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Civil Liberties and Mobilization Information in Press Coverage of the USA
PATRIOT Act
For Consideration in the AEJMC 2003 Convention Newspaper Division
And
MacDougall Student Paper Award
Jessica Matthews
Integrated Graduate Student (BA & MA) in Telecommunications
Pennsylvania State University
415W. College Apt. 604
State College, PA 16802
[log in to unmask]
(570)971-3581
Abstract
This paper provides a baseline for the amount of newspaper coverage of the
USA PATRIOT Act and proposes a new method for content analysis that
measures salience by considering every story that refers to the Act and the
number of references per story. It expands the idea of mobilization
information to issue awareness during the legislative process and finds
that civil liberties concerns represent a complex issue for the press.
Civil Liberties and Mobilization Information in Press Coverage of the USA
PATRIOT Act
Introduction
The USA PATRIOT Act of 2001, passed in response to the events of September
11, was the first post-911 challenge for the press to balance the issues of
rising government power with civil rights concerns as well as privacy and
safety. Containing three hundred and fifty subject areas, effecting forty
federal agencies, and twenty-one legal amendments and passed in just six
weeks, the USA PATRIOT Act represents a formidable test for balanced press
coverage of the sweeping regulation (Mendoza, 2001).
Newspaper coverage of this legislation represents press patterns for policy
coverage in the post-911 news media environment and sets a precedent for
government and media interaction during the "War on Terror." This pilot
study provides a baseline for the amount of newspaper coverage of the USA
PATRIOT Act and investigates the following aspects of the coverage:
1. For major newspaper coverage, what is the relationship between the
number of stories only mentioning the Act and the number of stories about
the Act?
2. For major newspaper coverage, what are the characteristics of stories
mentioning civil liberties?
3. For major newspaper coverage, how much of the coverage of the Act
mentions the name of the legislation?
4. For major newspaper coverage, what is the nature of stories published
before the Act passed and stories published after the Act passed?
Literature Review
Just six days after the September 11 terrorist attacks Attorney General
John Ashcroft presented congressional leaders with the Bush
Administration's proposal to strengthen anti-terrorism legislation. The
proposal, called the Mobilization Against Terrorism Act, was designed to
punish terrorists, prevent terrorism, and destroy terrorist
organizations. The Mobilization Again Terrorism Act dealt with many areas
including immigration, intelligence gathering, money laundering, and
criminal justice. The administration was mainly looking to broaden the
abilities of the intelligence community to conduct roving searches of
people suspected of terrorist involvement, to detain people suspected of
terrorist involvement, and remove statues of limitations on crimes of
terrorism. They also wanted expanded powers for the Department of Justice
to place wiretaps on phones and computer terminals of suspected terrorists
or anyone having connection to suspected terrorists (Evans, 2002).
The Mobilization Against Terrorism Act was the foundation for the Provide
Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (PATRIOT)
Act of 2001 introduced by the House of Representatives and the Uniting and
Strengthening America (USA) Act of 2001 introduced by the Senate, which
became the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 (Evans, 2002).
On October 2, 2001 the PATRIOT Act was introduced in the House of
Representatives. The Uniting and Strengthening America (USA) Act of 2001
was introduced in the Senate two days later. The Senate approved its
version of the bill with a vote of ninety-six to one and the next day the
House approved its version of the bill with a vote of three hundred
thirty-seven to seventy-nine (Evans, 2002).
The House and Senate bills went even farther than the Bush Administration's
proposal by creating a provision allowing secret searches of a suspect's
property. A letter written by the ACLU and backed by 180 other national
organizations warned congress not to pass the bill too quickly saying, an
act "passed immediately makes it almost impossible for the majority of the
Congress to understand the implications of pending bills" (Murphy & Nojeim,
2001, p.1). However, the Senate debated the final version of the bill for
only one day. The Senate passed its version of the bill on October 11 and
the House passed its version on October 12. On October 25, 2001, Congress
passed the USA PATRIOT Act and President Bush signed it into law the next
day (Evans, 2002).
