Dan Eggens’ article in the Washington Post confirms many suspicions across the nation that much of the anti-terror laws that republicans shook hands over was really operation salivate for conservative lawmakers. The 60-page report submitted to the House Judiciary Committee points to gross misuse of the powers granted under the post-9/11 fear factor, to pursue violations relating to drugs, bank theft, and credit card fraud.

“Tim Edgar, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, said the report confirms fears that justice and the FBI would abuse some of their new powers. ‘many of these terrorism powers were actually being asked for as a way of increasing the government’s authority in other area’s’ Edgar said.” Eggen’s report shows an ugly by-product of a law signed back on 10/26/01, and confirms suspicions of what could result from secret interrogations and prosecutions, delayed detentions, and searches and seizures at a whim, all done to anyone at anytime the government chooses.

My initial concern was that when said terrorism ceases to be a threat, the government would quietly go after all the domestic undesirables they’ve always wanted like they did back from the ‘50’s through the ‘70’s. But leave it to Attorney General John Ashcroft to exceed even my expectations. According to the Post: “The report plays down the government’s use of some of the most controversial new powers. For example the report said that fewer than 10 FBI field offices have conducted investigations involving visits to mosques, and all but one were connected to ongoing criminal inquiries.”

The report couldn’t have made the House Judiciary Committee too happy since it was that very Patriot Act that Republican House Leadership used to nullify an antiterrorism bill that addressed the concerns that evidently have now become a reality. According to author Nancy Chang: “In the Senate, the vote in favor of the USA Patriot Act was 98 to 1, in the House, the vote was 356 to 66. This hastily drafted complex, and far-reaching legislation spans 342 pages, yet it was passed with virtually no public hearing or debate, and it is accompanied by neither a conference report nor a committee report.”

But such is the case with this bill, you can’t really even call it Patriot Act improprieties, since it sounds like an oxymoron, and is basically tailor-made to undermine your civil liberties. At its core racial profiling, legalized profiling, seems to be the lawmakers’ base desire, and their ignition that drives the suspect to months of highly questionable confinement, perhaps even a final destination with the electric chair, with little or no contact with an attorney. The rub is, the man over these measures is the Attorney General himself, Ashcroft. As expected the first targets of the initiative were people of middle-eastern appearance, the hope was, who would question government at a time like this when terror just looms in the air? As time went on however, we’ve come to know that even the suicide crashes of 9/11 were preventable.

The same FBI that warned the Bush administration of terrorists being trained to fly at expensive American commercial aviation schools before 9/11-only to be ignored-is now having constraints lifted to include non-terror suspects, and soon, poor working-class American citizens and minorities. Is anyone safe?