Maybe this is the beginning of the end for that rude slap on the face of our Constitution.
Two United States senators on Wednesday accused the Justice Department of making misleading statements about the legal justification of secret domestic surveillance activities that the government is apparently carrying out under the Patriot Act. ...NYT
Ron Wyden and Mark Udall are questioning Attorney General Eric Holder about whether the Justice Department has been -- presumably deliberately -- misleading in its application of the law.
“We believe that the best way to avoid a negative public reaction and an erosion of confidence in U.S. intelligence agencies is to initiate an informed public debate about these authorities today,” the two wrote. “However, if the executive branch is unwilling to do that, then it is particularly important for government officials to avoid compounding that problem by making misleading statements.”
As usual, the government pleads "national security."
A few columns away, also in the New York Times, is an example of just how secure one citizen was made to feel recently.
On the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Shoshana Hebshi, 35, a freelance writer and stay-at-home mother of 6-year-old twins from a suburb of Toledo, Ohio, was on a plane flying from Denver to Detroit when something she — or another passenger in her row of seats — had done caused the government to scramble F-16 fighter planes and escort Frontier Airlines Flight 623 until it landed safely. The plane was taken to a remote part of the airport, and armed federal authorities handcuffed Ms. Hebshi and her seatmates and took them off the plane. She was placed in a jail cell, strip-searched and interrogated by the F.B.I. before eventually being released. The two men in her row were also allowed to go.
In case you still live in that cloud where discrimination and ill-treatment of non-white individuals no longer exist in glorious America, a clarification:
Ms. Hebshi says she believes she was detained because she is “dark-skinned” — she is half Arab, half Jewish. She described her seatmates as Indian. The F.B.I. says it was responding to reports that Ms. Hebshi and the men were behaving suspiciously. But Ms. Hebshi said she was never told what about her behavior, or that of her seatmates, had been alarming to others on the plane. ...NYT