Evans (2002) believes that the Act goes too far and criticizes the
expansion of the role of the director of the CIA in domestic intelligence
gathering, the broadening of surveillance powers for the intelligence
community, and the limitations for judicial oversight of the surveillance,
and the ability of judges to issue a search warrant without the persons
name or location on it. She states "Ultimately, the USA PATRIOT Act sets
aside the all too important protections guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment
in the name of fighting terrorism" (Evans, 2002).
Germain (2002) also criticized the new ability the USA PATRIOT Act gives to
the Attorney General to "certify" non-citizens as suspected
terrorists. This means non-citizens could be detained indefinitely with
only reasonable grounds to believe they would engage in terrorist activity
(Germain, 2002).
Coen (2001) refers to the USA PATRIOT Act as a serious erosion of American
civil liberties. Her review of ABC, NBC, and CBS's coverage of the Patriot
Act, showed that the media nearly ignored this issue. Though there was
little coverage of the Act, when it was covered there was always some
suggestion that these new measures were necessary. Neither CBS Evening
News nor NBC Nightly News covered the first round of debate about the
legislation at all (Coen, 2001).
Lewis (2002) mentions the USA PATRIOT Act as one of many new government
actions that limit civil liberties. Lewis (2002) states, "We are talking
about a tectonic shift from past decades in how our Freedom of Information
laws and commonly held principles of openness and government accountability
are administered and adhered to by those in power" (p.84). She also noted
that broader powers to monitor e-mail and telephone communication given by
the USA PATRIOT Act could potentially be used not only against terrorists
but also journalists (Lewis, 2002).
The press has been widely criticized for the patriotic nature of its
reporting after September 11. Criticism stems from poor and scarce
reporting on the war on terror, a lack of criticism of President Bush's
policies, and a lack of coverage of the USA PATRIOT Act. Results from a
Gallup poll in November of 2001 showed that 57% of Americans disapproved of
the way the news media was handling the war on terrorism (Masci,
2001). However, that disapproval has also come from a perception that the
press has not been patriotic enough. Jack Kelley of USA Today was strongly
criticized for reporting that U.S. troops had been operating secretly in
Afghanistan for two weeks, until it was later confirmed by U.S. officials
to be true (Kalb, 2001). Columnists Tom Gutting, of the Texas City (Texas)
Sun, and Dan Guthrie, of the Daily Courier in Grants Pass, Oregon, were
both fired in September 2001 for criticizing the president (Kalb, 2001).
Press operations in this environment especially about a policy issue such
as the USA PATRIOT Act are controversial. Lemert (1981) has shown that for
controversial issues, the information that allows the politically
inexperienced to act on their existing attitudes is withheld precisely when
these citizens need it. Lemert called this type of information
mobilization information (MI). Political MI may include the names of key
people for a policy issue, organizations with a particular point of view
and their contact information, meeting times and places, and the identity
and contact information of decision makers on a given issue (Lemert,
1981). The media's selection of issues for attention and the frames for
thinking about those issues bestow a great agenda setting function upon the
media (McCombs & Shaw, 1993) and MI, like any aspect of a newsworthy issue
is also subject to agenda setting. Lemert (1981, p.214) states that,
"Obviously, the news media can and do change information about citizen
attitudes merely through their decisions to cover (or not cover) this
information."
By broadening Lemert's model of mobilization information it is possible to
examine how much the press not only mobilized the public either to support
or oppose the USA PATRIOT Act, but also how aware the public was made of
the issue. Lemert identified three types of mobilization
information. Locational MI provides information about an issue in advance,
such as the time and place of a meeting, identificational MI provides
enough name and location information for persons to recognize the entity
outside of the media coverage, and tactical MI provides explicit and
implicit information on how to behave and what strategies are successful
(Lemert, 1981).
