Phyllis Schlafly
Constitutional Rights Should Trump Terrorism Regs
Wed Oct 17 21:13:07 2001


Constitutional Rights Should Trump Terrorism Regs
October 3, 2001

After the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, the Left moved quickly to use it as an excuse to
enact draconian federal gun control. Fortunately, saner heads prevailed by showing that no
new gun control laws would have been the slightest deterrent to that tragedy.

In the wake of the World Trade Center disaster, we certainly need defensive measures to
prevent another occurrence and to ensure the safety of air travel, as well as the offensive
measures already initiated by President Bush. But confiscating pocket knives and sewing
scissors from little old ladies will do nothing to fill the now-empty planes with confident
passengers.

The threat of terrorism comes from an identifiable group of alien males, between the ages of
20 and 35, whom our government has willfully or negligently allowed to live and travel in the
United States. Yet, in the thousands of print articles and television and radio segments that
have recorded the events of 9/11 and their aftermath, one has to search with a microscope
to find any mention of the government's culpability in regard to immigration and visa
practices.

Since the 19 hijackers are all dead, there is no national security reason that can justify
withholding information about them from the American public. We want the answers to so
many questions.

Who were the immigration officials who let them into our country and under what pretenses?
What did the hijackers say on their visa applications and airport arrival cards, and who
okayed those documents as legally filled out and signed?

What was the hijackers' previous employment and country of emigration? Who were their
U.S. guarantors of employment after arrival in the United States?

Who is responsible for failing to keep track of them in this country and failing to expel them
when their visas expired? Most if not all of the hijackers were illegally in this country
because their visas had expired.

It's time that the American people wake up to how the Left has practically deified such
concepts as "multiculturalism," "tolerance," "diversity," "political correctness," and "melting
pot," while demonizing such concepts as "profiling" and "conspiracy." All cultures are not
equally deserving of respect, we should be highly restrictive about who we allow into our
country, it was an identifiable group that perpetrated the 9/11 atrocity, aliens are not entitled
to the same rights as citizens, and it certainly had to be a criminal conspiracy to hijack four
planes simultaneously.

We cannot tolerate new security measures that treat citizens and aliens alike, such as a
national I.D. card. Any new legislation must make that clear distinction because American
citizens are not willing to live in a police state.

As one example of government overreaching, the Justice Department has just asked
Congress to permanently amend FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) to
authorize the Departments of Justice and Education to get student education records in
order to assist in investigating terrorism. For 27 years, FERPA has been a good and
respected guardian of student privacy rights in their school and college grades.

The only way such legislation could be tolerable is if it applies only to aliens. Stopping
terrorism does not require federal bureaucrats to snoop through the academic records of
law-abiding students and graduates.

President Bush's announcement of a new Cabinet-level Office of Homeland Security, with as
yet undefined duties, is neither new nor reassuring. In 1999, President Clinton's Deputy
Secretary of Defense John Hamre floated the idea of creating a Homelands Defense
Command under which a unit of U.S. troops, commanded by a four-star general, would take
charge in case of a terrorist attack on U.S. soil.

Discussion of such plans within the Clinton Administration included an article in the Autumn
1997 "Parameters," the scholarly publication of the Army War College. The article predicted
that "the growing prospect of terrorism in our own country . . . will almost inevitably trigger
an intervention by the military," and "legal niceties or strict construction of prohibited
conduct will be a minor concern."

Clinton issued a Presidential Decision Directive to authorize military intervention against
terrorism on our own soil. Secretary of Defense William Cohen said in an Army Times
interview that "Terrorism is escalating to the point that Americans soon may have to choose
between civil liberties and more intrusive means of protection."

The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 is supposed to protect us against a President using the
Army to enforce the law against civilians. Later laws, however, have carved out a number of
exceptions that authorize the President, after proclaiming a state of emergency, to send
active- duty soldiers to respond to a crisis and serve under the direction of the Federal
Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

Our limited experience with law enforcement by the U.S. military is not reassuring. When
U.S. Army tanks stormed the Branch Davidian compound in Waco in 1993, scores of
innocent people were killed.

As Rep. Bob Barr (R-GA) stated last week, "We must not allow our constitutional freedoms
to become victims of these violent attacks. ... We should first examine why the attacks
occurred."

Phyllis Schlafly column 10-03-01

http://eagleforum.org/column/2001/oct01/01-10-03.shtml