Abner J. Mikva, former chief judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Washington, D.C., circuit, warns that our constitutional rights are at risk in the Bush administration's war on terrorism.
''We dare not let the evil dreams of the terrorists be achieved by ourselves destroying the freedom that they despise,'' he said.
''I can tell you that even though suing bin Laden is not the most likely way to bring him to justice, the rule of law and how to implement it remains the critical order of the day," Mikva told the 34th annual meeting of the Chicago Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights. "If we lose our enthusiasm for that quest, terrorism will have destroyed more than the World Trade Center; it will have destroyed our special status, our raison de etre."
Mikva, a visiting professor at the University of Chicago Law School, said that the Bush administration has pushed through laws that undermine the Bill of Rights and violate the principle of due process and equal justice under the law.
He described the Patriot Act and other actions, initiated by the Bush administration in the fall of 2001 and passed by Congress with little debate, as "more serious threats to our liberty" than the terrorist attacks.
Read more about Mikva's opinion from the Chicago Sun-Times here. (via PatriotWatch)