Expanding Lemert's (1981) model to refer not just to the listing of times
and dates but more broadly as the degree to which the public was made aware
of the policy and therefore would have the ability to support or oppose the
legislation, the following manifestations of mobilization information are
possible. Stories about the USA PATRIOT Act before the Act was passed
alert citizens that there is an issue to be decided soon and represent
locational MI. Stories that refer to the USA PATRIOT Act and mention its
actual name provide identificational MI. The mentioning of civil liberties
concerns alert citizens that there may be cause for legitimate objection to
the legislation and represent tactical MI.
While mobilization information is a reportable aspect of an issue that can
explain the type of awareness and political participation for the
politically inexperienced within news stories, framing examines the
selection and salience of specific aspects represented or unrepresented in
news stories. The number of news stories on a particular issue and the way
the stories frame the issue is strongly correlated with the public
perception and salience of the issue (McCombs & Shaw, 1993). Entman (1993,
p.53) suggests that not just the total number of stories about an issue
provide salience to the issue, "However, even a single unillustrated
appearance of a notion in an obscure part of the text can be highly
salient, if it comports with the existing schemata in a receiver's belief
systems."
Traditionally, many content analyses identify stories using a headline or
headline first paragraph search. While this is certainly useful in finding
the majority of stories specifically about a given issue, to truly measure
salience, particularly for policy issues cutting across many subject areas
such as the USA PATRIOT Act, the total number of references to the issue in
each story provide a richer description of the press representation of the
issue. The press provides salience to an issue and recognizes its news
value not only by the number of headline stories or the number of full
paragraphs describing the issue but also by acknowledging the presence of
the issue across stories.
The lack of mobilization information for controversial issues shown by
Lemert (1981) suggests that the press seems more likely to mention an issue
more and at the same time provide fewer in-depth stories about issues that
the public may be particularly sensitive about. In this manner the press
would recognize the news value of the issue by mentioning it often, but
avoid offending its audience by being too critical or not critical enough
by not covering it in detail. This leads to the first hypothesis:
H1: The distribution of references to the PATRIOT Act will show a much
greater frequency of stories that only mention the Act.
At a minimum, portions of the vocal public such as the American Civil
Liberties Union, if not portions of the general public as well, were
concerned about the USA PATRIOT Act's effect on civil liberties. Without
knowledge of what the "anti-terrorism legislation" is actually called the
public cannot respond to the proposed policy. Lemert's (1981) model
suggests that tactical and identificational mobilization information such
as the name of the Act and civil liberties concerns would be withheld until
after the Act was passed. Additionally, the press had only six weeks to
cover the legislation process, while covering the historic aftermath of the
terrorist attacks, which could lead to more reflective coverage.
H2: Stories will be more likely to mention civil liberties concerns and
the actual name of the USA PATRIOT Act after the Act was passed than before
it was passed.
Sniderman, Brody, and Tetlock (1991) have shown that an issue framed to
accentuate civil liberties concerns can increase the public's support for
privacy and tolerance considerations and the same issue framed to
accentuate the need for public safety can increase support for safety
measures at the expense of privacy and tolerance. Thus, as civil liberties
can create a powerful frame it is important to determine the
characteristics of stories mentioning civil liberties concerns with respect
to the number of references per story. Because there was not enough
evidence to predict the outcome the following research question was explored.
RQ: For major newspaper coverage, what is the relationship between the
number of references to the USA PATRIOT Act in a news story and whether the
story mentions civil liberties concerns?
Methods
A study by Kiousis (2001) on media credibility found that people comparing
online news, television news, and newspapers still rate newspapers with the
highest credibility of all three media channels. At the same time
newspaper circulation polls show that circulations increased in 2001 for
the nations largest newspapers even before September 11 ("Newspaper
Circulation," 2001) and the circulation of all types of newspapers
increased strongly after the attacks ("Newspaper circulation is up
following attacks," 2001).
A survey by Beta Research and McPheters & Co., found that people reported
spending 51% more time with newspapers in October 2001 and until April they
still reported spending 33% more time with newspapers. Also the average
number of papers people reported reading increased, from 1.5 to 1.7. The
researchers suggested that this increase benefited primarily large national
papers because of their stronger coverage of foreign news (Fine,
2002). Therefore, even though, in general, the majority of Americans get
their news from television, for people seeking credible information about
the USA PATRIOT Act from September to December 2001 newspapers are
particularly relevant.
