Democrats in the newly seated 110th Congress regularly lambaste the Bush administration for its abuse of civil liberties. I agree with their criticism, but when it comes to your civil liberties, the threats are bipartisan.
We all know the civil liberties horrors foisted on the America and the world by the Bush administration. Who can forget laws like the USA Patriot Act, which permits the FBI, CIA and other government agencies to access your financial, Internet, medical or other records without a warrant, using a secret subpoena? Or the Military Commissions Act, which eliminates the 1,000-year-old right of habeas corpus? Under this law, the government can detain anyone—even U.S. citizens—indefinitely, without ever charging them with a crime. Then there’s the Real ID Act, which establishes a de-facto national identity card in the guise of a driver’s license.
However, from a historical perspective, Democrats are no better than Republicans on the issues of civil liberties. The last time the Democrats controlled the White House, during the Clinton administration, they proposed a mandatory national medical ID card on which all Americans’ private medical information would be stored. Not to mention the Clinton’s "Clipper Chip" proposal, which sought to have the federal government maintain the key to all private encryption techniques.
For that reason, I’m not optimistic that the Democrats, now that they control Congress, will do much, if anything, to roll back the civil liberties horrors that have been enacted into law since the Bush administration took office in 2000. And their recent record underscores that conclusion.
Only one Democrat in the Senate, Russ Feingold, had the political courage to vote against the USA PATRIOT Act. Democrats overwhelmingly (and in the Senate, unanimously) voted for the Defense Authorization Act for 2007, which gives the president the authority to declare and enforce martial law during “emergencies." What constitutes an "emergency" is basically left up to the president. Many Democrats even voted in favor of the horrific Military Commissions Act.
If the Democrats really care about civil liberties, they’ll vote to repeal the USA PATRIOT Act, Military Commissions Act, Real ID Act and the Defense Authorization Act for 2007. They’ll also block funding for warrantless military surveillance of U.S. citizens and end the military’s power to indefinitely detain people, even non-U.S. citizens, without due process.
I’m not holding my breath for any of these things to happen. And if they don’t, the next time someone tells you the Democrats care more about civil liberties than the Republicans, you’ll have the cold, hard facts to challenge that assertion.
