A forgotten injustice echoes today

The governor of Montana has issued posthumous pardons to 75 German Americans who were fined or imprisoned during World War I for statements deemed seditious at a time of intense anti-German sentiment. At the same time on Capitol Hill, the Senate Judiciary Committee is examining the Bush administration’s extraordinary assertion of executive power.
These events are not exactly parallel. But both go to the heart of what is permissible in a democratic society and to how government can abuse its power over individuals’ lives.

A Montana law enacted unanimously in February 1918 made it a crime to say or publish anything “disloyal, profane, violent, scurrilous, contemptuous or abusive” about the government, soldiers or the American flag. One man, according to a New York Times report, was sentenced to seven to 20 years in prison for calling wartime food regulations a “big joke.” In all, 79 people were convicted, 41 went to prison and paid heavy fines. All were freed after the law expired at the end of the war late in the same year. The federal government also imprisoned some wartime critics.

Today it’s rare for anyone to be arrested, much less imprisoned, for unpopular speech. But a pall of suspicion has been cast over many people, including Muslims, since 9/11. And the Bush administration’s conduct of its anti-terror campaign has included unjustified intrusions into private behavior, arrest and detention without due process, transfer of suspects to countries known to practice torture, abuse of prisoners, wiretapping without warrants required by law, and, say some critics, improper surveillance of anti-war groups.

What happened to German Americans nearly a century ago is an example of how public hysteria and reflexive punishment of dissenters can go too far. But wrong as it was, it was done publicly under the law.

Today, much is done arbitrarily by an administration that seems to regard public or congressional oversight as a nuisance to be disregarded.

An example is President Bush’s response to legislation he doesn’t like. Instead of vetoing bills, he signs them but attaches little-noticed “signing statements” - 750 so far, according to the Boston Globe - saying he will enforce the law in the context of his powers as commander in chief in wartime. In other words, he’ll do what he wants and call it legal.

The news media have come under the White House’s glare. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Arlen Specter expressed concern at a hearing Tuesday about an apparent administration attempt to intimidate, and conceivably prosecute, journalists to whom classified information was leaked about government wiretapping and about alleged secret overseas prisons operated by the Central Intelligence Agency.

Specter’s remark that “there’s a lot more oversight provided by the press than there is by the Judiciary Committee” is a sobering comment on the legislative branch’s failure to assert its own authority against a runaway executive. Yet it’s far from clear that that will change.

http://www.sacbee.com/content/opinion/story/14251443p-15067826c.html