The newspapers under study were chosen because they represent the top five
newspapers in daily circulation during the October-December 2001-time
period (Rose, 2002). The terms "anti-terrorism legislation," "terrorism
bill," and "USA PATRIOT Act" were all used as search phrases to collect the
sample. Other searches were employed to ensure that all stories mentioning
the Act were found however; these three terms were found to encompass the
other search terms' results. The sample was made up of 112 stories taken
from USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Los
Angeles Times, and the Washington Post between September 12 and the end of
December 2001. These dates were chosen because after December references
to the USA PATRIOT Act were less frequent and typically about changes or
new cases involving the Act. Editorials and newspaper indexes were
excluded from the sample.
The USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and New York Times stories were found
using full text searches of Lexis/Nexis Academic Universe, while the Wall
Street Journal and Los Angeles Times were found by performing an all-basic
search fields search of Pro Quest. Stories were coded for mentioning civil
liberties if the story mentioned, at least once, that there were civil
liberties concerns, that civil liberties groups had taken some action, or
that the constitutionality of the Act was in some way questioned. Stories
coded as referring to the Act in the headline had to make a specific refer
to the Act, not necessarily by calling it by name. For example
"Anti-terrorism Bill Stalls in Senate" and "Lawmakers Tone Down Terror
Bill" were counted as referring to the Act in the headline. For
measurement comparisons the stories were also coded as appearing or not
appearing in headline searches under the same three search terms. Stories
were coded as mentioning actual name of the act if they included any of the
following terms: the "Mobilization Against Terrorism Act," "the PATRIOT
Act," the "USA Act," " USA PATRIOT Act," or the "U.S.A. PATRIOT Act of
2001" as it was referred to by the Ashcroft proposal, the House, the
Senate, the final legislation, and the final legislation with punctuation
respectively.
The number of references per story were counted per story including, but
not limited to references by the following terms: anti-terrorism
legislation, terrorism bill, proposed legislation, terrorist statute, the
bill, the act, or terrorism regulations unless these phrases were clearly
describing legislation in a different country or previous anti-terrorism
legislation. For example, the following terms in bold were each coded as
references to the USA PATRIOT Act (see appendix A for the complete example):
Voting against the anti-terrorism bill wasn't even a close call for Sen.
Russell Feingold (D-Wis.). It didn't matter that everyone else was voting
for it, or that nine months ago he had voted to confirm the bill's prime
advocate, Attorney General John D. Ashcroft. What mattered most, he says,
were the freedoms that were being taken away. (Pierre, 2001, p. A,8)
Only one reference to the act was counted per sentence. Stories appearing
in newspapers before October 26, 2001 were coded as appearing before the
Act passed.
Results
The first hypothesis predicted that the distribution of references per
story would show that a greater number of stories would have only a few
references to the Act and fewer stories
[--- WMF Graphic Goes Here ---]
Figure 1: Frequency distribution of number of references, (M= 5.14)
would refer to it multiple times. The distribution of references to the
USA PATRIOT Act was highly skewed toward a small number of references, with
37% of all stories containing only one reference to the Act (see figure
1). The mean number of references per story was 5.14. For stories coded
as referring to the USA PATRIOT Act in the headline, the mean number of
references was 11.5. Of the 112 stories included in the sample, 38 were
coded as being referenced in the headline and 78 stories were not
referenced in the headline. Although the Washington Post had by far the
greatest number of stories mentioning the Act (see table 1), there were no
statistically significant differences between the mentioning of civil
liberties, the mentioning of the actual name of the USA PATRIOT Act, or the
number of stories published before or after the Act passed between all
newspapers.
