Coleman made sure there was little oversight

From the Mankato Free Press

Tom Maertens

Future historians will wonder how it was that Americans were stampeded by the Bush administration into sacrificing their civil liberties without a whimper. Since 9/11, in the name of security, various news reports from the Associated Press, New York Times, Boston Globe, U.S. News and World Report and other sources show the Bush Administration has:

• Denied individual’s rights to habeas corpus, trial by impartial jury, legal counsel and knowledge of the evidence against them;
• Employed enforced disappearance/secret prisons;
• Approved the use of torture and other mistreatment;
• Supported use of coerced and hearsay testimony;
• Claimed the right to ignore laws in signing statements;
• Conducted warrantless searches and wiretaps;
• Instituted secret no-fly lists;
• Passed the USA Patriot Act that permits secret arrests, sneak and peek searches and access to many private records;
• Issued 45,000 National Security letters per year, circumventing the FISA court, while issuing gag orders on revealing their existence;
• Intercepted E-mails and phone calls without warrants, starting even before 9/11;
• Engaged CIA’s National Clandestine Service and DOD’s Counterintelligence Field Activity in domestic spying;
• Spied on Greenpeace, Quakers, Catholic Workers, and 150 more domestic organizations that were carrying out peaceful protest.
• Passed the Military Commissions Act that allows U.S. citizens to be held as “enemy combatants” without habeas corpus or intervention by a court;
• Argued before Congress (by Steven Bradbury, Justice Department) that the president may order domestic assassinations of terrorist suspects.

What enabled Bush’s subversion of the Constitution was a rubber-stamp Republican Congress of loyalist stooges like Norm Coleman, who ensured that the oversight committee he chaired never uttered a peep in protest.