Being from New Jersey, a lot of people ask me how it is that a guy like myself ended up all the way in Madison. I often reply that there are surprisingly few large colleges located in state capitals, and that such an arrangement provides a natural advantage to a political science student like myself. The Capitol building is mere blocks from my apartment. Between the usual college student activism and the professional kind, opportunities to get involved in politics are boundless. This Sunday we'll get a taste of that when U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., comes to the campus to talk about the Patriot Act.
In late 2001, the Patriot Act sailed through Congress. In a climate of fear after the Sept. 11 attacks, Congress passed a massive bill to expand the police powers of the Justice Department. The idea was that the government needed greater leeway in monitoring potential terrorists, as it was self-evident that terrorist activity in the United States had been able to slip through the cracks. However, almost nobody in Congress realized the degree to which they were tampering with basic constitutional protections. The law empowers the government to secretly wiretap and monitor just about anybody on the government's word that it's in the country's interest to do so. This runs against all notions of due process and security in our persons embodied in the Constitution. U.S. Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, would later remark that, \Everyone voted for it, but it was stupid.""
Passage was definite, so even liberals like Sen. Jon Corzine, D-N.J., or the late Sen. Paul Wellstone supported the law. However, Russ Feingold saw the dangers and became the only senator, who with a few dozen members of the House, voted against it. At the time most media execrated Feingold for going against the security interests of the country. He was said to be a lone skeptic holding up a strawman of government abuse, and this vote would be bound to haunt him in 2004.
Since then, Feingold has been vindicated. The FBI invoked the Patriot Act to look at people's private financial records in an investigation of local government corruption in Nevada. This meant the government took an expansive law about fighting terrorism and applied the increase in state authority to intrude into people's lives where there wasn't even a pretense of terrorism being involved in the case. The government has established no-fly lists, people forbidden from getting on an airplane and without any ability to appeal this classification, even if they were mistakenly put on. Jose Padilla, alleged to be an al Qaeda member, has been held without trial for almost two years without due process. Should Padilla be guilty of what he's been accused of, and he most likely is, the government should have no problem trying him for treason as the framers of our constitution intended. Instead, the government is able to finger anybody it wants and drastically curtail his or her basic freedoms and privacy.
Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, a right-winger if there ever was one, has co-sponsored with Feingold and others a bill to modify the Patriot Act to prevent such abuses from happening and to refocus the narrow purposes of fighting terrorism while preserving our basic liberties. Unfortunately, this law stands no chance of going anywhere. If these questions had been asked the first time around then modifications might have been made, but the Craig-Durbin bill has gone nowhere fast. Russ Feingold was right.
Just don't tell any of this to Republicans in Wisconsin. All three major Republican candidates for Senate have lambasted Feingold on that vote. Businessman Tim Michels even lists it as a major complaint against Feingold on the first page of his Web site. It's gotten to the point where Ed Thompson, brother of our former Republican governor Tommy Thompson, has said he supports Feingold's re-election. Ed Thompson, the chairman of the state Libertarian Party, is supporting one of the most liberal members of Congress, citing Feingold's foresight on the Patriot Act as his major reason.
But don't just take it from me. Go see Russ Feingold this Sunday at the Wisconsin Union Theater, where the topic he'll be discussing is the Patriot Act and why he opposed it. I personally might not be able to be there. Just in case I'm too hung over from Saturday night to make it over, I'll need people to fill the space I could have occupied. Getting political news straight from the horse's mouth is a benefit we have in going to school here, and every citizen should take advantage of it.
Eric Kleefeld is a senior majoring in political science.
