'STRIP SEARCH'

[desdemona]

TV REVIEW | 'STRIP SEARCH'

When the Nation Is at Risk, Did You Say Civil Rights?

"Strip Search," an intensely earnest, painfully wrongheaded film on HBO tonight, tries to sound an alarm about the erosion of civil liberties under the Patriot Act by likening the detention of a Muslim immigrant in the United States to that of an American student in China.

The problem is not just that this kind of melodramatic moral equivalency is silly and specious. (Dissent, terrorism — what's the difference, really?) The most tendentious point in "Strip Search" is Glenn Close. As a federal investigator intent on wringing a confession from the Muslim suspect, the slithering star of "Fatal Attraction" is a hundred times more menacing and scary than any bullying Chinese military interrogator. One glimpse of Ms. Close in action ("But who am I, just a lowly cog in a rusting wheel," she whispers silkily, "ignored, unappreciated"), and viewers can only conclude that even without air-conditioning or habeas corpus, a suspect is much better off in Communist China.

read more:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/27/arts/tel...ion/27STAN.html

[DudeAsInCool]

...viewers can only conclude that even without air-conditioning or habeas corpus, a suspect is much better off in Communist China.

:wha':

[desdemona]

Patriot Act Suppresses News Of Challenge to Patriot Act

By Dan Eggen

Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, April 29, 2004; Page A17

The American Civil Liberties Union disclosed yesterday that it filed a lawsuit three weeks ago challenging the FBI's methods of obtaining many business records, but the group was barred from revealing even the existence of the case until now.

The lawsuit was filed April 6 in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, but the case was kept under seal to avoid violating secrecy rules contained in the USA Patriot Act, the ACLU said. The group was allowed to release a redacted version of the lawsuit after weeks of negotiations with the government

read more:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/artic...av=most_emailed