SAD STORIES FROM AMERICA'S PAST

MARJORIE COHN, PORTSIDE - In 1798, the Federalist-led Congress,
capitalizing on the fear of war, passed the four Alien and Sedition Acts
to stifle dissent against the Federalist Party's political agenda. The
Naturalization Act extended the time necessary for immigrants to reside
in the U.S. because most immigrants sympathized with the Republicans.

The Alien Enemies Act provided for the arrest, detention and deportation
of male citizens of any foreign nation at war with the United States.
Many of the 25,000 French citizens living in the U.S. could have been
expelled had France and America gone to war, but this law was never
used. The Alien Friends Act authorized the deportation of any
non-citizen suspected of endangering the security of the U.S.
government; the law lasted only two years and no one was deported under
it.

The Sedition Act provided criminal penalties for any person who wrote,
printed, published, or spoke anything "false, scandalous and malicious"
with the intent to hold the government in "contempt or disrepute." The
Federalists argued it was necessary to suppress criticism of the
government in time of war. The Republicans objected that the Sedition
Act violated the First Amendment, which had become part of the
Constitution seven years earlier. Employed exclusively against
Republicans, the Sedition Act was used to target congressmen and
newspaper editors who criticized President John Adams.

Subsequent examples of laws passed and actions taken as a result of
fear-mongering during periods of xenophobia are the Espionage Act of
1917, the Sedition Act of 1918, the Red Scare following World War I, the
forcible internment of people of Japanese descent during World War II,
and the Alien Registration Act of 1940 (the Smith Act).


During the McCarthy period of the 1950s, in an effort to eradicate the
perceived threat of communism, the government engaged in widespread
illegal surveillance to threaten and silence anyone who had an
unorthodox political viewpoint. Many people were jailed, blacklisted and
lost their jobs. Thousands of lives were shattered as the FBI engaged in
"red-baiting."

One month after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, United
States Attorney General John Ashcroft rushed the U.S.A. Patriot Act
through a timid Congress. The Patriot Act created a crime of domestic
terrorism aimed at political activists who protest government policies,
and set forth an ideological test for entry into the United States.

In 1944, the Supreme Court upheld the legality of the internment of
Japanese and Japanese-American citizens in Korematsu v. United States.
Justice Robert Jackson warned in his dissent that the ruling would "lie
about like a loaded weapon ready for the hand of any authority that can
bring forward a plausible claim of an urgent need."

That day has come with the Military Commissions Act of 2006. It provides
the basis for the President to round- up both aliens and U.S. citizens
he determines have given material support to terrorists. Kellogg Brown &
Root, a subsidiary of Cheney's Halliburton, is constructing a huge
facility at an undisclosed location to hold tens of thousands of
undesirables.

In his 1928 dissent in Olmstead v. United States, Justice Louis Brandeis
cautioned, "The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious
encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding."
Seventy- three years later, former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer,
speaking for a zealous President, warned Americans "they need to watch
what they say, watch what they do."