They're in possession of troubling intelligence
It's sad commentary on our democracy that lost in all the heated debate over a war on terror has been a war much closer to home, waged on the personal freedoms that made America America.
It is astonishing how little attention the Patriot Act and subsequent encroachments have received from the opposition in this year's presidential election - even while Democrats were competing for the nomination. A law and accompanying attitude reminiscent of the Red Scare or Japanese internment - blots on our judgment eclipsed only by slavery - are not campaign issues this year.
In the land that once worried about whether a police officer had made you aware of your rights, Congress has decided it's better to be safe than sorry - or free from undue government intrusion. It has sided with easy wiretaps and personal records investigations, not to mention limitless detentions.
And now we're diverting planes to Maine to protect ourselves from Cat Stevens.
I know, I know. Pop singer Cat Stevens, frequently shirtless in the '70s, the Peace Train guy, now named Yusuf Islam, upset the group 10,000 Maniacs enough to make them stop singing his song years ago when he supported the Ayatollah Khomeini's rabid condemnation of author Salman Rushie. Cat zigged and we zagged. And he was deported from Israel a few years ago because of alleged ties to Hamas. But that was Israel, and that's how they operate. It's not supposed to be our way.
Islam, detained and sent back home to England because he's on a Department of Homeland Security watch list, reported signing a lot of autographs for the FBI. BBC News quoted a Homeland Security spokesman saying "the intelligence community has come into possession of additional information that raises concerns about him." And I have in my possession a list of known communists. (I honestly do, but that's another issue, and none of them is plotting world dominance or water fluoridation).
So this is where Sept. 11, 2001, has brought us. Cat Stevens, who once sang that he'd like to fish from an ice hole or maybe live on a commune, scares us. It's a joke, except for the people whose London-Washington flight was diverted to Maine for an autograph session. If the former pop star has charity ties or some deeper links to terrorists, show us the evidence. That's how our system is supposed to work. You're not supposed to be blacklisted for your words or associations.
Last year at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport, an American-born college student of Pakistani descent needed legal help from the American Civil Liberties Union to set things right after she apparently was strip-searched because her clothing gave away her heritage. She was just trying to get home, to Ohio, and she tripped no metal detectors but she wore a black scarf. There's submitting to inconvenience for the privilege of flight, and then there's racial profiling. Whatever the guards' motives (and I have to wonder, because she was stunningly beautiful) it's nobody's business what goes on under that scarf.
This week the Alaska Civil Liberties Union joined with the American Conservative Union in an advertising campaign to impress upon Congress and candidates for Congress the importance of not expanding on the Patriot Act's powers to persecute. They emphasize that this battle is being joined by liberals and conservatives alike, as evidenced by cooperation by such ideologically mismatched partners as Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, and Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., against government abuse
By last month, 350 communities including Juneau had passed resolutions seeking reform of the Patriot Act. And the Alaska Legislature is among the bodies having taken a stand against the law.
So it's not as if no one has noticed the hyporcisy of fighting terror with a reign of terror, the way they did in the not-so-futuristic film "Brazil." It's just that no one is really doing anything about it.
• Brandon Loomis is city editor of the Juneau Empire and can be reached at brandon.loomis@juneauempire.com.