“When John Ashcroft Thinks You Have a Civil Liberties Problem…”

Gary Farber at Amygdala takes the early lead in the contest for best post title of 2006. Read.

You may remember John Ashcroft from such remarks as

To those who pit Americans against immigrants, and citizens against non-citizens; to those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty; my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists — for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America’s enemies, and pause to America’s friends. They encourage people of good will to remain silent in the face of evil.

But in the good old days, when there was a Democrat in the White House, Ashcroft used to worry a lot about government intrusion into our communications:

There is a concern that the Internet could be used to commit crimes and that advanced encryption could disguise such activity. However, we do not provide the government with phone jacks outside our homes for unlimited wiretaps. Why, then, should we grant government the Orwellian capability to listen at will and in real time to our communications across the Web?

The protections of the Fourth Amendment are clear. The right to protection from unlawful searches is an indivisible American value. Two hundred years of court decisions have stood in defense of this fundamental right. The state’s interest in effective crime-fighting should never vitiate the citizens’ Bill of Rights.

Maybe there was still a little bit of the old Ashcroft left when Bush’s people came to him in the hospital to get his blessing on their illegal use of the NSA to spy on Americans.