Politics: Hentoff

Nat Hentoff asks some good questions about what Americans don't know but what can hurt them. And he asks why the media doesn't care.

But the media, with few exceptions, are failing to report consistently, and in depth, precisely how Bush and Ashcroft are undermining our fundamental individual liberties.

For example, in writing here about the Justice Department's proposed sequel to the Patriot Act (titled inoffensively the Domestic Security Enhancement Act), I noted that it had been kept secret from Congress. A week before it was leaked by an understandably anonymous member of Ashcroft's staff, a representative of the Justice Department even lied to the Senate Judiciary Committee about its very existence.

A few sections in that chilling 86-page draft were briefly covered in some of the media. But as I predicted after providing more details here ("Ashcroft Out of Control" and "Red Alert for the Bill of Rights"), these invasions of the Constitution were only a one- or two-day story in nearly all of the media.

How many Americans know that if the bill is passed (and Bush certainly won't veto it), they can be stripped of their citizenship if charged with giving "material support" to a group designated by the government as "terrorist"? Sending a check for the outfit's lawful activities—without knowing why it landed on Ashcroft's list—could make you a person without a country and put you behind bars here indefinitely. As Chief Justice Earl Warren said, "you lose the right to have rights" when you lose your citizenship.