Pubdate: Fri, 26 May 2000
Source: Washington Times (DC)
Copyright: 2000 News World Communications, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.washtimes.com/
Author: R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr.
Note: R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. is the editor in chief of the American Spectator.

CLOSING RANKS ON MAPA

Capitol Hill politics is actually even more interesting than the Sunday 
morning talk shows would have you believe. One popinjay shrieking from the 
left and another from the right about last week's headlines is not the 
whole of Washington's political dramas.

Occasionally, American politics is more complicated and more momentous. The 
scheming and orating in Washington now going on over a little-known 
legislative monstrosity called the Methamphetamine Anti-Proliferation Act 
(MAPA) would go down as an enormous bore on any Sunday morning talk show. 
Yet its outcome is of vital importance to our freedoms as citizens and its 
opponents demonstrate that sometimes our elected officials do more than 
feel our pain and kiss babies.

MAPA, if passed by Congress, would empower federal agents to search your 
home and take your property without immediately informing you - possibly 
without ever informing you. Naturally it gives unscrupulous law enforcement 
officials opportunities to plant evidence or to spice it up pursuant to 
getting an easy conviction.

The diversity of the political forces that have come together to oppose 
MAPA constitute politics at its most interesting and most serious - even 
more serious that the soap opera between Bill Clinton and his fabled 
"Clinton-haters." The American Civil Liberties Union's stalwart campaign 
against MAPA is being aided and abetted by the liberal Rep. Sheila 
Jackson-Lee, Texas Democrat, and the conservative Rep. Bob Barr, Georgia 
Republican.

According to the Justice Department, methamphetamine is a brain buzzer 
increasingly popular with young people. It is concocted in "meth labs" 
throughout the country, and Justice hopes its agents will suppress the 
production and trafficking in "meth" with MAPA. The bill increases criminal 
penalties selling meth and appropriates funds for hunting down and closing 
"meth labs." It also would appropriate funds for treatment of the meth 
monsters. Slipped into this potpourri of good deeds unfortunately are 
amendments that would allow agents to search homes, workplaces and vehicles 
without informing their owners. The agents would also be able to remove 
property without fully inventorying it. It could be months before the 
inventories were submitted to property owners.

Former federal prosecutor Mr. Barr argues these provisions "change present 
laws regarding search warrants, loosening up the need to provide notice and 
the requirement for inventories of property seized." He claims these 
insidious provisions would then be used by other law enforcement agents for 
a wider array of searches. "Agents without search warrants could enter 
unoccupied houses and offices and search, copy, or seize information, even 
on computer hard drives."

Whether the liberal Democrat Mrs. Jackson-Lee and the conservative 
Republican Mr. Barr succeed in thwarting MAPA, this particular struggle on 
behalf of civil liberties highlights a particularly menacing threat to 
civil liberties, Mr. Barr says, given the present balance of power in 
Washington between Republicans and Democrats.

Republicans are always strong law-and-order advocates. Despite the wide 
streak of libertarianism in their ranks, they are suckers for FBI claims 
that such instrumentalities as MAPA are necessary in the war against drugs 
and terrorism. Democrats, whether soft on law and order or libertarian 
regarding law enforcement, are easily manipulated by their guy in the White 
House.

The consequence is that Justice Department officials intent on making their 
job of apprehending criminals easier, are having an easier time passing 
laws that may make ordinary Americans' lives less easy. Your security from 
a rashly executed search warrant will be weakened by MAPA. If the feds 
secretly enter your home rather than the home of the guy next door, who 
will find out? If the guy next door is their target, lucky him. And 
whatever is taken from which home, only the feds will know.

Yet an alliance of Republicans and Democrats may make all this happen. The 
price of liberty is vigilance, as the Founding Fathers knew back in the 
good old days..

R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. is the editor in chief of the American Spectator.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jo-D