This New York Times article reports that Attorney General John Ashcroft made pointed statements about what the Bush administration perceives to be “baseless hysteria” over the USA PATRIOT Act, specifically condemning the American Library Association for perpetuating claims about government snooping. Ashcroft said that the Department of Justice had no interest in the reading habits of American library users. To do so, according to Ashcroft would “betray our high regard for the First Amendment.”
ALA is all puffed up over the statements, saying through their spokesperson Emily Sheketoff, “we must be having an impact.”
It would be interesting to know…
I wonder if it was Mark Corallo who referred to ALA as “American Librarian Association” (which could be taken as a deliberate snub that he considers them so unimportant he can’t get the name right) or a New York Times typo? I’m leaning towards the former myself, despite the lack of quotes around the first part of that paragraph.
Semantics
Well, Ashscroft did get one thing right in a sort of bafflegabbed kind of way. The Bush administration isn’t interested in the reading habits of Americans; only un-Americans.