Reply #51: Parts of the Patriot Act are useful.

[blm]

Other areas were more troublesome so they made sure those were sunsetted.

Basicly, I believe the most important feeling at the time was showing national unity just after 9-11 for whatever lay ahead.

Wellstone, Byrd, and Kennedy agreed.

btw....you were the one who brought up Dean as an example of someone whose word you trust on this issue, so...I'm just following your point.

http://www.talkleft.com/archives/003739.html
……He once addressed a meeting of defense attorneys by stating that "my job is to make your job as difficult as possible." He is a man of his word, at least on this campaign promise. He did not want to fund public defense.
……Dean has made no secret of his belief that the justice system gives all the breaks to defendants. Consequently, during the 1990s, state’s attorneys, police, and corrections all received budget increases vastly exceeding increases enjoyed by the defender general’s office. That meant the state’s attorneys were able to round up ever increasing numbers of criminal defendants, but the public defenders were not given comparable resources to respond.
http://rogueimc.org/2003/11/1757.shtml
Dean, in 1999, wanted to refuse a $150,000 federal grant to the public defender's office for aiding mentally disabled defendants. "That was unusual, to say the least," says Appel. The state legislature overrode Dean's opposition. Dean spokesman Carson responded that Dean didn't want to create a program that the state couldn't afford to fund if federal money disappeared in the future. But he did not disavow Dean's anti-defendant bent. "This is a governor who was tough on crime and is a big believer in victims' rights," Carson says.
(Note:The state legislature overrode Dean's opposition and forced him to take it.)
Source: http://stacks.msnbc.com/news/912159.asp?cp1=1
Dean: “I got life without parole through our legislature. The problems with life without parole is that it’s not life without parole. There are always people who get out.”
http://richmond.indymedia.org/newswire/display/4371/index.php
.. “I’m looking to make it easier to convict guilty people and not have as many technicalities interfere with justice, and I’ll appoint someone to fit that bill”.
Asked if that reflected a “get-tough-on-crime” approach, Dean responded: “I’m looking for someone who is for justice. My beef about the judicial system is that it does not emphasize truth and justice over lawyering. It emphasizes legal technicalities and rights of the defendants and all that.” Such comments may play well with the general public, but they have sent a chill through the collective spine of lawyers – particularly defense lawyers – around the state.
http://rogueimc.org/2003/11/1757.shtml
He attempted an explanation of his support for capital punishment, even while agreeing that in some cases "the wrong guy" might be executed…. ...he thought the death penalty was preferable in some instances to a sentence of life without parole, Dean noted that in some instances criminals who are locked up for life might be freed on a legal "technicality" only to commit more horrible crimes. "That is every bit as heinous as putting to death someone who didn't commit the crime," he said.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A1907-2003Jul2?language=printer
William Cohen: …..In all my years writing about the death penalty, I have never heard any politician admit that he would countenance the death of an innocent person in order to ensure that the guilty die. Dean is maybe the first to acknowledge the unacknowledgeable. For that, I suppose, he ought to be congratulated. But by equating the murder of one individual by another with the murder of an innocent person by the government -- the unpreventable with the preventable -- he has casually trashed several hundred years of legal safeguards.
http://www.vpr.net/vt_news/stories/sharedlegacy/shared3.shtml
Vermont Public Radio, Bob Kinzel: "It's likely that Howard Dean's tenure in office will also have a long term effect on the state's criminal justice system. In his first years as Governor, Dean was often critical of judges who Dean thought did not hand down tough enough sentences. Over the last 10 years, Dean has appointed more judges than any previous governor and Dean describes his appointees as "law and order" judges. Dean's judicial philosophy appears to be having a significant impact - during his tenure as governor the average sentence handed down in Vermont has doubled - a situation that has led to an overcrowding of the state's prison system."
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles8/Bister-Estrin-Jacobs_Dean.htm
His governorship was a campaign against reasonable approaches to substance abuse. ….. the only other option in his bag of tricks is tougher penalties. He has endorsed fully the National Governors Association's policy, which calls for increased involvement of law enforcement and disavows any form of legalization not only as a policy but also as a philosophy. In short, Dean not only believes in the war on drug users, but also would like to see it intensified.
…..While Dean vocalized his opposition to methadone treatment clinics and decried any efforts to reduce the penalties on marijuana use -- even labeling the latter as a gateway drug (a statistically questionable claim at best) -- the population of Vermont's prisons increased to potentially dangerous levels. There is a correlation between these two phenomena. The more police go after individuals who use drugs, and the more judges are instructed to put them in jail, the more prisoners there are. ……. according to the DEA, the number of drug arrests in Vermont increased under Dean's watch, peaking in the year 2001, with the imprisonment of women increasing by over 140%.
http://rogueimc.org/2003/11/1757.shtml
Robert Appel, former head of the state's public defender system, said he had constant clashes with Dean over funding for the service. According to Appel, Dean said on at least one public occasion that the state should spend less money providing the accused with legal representation, saying that "95% of criminal defendants are guilty anyway." He later claimed that he was kidding.
http://www.loper.org/~george/archives/2003/Aug/946.html
(He appointed) state judges who were willing to undermine the Bill of Rights. In a 1997 interview with the Vermont News Bureau, Howard Dean admitted his desire to expedite the judicial process by using such justices to 'quickly convict guilty criminals.' He wanted individuals that would deem 'common sense more important than legal technicalities.' Constitutional protections (legal technicalities) apparently undermine Dean's yearning for speedy trials.