The conservative activists took great pains to say nice things about Bush and Ashcroft -- the laws are "not because they're bad people, but because they think these are good things, because they think they can protect us," Keene said. It was quite a change in rhetorical tone from that taken by the right toward Clinton administration Attorney General Janet Reno. "I'd prefer not to focus on individuals," Barr said. "This is an institutional problem regardless of who the attorney general is, regardless of which party is in power."

Norquist noted that Ashcroft as a senator (he was defeated in his reelection campaign in November 2000 by ex-Gov. Mel Carnahan, who was dead at the time) seemed to have quite a different view of civil liberties than in his present post. "When John Ashcroft was a senator, if you asked me who were the senators most sympathetic to our [civil liberties and privacy] causes I would have offered Ashcroft as one of the top guys."

Regardless, much of their consternation seemed focused on the Congress. "I don't know that 5 percent of the people who voted for that bill ever read it," Keene said.

"You're always an optimist," Barr quipped.

The conservative activists' thoughts on these issues put them in a somewhat awkward position since -- particularly in Norquist's case -- all are known for being fairly influential with the GOP-controlled House, Senate and White House. If Daschle told his caucus to "fold," as Feingold said, one couldn't help but wonder if the conservatives -- gung-ho for the GOP and President George W. Bush in almost every other policy area -- were self-folding a tad on their own. How vociferous were they willing to be?

"You can't walk into this White House and say if you don't give us this we won't support you for reelection because that's not credible," Norquist allowed. But he insisted that in his meetings with "friends" in the White House he brought the matter up quite a bit. "It's not the 15th issue, it's one of the top issues," he said.

But surely these individuals could exert some influence with Bush, Ashcroft, or Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah? Not one activist claimed to have specifically met with any of those officeholders to discuss that issue. Surely the influential group could exert their power and change these laws?

"Perhaps it means we're not as powerful as you think we are," Keene smiled.

Eagle Forum's Waters reported on a previous left-right coalition, when her organization called allies in the Senate to support an amendment to hamstring plans for the Total Information Awareness program offered by a liberal Democrat, Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon. But other problems remain -- CAPPS II will require airline passengers to give airlines their name, address, date of birth and phone number, which will be checked against any number of databases. Waters said that Congress had been assured that the Transportation Security Administration won't check the information against Social Security, Internal Revenue Service, or medical records databases. But, she said, "there are no legal parameters" preventing them from doing so.

Comstock pointed out that many conservatives -- especially those in the Federalist Society -- supported the laws, so the four at the press conference were hardly representative. Moreover, she wondered about the company her fellow conservatives were keeping. "The ACLU has opposed not only the PATRIOT Act, it opposed the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1996," she said, archly adding that "the ACLU not only thinks we're doing too much to try to stop terrorism now, they think we were doing too much on Sept. 11."

Comstock and Corallo, clearly eager for anyone to listen to the Justice Department's side of the story, rebutted what they regard as myths about what Ashcroft and his team have been up to. They're not harassing the Arab-American and Muslim communities, they say; they were investigating the paths of the 9/11 hijackers and since then have worked closely with those communities. There weren't "thousands" of Arabs and Muslims detained secretly, they say; 765 were detained on violations of immigration laws, of whom 478 were deported and 134 charged with other crimes, leading to around 100 convictions. And while the Justice Department didn't provide a list of those being detained, they were all able to go to the media themselves if they wanted to, they say.

At the press conference, this reporter repeated a response one occasionally hears from the Bush administration when asked about these criticisms: There hasn't been any major terrorist attacks in the U.S. since Sept. 11, and both the president and the attorney general enjoy high approval ratings. "It's always difficult to disprove a negative," Barr said. That we haven't had another major terrorist attack in the U.S. may be because the government is better aware of the mistakes it made before that fateful morning, and because of the "increased awareness on the part of the public. You can't legitimately say that it's because of the expanded powers ... that we haven't had another terrorist attack," he said.

As for the overwhelming support for the Bush administration's national security policies, "that's a perennial problem in dealing with these kids of issues," Barr said, and the only solution is educating the public through forums, like Thursday's. People need to learn that "we're all subject to having our privacy invaded, but just because people feel that they don't have anything to hide or they feel safer, that doesn't mean these proposals should be allowed to go forward." These laws "will dramatically change the way we go about conducting our society," Barr said, before invoking the Big Brother thought control of George Orwell's "1984." Comstock notes that at the press conference, these conservatives referred to themselves as the "Leave Us Alone" coalition, in reference to former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis' famous remark that "the right to be let alone is the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men."

"We're trying to get the terrorists to leave us alone," Comstock noted. "Terrorists aren't in the 'Leave Us Alone' coalition."

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