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Friday, March 23, 2007

Real American Hero

The breakup of unified Republican control of government has restored the checks and balances to our democracy and few examples have illustrated it as well as this letter from a citizen who was served a National Security Letter and refused to take it sitting down.

These letters have been sent to citizens by the FBI - over 140,000 of them since 2003 - to demand certain sensitive information. The letters, authorized by the "Patriot" Act, require no judicial oversight and are accompanied by a gag order preventing the recipient from telling anyone that they've even received the letter. In other words, it's something you'd expect to hear about in a spy movie about Communist Russia, not in the United States.

This citizen refused to give up his rights. He sought legal counsel from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and was successful in getting the FBI to back off from its information request. However, the FBI refused to remove the gag order and this man is still prevented from telling his family and friends about the letter he received, its contents, or why he's been meeting with so many lawyers.

So, even after successfully defending his right to habeus corpus, the man continues the fight for civil liberties. In his anonymous letter to the Washington Post - anonymous to protect him from breaking the gag order - he argues that, among other things, the gag order violates his right to petition his representatives for changes to the Patriot Act, because he is barred from discussing his receipt of said letter.

This man, unlike the Republican-sponsored legislation, is no pretender to the term "patriot" and no stranger to the cause of liberty.

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