Press Coverage of the USA PATRIOT Act - 3 -
Table 1: Number of stories per newspaper
Newspaper
Number of stories
Probability
Los Angeles Times
12
0.10714
New York Times
17
0.15179
USA Today
16
0.14286
Washington Post
59
0.52679
Wall Street Journal
8
0.07143
Total
112
1.00000
The second hypothesis predicted that more stories would mention the actual
name of the Act and civil liberties concerns after the Act passed. A
t-test showed a significantly greater number of references published before
the Act passed (M= 6.95 references per story) than after the act was
legislated into law (M=3.05), t (110)= -3.8, p< .0002. A Chi Square test
between references to the Act per story and month in which the story was
published showed that the average number of references to the Act per story
was significantly different by month. News coverage seemed to trail off
with the highest number of references in September (M=7.42), lower in
October (M= 6.78), lower still in November (M=2.3), and lowest in December
(M=2.06), __ (3)= 6.75, p<.0003.
Table 2: Stories Published Before the Act passed By Stories Mentioning
the Actual name of the "USA PATRIOT Act"
Count
Total %
Col %
Row %
Do not
Mention
USA PATRIOT
Act
Mention
USA PATRIOT
Act
After
The Act
Passed
36
32.14
39.13
69.23
16
14.29
80.00
30.77
52
46.43
Before
The Act
Passed
56
50.00
60.87
93.33
4
3.57
20.00
6.67
60
53.57
92
82.14
20
17.86
112
p< .0007
Despite there being more references to the Act before it was passed, a Chi
Square test run between stories published before the Act passed and stories
mentioning the actual name of the Act showed that significantly more
stories mentioned the actual name of the Act after the Act passed, __ (1)=
11.52, p< .0007 (see table 2). Only 6.6% of stories before the Act passed
mentioned the actual name of the USA PATRIOT Act, while 30% of stories
after the Act passed mentioned its actual name. However, a Chi Square test
between stories published before the Act passed and stories mentioning
civil liberties concerns found that the difference in the number of stories
mentioning civil liberties before the Act was passed was not statistically
significant from the number published after the Act was passed, __ (1)=
2.3, p > .10 (see table 3).
Table 3: Stories Published Before the Act Passed By Stories Mentioning
Civil Liberties concerns
Count
Total %
Col %
Row %
Do Not
Mention
Civil Liberties
Mention
Civil Liberties
After the Act
Passed
30
26.79
53.57
57.69
22
19.64
39.29
42.31
52
46.43
Before the Act
Passed
26
23.21
46.43
43.33
34
30.36
60.71
56.67
60
53.57
56
50.00
56
50.00
112
P>.10
Finally, the research question sought to determine if a relationship would
exist between the number of references per story and stories mentioning
civil liberties. A t-test found that, on average, the number of references
to the Act (M=7.83) in stories that mention civil liberties is
significantly higher than in stories that do not mention civil liberties
(M=2.44), t (110)=5.65, p<.0001.
Discussion
The first hypothesis, that there would be a greater number of stories with
few references to the Act, was fully supported. This suggests that the
press recognized the news value of the USA PATRIOT Act by mentioning it
across many stories but devoted little coverage specifically to the
Act. However, because this specific method of counting the number of
references to a policy issue in news stories has not been previously
employed it is unknown if this is a normal press pattern for policy issues
or if it is unique to controversial policy issues or for policies that have
a high number of subject areas. Conversely, the finding that civil
liberties concerns were, on average, mentioned when a greater number of
references to the Act were included in the story suggests that stories with
single or relatively few references to a given policy issue, as the
majority of stories are in this sample, may exclude vital aspects of the
policy issue resulting in incomplete coverage.
The distribution of references per story to the Act also supports the
rationale for the reference counting method of content analysis because by
employing traditional methods 74 out of the 112 stories in the sample,
which were coded as not referring to the Act in their headline, would have
been excluded. If one of the goals of a specific content analysis is to
measure an issue's salience it would be difficult to rationalize ignoring
more than half of the issue's newspaper coverage.
