They won't. Democrats won't stand for it, and it would cause a civil war.

My point is that it is rational for Democrats to voice those concerns, to fear this President and this administration who has shown nothing but contempt for civil liberties and ignorance for all but the 2nd Amendment in the Constitution. Without those on the Left serving as the counter-weight, God forbid what liberties the Right would forsake on the alter of security.

I've found that if you can't enforce a given law without doing bad things that said law is rarely a good idea.

And you are palming and swallowing Ashcroft's words when he says that those who raise civil liberty concerns are "giv[ing] ammunition to our enemies."

Could it be that you're the only person who read that that took ammunition literally?

Let's be clear here. Opposition to government policy does not constitute treason. Directly giving aid to the enemy does. If you want to know what Ashcroft meant by what he said, you might consider asking him. But keep in mind that what Ashcroft doesn't actually get to decide what the law is.

Oh and I'm sure you've asked him yourself many times.

Give me a break. John Ashcroft is responsible for what John Ashcroft says, not me.

Metaphorically speaking, one who gives ammunition to someone else could probably be said to be adhering to that person. If I gave ammunition to a killer, and that person shot someone else, I could be guilty as an accomplice to the crime.

Ashcrofts words were designed as a warning, to put dissenters on notice that if they chose to express reasoned dissent to the Patriot Act, they did so with the knowledge that it helped the enemy.

It is unreasonable to expect that people in a democracy should stay silent on the orders of the Government. It is especially unreasonable to silence those who express concerns about the Government's potential abuse of power.

Therefore, it is unreasonable for Ashcroft to expect that his words served any other purpose than to put dissenters on warning that there would be a PRESUMPTION in the mind of the Department of Justice, which indeed does make and interpret laws, that any dissent after his speech would be considered in the same sense as handing a grenade to an al-Qaeda operative.

Treason.

Thanks for confirming that you were in fact the only person reading that article that took "ammunition" as anything other than a metaphor.

I don't actually need to ask Ashcroft anything. I'm not the one who insists on making assumptions about what he said. And then spinning some grandiose yarn of government plots to silent the masses of dissenters.

DOJ makes laws? Since when? And why wasn't I notified?

"silence", even. Grrr.

Comments are Closed.