The War on Civil Liberties: How Bush and Ashcroft Have Dismantled the Bill of Rights

by Elaine Cassel

Examining the legal foundations of the war on terror, this book investigates the loss of the civil liberties of American citizens and legal immigrants. In a detailed look at bills such as the 1996... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1556525559
• ISBN13: 9781556525551
• Release Date: September 2004
• Publisher: Chicago Review Press
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.4" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

AFTER PATRIOT ACT II THIS REMAINS THE BOOK FOR EACH AMERICAN TO READ

WAtch the dissolution of our once great and honored BIll of RIghts. We must read this book and weep for our lost once great nation. It is time to take action now. IT is never too llate. Never surrender. Read this book. Famously we americans do not know our own constitution. We have been reduced to honoring a tri-color military banner once used for positioning on battlefields. We do not know our own Consitution, anymore than most self-proclaimed religious people have studied the Bible. We are ignorant of our own great Bill of Rights, and when we hear for the first time the rights we have, we figure it must be some communist liberal document. It is the rights our forefathers fought and died for. IT is the rights we now have lost forever. REad this book and weep, grieve, and act.

The War on Civil Liberties

I cannot think of a title for this review more clever and apt than Cassel's. If David Cole is the Samuel Adams of our time, then Elaine Cassel is the Mercy Otis Warren. This book takes on the herculean task of documenting the erosion of civil rights and liberties during the Bush/Ashcroft regime. To the extent that some topics about which she writes have been superseded by events (such as the Supreme Court's enemy combatant decisions, the 9/11 Commission Report, and the revelation of the government's torture memos), Cassel is the first to recognize that her subject matter is a moving target, with daily incursions that make up-to-the-minute comprehensiveness impossible. However, her book is still timely and current events only augment her point and serve as an "a fortiori" argument. Not only does Cassel do a great job synethsizing the numerous instances in which we have surrendered liberty to purchase security, but she shows how this is a false tradeoff and offers real solutions, from staying informed to voting. One can only hope that this book will become a victim of its own success, but we will have to wait until November to see. Meanwhile, for a cogent and important argument about how our leaders have eagerly sacrificed civil liberties in the name of fighting terrorism -- and how this strategy is unnecessary, unwise and unconstitutional -- this book is a must-read.