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Riva Enteen is the program director for the San Francisco chapter of the National
Lawyers Guild.  She spoke with KPFA's Guns
and Butter radio team for a show that aired today, January 15, 2003. 
Topics covered include the rise of police state powers, and the fact that
restrictions serve interests other than so-called security, that in fact were
the government interested in long-term security radically different measures would need to be taken.  She discusses how
elements of the USA Patriot Act and 30
executive orders (as of August, 2002) directly violate the Constitution to
such an extent that they are grounds for impeachment.  She speaks about
the local communities passing resolutions to protest and limit the USA
Patriot Act's power, but cautions that with the executive orders and the passage
of the Homeland Security Act, the threats we face are coming from multiple
fronts.

Some media commentators have attempted to spin the issue about legislators
not reading the so-called USA Patriot Act before passing it.  Riva Enteen
researched what happened, and notes that we were not just dealing with lazy
legislators, but an actual and explicit political decision to ram the legislation
through without review.  She notes:

"There is a requirement that legislation be available to read
before voting ... But that requirement can be suspended by the rules committee,
and the rules committee voted to suspend that requirement.  And that
rules committee decision had to be voted on by the Congress.  What was
interesting is that it was a closed vote in the House;  it was eight
votes apart.  So, almost half the House said, "Excuse me, but can we
just get a chance to read it before we vote on it?"  It was close,
but we lost by eight votes.  And when it came to an up or down vote (the
final vote for the bill), it was a landslide because everybody is lockstep
with this government because it's all in the name of fighting terrorism."

Listen to the program.  Burn CDs of the MP3 and share it with friends. 
The program runs for just under 59 minutes.  It's a large mp3:  about
24 megs.  But it's well worth the download time.  This is one of the
most fact filled interviews I've heard on the subject to date.

It's also worth pointing out an ACLU press release and report -- also
released on January 15th.  The ACLU details the fact that "Big Brother
Is No Longer A Fiction."  Click
here to pull up an Indymedia page for further reading.