Opinion: Congress and courts should rein in Ashcroft

Attorney General John Ashcroft seems to have forgotten that the role of the Justice Department is to pursue justice, which in this country is defined in part as the enforcement the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Instead, Ashcroft is determined to ignore our courts and laws in order to incarcerate citizens deemed to be "enemy combatants" as expeditiously as possible. His plan of using a "high-level committee" rather than judicial review in deciding which citizens should be detained without due process removes the protections created by the separation of executive and judicial power and leads to exactly the kind of tyranny that our country's founders tried to prevent.

We can only hope that the courts and legislature take action to remind Ashcroft that he must adhere to our Constitution and laws. And then we can only hope that he doesn't ignore them.
-- Christopher Hannigan, St. Petersburg

Stop shredding the Constitution

Re: Ashcroft's camp for citizens is scary.

Professor Jonathan Turley's article on Attorney General John Ashcroft's planned "camp" for those he considers the enemy scared me to death. Ashcroft needs to read the Constitution with understanding and stop tearing it to shreds.

This plan -- and others Ashcroft proposes and some that he has put in place -- harkens back to the infamous Alien and Sedition Acts of the 1790s and revives ugly memories of Sen. Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s. The country neither needs nor deserves either approach.

I would hope that the administration and Congress would put a stop to such hysteria and do it now.

While this letter may result in my being invited to go to camp, I'll take that chance; I have more faith and trust in our Constitution than does Attorney General Ashcroft.
-- William F. Davenport Jr., St. Petersburg

A frightening grab for power

Re: John Ashcroft's proposed "camp" policy.

Perhaps I am paranoid, but I find John Ashcroft's ideas about internment camps for our fellow citizens as frightening as anything I have read. His demanding unilateral authority to decide that someone is an "enemy combatant" and thus send him to a camp seems a good reason for the rest of us to consider joining the ACLU.

Just for argument's sake, try to define "enemy combatant" while keeping in mind these are American citizens. Just imagine a Nixonesque personality with an "enemy's list" and no judicial control over who is placed on this list. The thought of this must engender comparisons to the purges of Stalin and Mao -- to say nothing of the elimination political opposition as practiced by the fascists we fought to destroy. Interesting, they also called their destinations "camps."

Lord Acton's 1887 admonition that ". . . absolute power corrupts absolutely" is valid still. We have a balance of powers or at least we have had for 200-plus years; the judicial process is key to maintaining this balance. We also have laws for treason that are within our Constitution. Do we need John Ashcroft to tell us what Madison and Jefferson said was wrong?

We can only hope that there are people with a clearer understanding of what our constitutional liberties provide for us as citizens and that those same people will not allow this attorney general powers that are in excess of any of those used by his predecessors.
-- Thomas I. Hayes, St. Petersburg

Political self-aggrandizement

Re: Photo of President Bush, Page 1, Aug. 16.

That photo of President Bush posing as the fifth face on Mount Rushmore is the most vulgar display of political self-aggrandizement I have ever seen. What is perhaps most disturbing, though, is that Bush was using this setting to push for legislation that would strip civil service protection from employees of the proposed Homeland Security Department. This would leave the men and women who are charged with protecting us without any protection from the political whims of partisan leadership.

Fighting terrorism effectively is going to require intelligence, including intelligence that tells leaders things they may not want to hear; civil service protection helps ensure that those charged with analyzing and relaying such intelligence are at least safe from being fired for doing their jobs.
-- Susan Hofstader, St. Petersburg

Take a Rushmore measure

Talk about getting some perspective. The front page picture on Aug. 16 of George W. Bush's face juxtaposed with those of Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt and Lincoln made me laugh until I nearly fell down in my front yard. Then I was sobered by the realization that there is little humor in the decline in quality of the men we have elevated to the role of leader of this great country.

I think all future presidents should pose for a picture beneath the visages of Mount Rushmore. It is an appropriate standard by which we should judge the "leader of the free world."
-- Bill Ellis, St. Petersburg

Think twice about chemical insecticides

Re: What's bugging environmentalists?, by Michelle Malkin, Aug. 13.

I was living in New York in the summer of 1999 when West Nile virus first appeared in the Western Hemisphere. Indeed the virus was a scary thing. Although, what turned out to be scarier than the virus was the rampant spraying of toxins on the people of New York from helicopters and trucks.

To this day, there is no evidence that the aerial or truck spraying of insecticides has helped reduce the risk of contracting West Nile virus. It has been an aggressive public education campaign initiated by a coalition of environmentalists and health professionals that has reduced the incidents of West Nile virus in New York State.

