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Edited on Sat Nov-15-03 10:02 AM by AP
(by the way, if this were the litmus test for picking a Democratic candidate, you wouldn't have many democrats to chose from. People say Landrieau and Schumer should run for president, or Byrd, or Clinton. People loved Wellstone. All of them voted for the Patriot Act.)
MR. RUSSERT: Those are very serious charges. It prompted The Washington Post to write this editorial: “‘I support dramatic revision of the Patriot Act. The last thing we should be doing is turning over our privacy, our liberties, our freedom, our constitutional rights to John Ashcroft.’ So said North Carolina Senator John Edwards... Surely, then, Mr. Edwards voted against the anti-terrorism law rushed through Congress after September 11. Well, no. When he rose on the Senate floor...he said, ‘The bill’s not perfect, but it is a good bill. It’s important for the nation, and I’m pleased to support it.’ Indeed, Mr. Edwards voted against all four amendments offered by Democratic Senator Russell Feingold to ameliorate some of the civil liberties concerns that Mr. Edwards now seems to feel so keenly—and that the Democratic audiences he is wooing respond to with such fervor... Democrats have enough to run on against President Bush. They don’t need to ignore their records, stray from the facts or take such cheap shots to make their case.” Do you regret your vote for the Patriot Act? SEN. EDWARDS: No, I think there are provisions in the Patriot Act which never get any attention, Tim, that were very good provisions: for example, provisions to deal with some of the information-sharing deficiencies that existed before September 11, provisions that, in fact, bring the law up to date with technology, that allow us to deal in an effective way with some of the money laundering that’s gone on. But I do believe there are provisions in the Patriot Act that can be changed. I can give you a couple of examples. For example, we are now allowing what is called sneak-and-peek searches without notice to the person who’s being searched, in my view, without adequate due process safeguards in place. The same thing is true—and I mentioned this in the statement you just showed—about the ability to go into libraries and bookstores without—and, again, in my judgment—adequate procedural safeguards in place. But if I could just for a moment step back from the Patriot Act, I think this issue’s a lot bigger than that. I think, for example, the administration’s pursuing a policy on what they call enemy combatants that allows them to arrest an American citizen on American soil, put them in prison, keep them there indefinitely. They never see a lawyer, never see a judge, or even get a chance to prove that they’re innocent. You know, to me, this violates absolutely everything we believe in as a nation. So I think there are provisions in ‘the Patriot Act that need to be changed. There are provisions that need to stay in place. And I think there are other policies of this administration that run completely contrary to our civil liberties. MR. RUSSERT: But Senator Feingold tried to amend the Patriot Act dealing with the library provisions, and voted against it. SEN. EDWARDS: And here’s why. The problem with what Russ was doing was he was imposing on the national government, the federal government, a requirement that they meet individual state law requirements. The way to deal with this issue—it’s a national issue. We’re talking about federal law enforcement. They way to deal with this issue is to have national legislation. So if we fixed, for example, the provisions that I just talked about at the national level, that’s the effective response. The response is not to require our national law enforcement agencies to have to meet procedural requirements that exist in 50 different states. MR. RUSSERT: When you go before a Democratic audience and say, “The notion they’re going to libraries to find out what books are being read” or bookstores, what books are being purchased—the Justice Department actually was asked whether that had ever been done, and here’s the response. “The Justice Department, which has repeatedly been accused of encroaching on civil liberties in its war on terrorism, has never actually used a controversial provision of the act that allows it to seek records from libraries, according to a confidential memo from Ashcroft... ‘The number of times the provision’s been used to date is zero.’” So it’s wrong for you to say that that’s being done. SEN. EDWARDS: No. I think that—well, first of all, I have no way of knowing everything that the Justice Department is doing. What I do know is that based on testimony they provided to Congress, they have been—and I think I’m using something close to their language—they have been in touch with libraries and bookstores around the country. Now, what provision they were using to do that, whether it was the Patriot Act or something else, I have no way of knowing. But what I do know, is when the United States Justice Department is contacting libraries and bookstores, it has an enormous chilling effect. And that’s what my concern is about this provision in the Patriot Act. I still believe it needs to be changed. MR. RUSSERT: Some Democrats have a different view: “Joe Biden of Delaware called criticism of the Patriot Act. Dianne Feinstein, (Democrat, California), mounted a strong defense of the Patriot Act, saying she believes that there is substantial uncertainty and perhaps some ignorance about what this bill actually does do and how it’s employed. ...I have never had a single abuse of the Patriot Act reported to me.” Have you? SEN. EDWARDS: To me, personally? No. But the independent inspector general in the Justice Department has found 34 credible complaints under the Patriot Act. I think in the first—if I’ve got the timing right, the first six months of this year, I think it’s a serious issue. I respect Joe Biden and Dianne very much, but I think we know that there have been abuses, and the inspector general’s findings would show that.
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