What If 9/11 Never Happened?
Posted August 16, 2006 08:52 AM
Dahlia Lithwick: "Many of the Patriot Act’s most sweeping provisions had been on John Ashcroft’s Christmas wish list for domestic crime fighting long before 9/11 ... September 11 was a useful excuse. Systematic erosions of the warrant requirement, liberal use of presidential signing statements, sweeping notions of what constitutes a "state secret," and efforts to sideline the courts would all merely have been directed at criminals. This was a constitutional shift waiting to happen."
We'd still have the Patriot Act, but Bush's war on culture would be aggravated.
[New York Mag: What If 9/11 Never Happened?]