It does not make sense to widely spray a toxic chemical like malathion (used in New York City), which is harmful to children, the elderly and people with compromised immune systems, to protect them from a disease that primarily affects that same population of people. New York health departments have come to realize this and are no longer using insecticides to kill adult mosquitoes, but have adopted a surveillance and prevention strategy.

Malkin should think twice about using chemical insecticides to protect her and her family from vector-borne diseases such as West Nile virus. It is irresponsible to call insecticides safe. A quick visit to the Environmental Protection Agency's Web site, http://www.epa.gov/, will reveal that no pesticides can be considered 100 percent safe, and DEET cannot be labeled as child-safe. The one tool that we have to protect us from West Nile virus is an educated public.

Please, visit http://www.citizenscampaign.org/ to learn more about what you can do to fight West Nile virus.
-- Tom Wheatley, Tampa

Look for a middle ground

Michelle Malkin's column on the West Nile virus (What's bugging environmentalists?, Aug. 13.) is a great example of overstatement. Though her point is a bit diffused by her ranting, her position seems to be that governments should use whatever toxic substances they have on hand in an all-out effort to exterminate mosquitoes, and damn the consequences, the assumption being that that will eliminate the West Nile virus. Well, it won't.

Though I share her disdain for supergreen environmentalists, taking the extreme opposite position doesn't help anything either. If we could disregard the lunatic fringe at both ends we might discover a middle ground with rational solutions that could lessen the danger of the virus without wholesale destruction. For example, a nontoxic water treatment that releases the surface tension on the water, causing insects that land on it to drown. Obviously more than just mosquitoes would be affected, but it would be far fewer species than poisons would kill. And it wouldn't endanger fish, birds or humans.

Her suggestion that the benefits of insecticides and pesticides will far outweigh the risk is both dangerous and misleading. It is far from a rational assessment, even if it is shared by a majority of Americans. Every species of insect, bird and fish fits into our environment, and sacrificing any of them in a knee-jerk response is not a solution. Years ago we didn't know much about phosphates either, and allowed farmers to treat their land without controls. Only afterward did we discover the downside.

Wholesale destruction of everything that flies or crawls will create more problems than it solves, and so will a hands-off, let-nature-take-its-course attitude. The answer lies somewhere in between, but it will take rational thinking to find it.
-- Ray David, Land O'Lakes

Go back to spraying

Re: Mosquitoes.

I have an opinion as to why the West Nile virus is spreading so fast. I think one reason is environmental efforts. Remember years back at the start of the mosquito season there used to be mosquito trucks out. Because of concern for the environment, the mosquito spraying was stopped. I think that the spraying should be started again.
-- John R. Bollinger, St. Petersburg

Maybe the Europeans have it right

Re: The price of leisure, Aug. 12.

I read with great interest the article about the disparity in the number of hours and days that workers in Europe and the United States put in during a typical year. I was surprised that you missed the point of the European system. It's not about making money! It's about the quality of life.

Quality of life does not necessarily mean GNP or economic growth rate. My wife and I just returned from about a month in the United Kingdom and Ireland, our eighth trip abroad, and we hear, when we are there, about the "workaholic Americans" who don't take the time to enjoy life and only think of money.

What we did see was a society that was relatively safe from violent crime, people who were extremely helpful with any problems we encountered in getting around in their countries, a less stressed-out population than is generally found in the United States, much more courtesy on the highways (merge really does mean merge, not "You're not getting in here, you expletive deleted!"), and much more tolerance for cultural and racial differences. Maybe the Europeans are the ones who have got it right, and we should learn from them, not the other way around. Money truly can't buy happiness. They seem to have figured it out. I have my doubts about us.
-- Steve Fisher, Zephyrhills

Share your opinions

Letters for publication should be addressed to Letters to the Editor, P.O. Box 1121, St. Petersburg, FL 33731. They also can be sent by fax to (727) 893-8675.

They should be brief and must include the writer's name, address and phone number. Please include a handwritten signature when possible.

Letters may be edited for clarity, taste and length. We regret that not all letters can be published.

For e-mail users: Letters can be sent by e-mail to letters@sptimes.com. E-mail messages must be text only and cannot include attachments. If you're using a word processing program to write the message, you must use its ''Save as'' function to save it as a text file, then import it into your e-mail program. Please include your return e-mail address, as well as your name, mailing address and phone number, in the text of the message.

Back to Opinion

Contact the Times | Privacy Policy
Standard of Accuracy | Terms, Conditions & Copyright

From the Times
Opinion page