June 18, 2006
The Multiracial Activist
From the Editor:
On June 2nd, I signed a comment letter sent to the Bureau of Prisons and coordinated by the ACLU. This letter was in response to yet another Bush Administration attempt, via the Bureau of Prisons, to circumvent the legal process and run roughshod over civil liberties while hiding behind the terrorist boogeyman. Further, the offensive, wide-sweeping regulation can be used to effectively silence any prisoner, convicted or not, even material witnesses, and those who have never been charged with a crime.
An excerpt from the letter:
The regulation provides that a Bureau of Prisons Warden may determine, without external review, that a person in Bureau custody has “an identifiable link to terrorist-related activity.” 28 CFR 540.200(a). Once a person is so designated, his or her communications with the outside world are all but eliminated.
I fully expect my conservative and neo-libertarian friends to love such regulations, as they've loved the falsely named PATRIOT Act and other illegal expansions of government power. After all, such individuals tend to believe that anything Bush does is golden. In their minds, once someone is accused of terrorism, rational thought is thrown out the window and hyper-emotional platitudes and logic straw men rule the day. There is no admitting, contrary to the evidence, that thousands, of innocent men, women and children have been imprisoned, interrogated, and in some cases, tortured on the basis of false allegations, fishing expeditions or in retaliation for the actions of third parties.
This regulation is yet another attempt to silence such individuals and their families and friends – similar to the disgusting prior attempt by the Bush Administration to eliminate attorney-client privilege and illegally spy on privileged conversations.
Again I ask, when do the impeachment hearings begin?