The Florida Times-Union
CARL
NEIL CANNON
Publisher
PATRICK A. YACK
Editor
MICHAEL RICHEY
Managing Editor
ROBERT E. MARTIN
General Manager
LLOYD BROWN
Editorial Page Editor
Jacksonville, Monday; February 2, 2004
DOMESTIC SECURITY
War changes things
U
. ..."
nless it chooses to ignore
'..
its own carefully stated
and time. tested
precedent, the U.S.
Supreme Court almost certainly
will reinstate portions of the
.
Patriot Act struck down by a liberal
federal judge.
Judge Audrey
Collins, a
California-based
Clinton appointee,
said the 2001 law
violated con-
stitutional
gtiarantees of free
speech and due
process when it
barred giving,
"expert advice or
assistance" to groups designated
as foreign terrorists. While it's OK
to outlaw advice on carrying out
acts of violence, she wrote, a strict
reading of the law might also
prohibit helping such groups
achieve their goals peacefully.
Al-Qaida deals strictly in
violence. It doesn't circulate
petitions or run candidates. If any
terrorist group wants to become a
political party, let it disavow
violence and prove itself sincere
with the reasonable passage of
time. Then, it could be reclassified.
During the Civil War, according to
The Complete
Book
of u.s.
Presidents
by William Degregorio,
Abraham Lincoln suspended the
writ of habeas corpus, permitted
military arrests and court-
martialed civilian anti-war
activists.
Encyclopaedia Britannica says a
Democrat congressman named
Clement Vallandigham was among
those sentenced by a military
commission to prison for speaking
out against the war and president.
He lost an appeal to the Supreme
Court.
Woodrow Wilson, that great icon
of Collins' own political party,
confiscated the property of
German nationals and prosecuted
citizens for non-violent anti-war
activities during World War I.
Among those convicted was
five- time Socialist
presidential
candidate Eugene
Debs, who was
sentenced to 10
years in prison.
Also, Degregorio
notes, Wilsons
administration
"vigorously
enforced mail
censorship,
banning leftist literature and
hiring an army of censors to .
examine the contents of some
125,000 pieces of suspicious mail
daily."
.
Franklin Roosevelt herded
120,000 Japanese-Americans into
internment camps, against the
advice of his top aides and J. Edgar
Hoover, without a trial and in most
cases without specific reason to
suspect disloyalty, during World
War II.
In Schenck vs. United States, the
Supreme Court upheld the
conviction of World War I draft
protesters. Justice Oliver Wendell
Holmes, in the majority opinion,
set the standard on free speech
during wartime.
"When a nation is at war,"
Holmes wrote, "many things that
might be said in time of peace are
such a hindrance to its efforts ...
that no court could regard them as
protected by any constitutional
right."
If it is permissible to jail draft
protesters during wartime, surely
it is also OK to prohibit consorting
with the enemy.