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# Tow the line while Bush reigns
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/tow-the-line-while-bush-reigns-editor/
- Published: 2008-01-15T16:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-24T17:58:30.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Opinion, Santa Monica, #archive-import

*By Ron Lowe Santa Monica Exercising is great, just keep it down Editor:*

(Former) FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover planned mass jailings, wanted to suspend habeas corpus and imprison 12,000 Americans in 1950; and 97 percent of the people on the lists were U.S. citizens who had irked Hoover over the years.

Following suit, Bush and Republicans in their six-year power surge passed legislation that seems to classify civil disobedience as terrorism. Most know of the Patriot Act and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Less publicized are amendments to the Insurrection Act, the Posse Comitatus Act authorizing the president to declare martial law using the United States military to repress domestic insurrection, conspiracy, disorderly citizens and other undesirables. Add to this the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Act (VRHTPA) passed by the House in 2007.

Since violence, radicalism, extremism and disasters are undefined, almost anyone is at risk and at the mercy of the Bush administration.

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on January 15, 2008.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/011508.pdf?ref=smdp.com)