Where Credit is Due
OK, so the Democratic Party Platform isn't interested in rolling back any of the Fourth Amendment-shredding and drug war-expanding that generations of Democrats have been culpable in, but there are some civil libertarian ideas in the document, mostly tied in with executive power expansion and Bush Administration policies in the War on Terror. Here's a relevant (and good) chunk:
As we combat terrorism, we must not sacrifice the American values we are fighting to protect. In recent years, we've seen an Administration put forward a false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we demand. The Democratic Party rejects this dichotomy. We will restore our constitutional traditions, and recover our nation's founding commitment to liberty under law.
We support constitutional protections and judicial oversight on any surveillance program involving Americans. We will review the current Administration's warrantless wiretapping program. We reject illegal wiretapping of American citizens, wherever they live. We reject the use of national security letters to spy on citizens who are not suspected of a crime. We reject the tracking of citizens who do nothing more than protest a misguided war. We reject torture. We reject sweeping claims of "inherent" presidential power. We will revisit the Patriot Act and overturn unconstitutional executive decisions issued during the past eight years. We will not use signing statements to nullify or undermine duly enacted law. […]
We will not ship away prisoners in the dead of night to be tortured in far off countries, or detain without trial or charge prisoners who can and should be brought to justice for their crimes, or maintain a network of secret prisons to jail people beyond the reach of the law. We will respect the time-honored principle of habeas corpus, the seven century-old right of individuals to challenge the terms of their own detention that was recently reaffirmed by our Supreme Court. We will close the detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, the location of so many of the worst constitutional abuses in recent years. With these necessary changes, the attention of the world will be directed where it belongs: on what terrorists have done to us, not on how we treat suspects.
I just wish some of that righteous principle would be brought to bear on the more widespread domestic civil-libertarian concerns such as eminent domain abuse, the federalization of crime, the regulation of political speech, and various obscenity crackdowns. What the Founders warned us about wartime power-grabbing has equal relevance to domestic and urban policy as well.