The second hypothesis, that stories will be more likely to mention civil
liberties and the actual name of the USA PATRIOT Act after the Act passed
than before it passed, was partially supported. The total number of
stories that referred to the USA PATRIOT Act but did not mention its name
was relatively low, with only 17.8% of all stories mentioning the actual
name of the Act. The finding that significantly more stories mentioned the
actual name of the Act after it was legislated into law may seem intuitive
because there was approximately half a month more time included in the
sample after the Act passed. It may also be expected that legislation
passed in only six weeks would not have been named throughout the
legislation process; however, just six days after September 11, the
Mobilization Against Terrorism proposal was presented to congressional
leaders and the USA Act and PATRIOT Act were named in both houses of
Congress by October 4, all of these names were coded as actual references
to the Act. Additionally, there was both a higher total number of stories
before (N=60) the Act passed than after (N=52) the Act passed and on
average, significantly more references to the Act per story in stories
published before the Act passed.
There were actually more stories mentioning civil liberties that were
published before the Act passed than after, although it was not
statistically significant. This suggests that the press did do relatively
better than expected in terms of mentioning civil liberties concerns during
the legislative process and that perhaps the press did not become more
critical of the Act after it passed. However, only 50% of all stories
mentioned civil liberties.
Overall, the application of Lemert's model of mobilization information for
controversial issues received mixed support. The finding that there were
significantly fewer stories mentioning the actual name of the Act before it
passed shows a lack of identifiactional MI. Lacking knowledge of the name
of the proposed Act increases the difficulty for the public to respond to
the policy issue. However, the significantly higher number of references
to the Act per story before the Act passed provides the public with more
locational MI. Therefore, the public is made more aware of the proposed
legislation while there is still time to express support or opposition that
could effect the legislation.
The statistically insignificant difference between the number of stories
mentioning civil liberties concerns before the Act passed compared to after
the Act passed to some extent suggests that tactical MI was not withheld
during the legislation process. Thus, the public was not completely denied
information that there may be cause for concern about the
legislation. Because there were almost twice as many references to the Act
in stories before the Act passed and on average, stories with more
references to the Act tended to mentioned civil liberties more, one would
expect that significantly more stories would mention civil liberties before
the Act passed. Additionally, the overall lack of mentioning civil
liberties concerns in half of the total press coverage indicates that civil
liberties concerns were not the dominant frame employed by the press for
the USA PATRIOT Act.
The finding that, on average, there were more references per story in
stories that mentioned civil liberties than in stories that did not mention
civil liberties suggests that civil liberties are an involved
issue. Because Sniderman, Brody & Tetlock (1991) have shown that civil
liberties concerns can create a powerful frame more clarification may be
needed to counter the frame (assuming that it is usually countered) in the
balanced journalistic tradition. Although all stories mentioning civil
liberties cannot be considered as employing a civil liberties frame stories
not even mentioning civil liberties are framing the policy debate in such a
way that fundamental aspects of the issue are excluded from the frame.
Additionally, stories not specifically about the USA PATRIOT Act that refer
to the Act but do not mention civil liberties may, depending on the
context, create an even more powerful frame in which the legislation is not
questioned or explained. For example, many stories referring to the USA
PATRIOT Act were actually about the anthrax attacks. Referring to
"anti-terrorism legislation" (as it was often called) in this context
primes a much different response from the audience toward the legislation
than a story with a long and detailed description of the Act and its
possible implications. That the number of references per story is related
to the mentioning of civil liberties also signifies utility for the
reference counting model, as aspects of newspaper coverage can be related
to the number of references to a policy issue in a news story.
Limitations
Intuitively, the sample of 112 stories with references to the USA PATRIOT
Act for five newspapers over a nearly four-month period seems to suggest
inadequate press coverage of this legislation. Unfortunately, no solid
conclusions about the total number of stories can be made because of the
unprecedented media environment following September 11 and the uniqueness
of the USA PATRIOT Act would make any other policy issue's validity
questionable as a comparative study.
