Word: ashcroft
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...Winners JOHN ASHCROFT Musical A.G. wows Letterman crowd with pop songs, then announces he'd like hair and urine samples from every Muslim in the audience STEVE IRWIN "Crocodile Guy" made $8.7 million last year. Too bad insurance premiums for sticking your head in a crocodile's jaw are three times that ELIZABETH HURLEY Ex-covergirl may get millions for the story of her son Damian's birth. Meanwhile, Hugh Grant is trying desperately to impregnate himself Losers DAVID BECKHAM England's top footballer breaks foot, may miss World Cup. For our American readers, that's like the Rock getting...
...this law, the USA Patriot Act, said nothing about restricting traditional lawyer-client confidentiality. As finally adopted, the Act softened several of the Bush Administration's initial proposals that most worried civil libertarians. These adjustments were part of the healthy give and take of the democratic legislative process. Ashcroft's regulation simply sidesteps the Constitution's careful system of legislative checks and balances, and indeed drew angry responses in November from Senate leaders who were not even informed of the published regulation, much less consulted beforehand...
...regulation also circumvents the judiciary. Ashcroft says that he alone - and not a judge - should decide whether a given inmate is too dangerous to speak privately with a lawyer. The charges against Stewart, however, were based on evidence acquired in the traditional way, with judicial approval of surveillance directed at the sheik and the lawyer. This indictment would seem to suggest that the traditional system works pretty well...
...Perhaps Ashcroft fears that even honest attorneys may unwittingly transmit some innocent-sounding code word - "rosebud" - to terrorists on the loose. Providing lawyers with security briefings about what to watch out for would reduce this risk. And instead of putting federal agents in the room where inmates meet lawyers, the government could videotape the conversations in exceptional cases. These tapes could be reviewed in private by a judge with top-security clearance and briefing. Unless the judge found lawyer-client misconduct, executive officials would be denied access to the tapes...
...Thus, there are ways to deal with improper lawyering that are less intrusive to traditional lawyer-client confidentiality than Ashcroft's approach. If new rules are needed to prevent new threats, America should frame such measures democratically, in a process that involves the legislature, the courts, and the people. In that process those zealous for liberty can be heard alongside those zealous for security...