Using only one researcher to code all the stories was another
limitation. Two different databases were used to construct the sample,
which could have created some differences in the way stories were found
from each newspaper, although the difference in the number of stories
between newspapers seemed consistent with the coverage expectation for each
newspaper. The researcher did perceive differences in the number and type
of editorials that the different databases found. For this reason
editorials could not be included in the study.
Future Research
Research on newspaper coverage specifically on the coverage of the USA
PATRIOT Act would benefit from a contextual analysis that could compare the
tone of the newspaper coverage with the amount of coverage and explore the
topics and framing of the Act in stories not specifically about the
Act. Research on newspaper coverage of policy issues employing the
reference counting method could compare the frequency and distribution of
references for other controversial or non-controversial issues to this
sample's distribution. Other variables common to news stories, such as
whether stories mentioned pubic opinion, could be examined for a
relationship with the number of references per story. Relationships found
between other common news story variables or frames to the number of
references per story could be compared to judge the relative complexity of
the news story's element or frame.
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Appendix A
Words in bold indicate terms counted as references to the Act:
Voting against the anti-terrorism bill wasn't even a close call for Sen.
Russell Feingold (D-Wis.). It didn't matter that everyone else was voting
for it, or that nine months ago he had voted to confirm the bill's prime
advocate, Attorney General John D. Ashcroft. What mattered most, he says,
were the freedoms that were being taken away.
So he cast the lone dissenting vote Thursday in the Senate. Passed 357 to
66 in the House, the bill was signed into law yesterday by President Bush.
In an interview yesterday, Feingold said that despite the lopsided margins,
many of his fellow legislators voted for the measure only because they felt
they had no choice. He said that even the bill's title—the "USA Patriot
Act"—was part of the "relentless" pressure to move it swiftly.
"This is one of the ridiculous things they do in Washington," he said.
"They want to intimidate people. . . . A number of my colleagues said they
thought I was right on the merits but felt they had to vote for it anyway."
The vote was nothing unusual for Feingold, said Jeff Mayers, editor of
WisPolitics.com. Mayers said Feingold made a name for himself by protesting
bovine growth hormones—popular with farmers in this dairy-producing state
because they increase milk production—and as a state senator often went
against the wishes of Democratic Party leaders.
"This is what people have come to expect out of Feingold," Mayers said.
"He's the Wisconsin maverick. He seems to score points for taking the stand
and telling people what he thinks."
Feingold said what particularly troubled him on the anti-terrorism bill was
the broader authority it gave in federal criminal investigations—not just
those involving suspected terrorists—to secretly search homes and offices.
It was no small matter, he said, that police can compel the disclosure of
medical or education records of anyone with even a casual knowledge of a
suspected terrorist. "This is not a bill that is carefully tailored to the
terrorism problem. The whole tenor of the debate was 'Let's grab as much as
we can' given the fear of terrorism."
At 48, Feingold has been in politics for nearly two decades, winning a seat
in the Wisconsin Senate on his first try at 29. He was elected to the U.S.
Senate in 1992 and is in the middle of his second term. He is considered a
progressive, sponsoring legislation to end racial profiling on the nation's
roadways and to examine the role of racial discrimination in the
application of capital punishment.
Earlier this year, he was taken to task by supporters who viewed his vote
to confirm Ashcroft as a betrayal of those roots. Feingold said he just
votes his conscience.
In this case, he said, there was no way in good conscience to support the
anti-terrorism bill. He said he was also listening to his constituents, who
understand that government should not be given too much power. Since the
vote, he said, calls to his offices in Washington and Wisconsin have been
evenly split between supporters and detractors.
Feingold, chairman of the Judiciary subcommittee on the Constitution, has
posted a 10-page statement on his Web site outlining the reasons for his
vote. But he said he does not believe that patriotism requires everyone to
walk in lockstep. "Unity doesn't mean unanimity," he said.
Now that the bill is passed, Feingold said Congress is going to have to
keep watch on how its provisions are enforced. He's not hopeful they can be
overturned.
"The problem is that these things tend to go only in one direction."
(Pierre, 2001, p. A,8)
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