“A cynic might think that domestic extremists who share the attorney general's antipathy to abortion and gun control — and are opposed to the likes of Mr. Leahy and Tom Daschle — receive a free pass denied to suspicious-looking immigrants.”

Wait Until Dark
If the administration were really proud of how it's grabbing "emergency" powers that skirt the law, it wouldn't do so in the dead of night. It wasn't enough for Congress to enhance Mr. Ashcroft's antiterrorist legal arsenal legitimately by passing the U.S.A.-Patriot Act before anyone could read it; now he rewrites more rules without consulting senators or congressmen of either party at all. He abridged by decree the Freedom of Information Act, an essential check on government malfeasance in peace and war alike, and discreetly slipped his new directive allowing eavesdropping on conversations between some lawyers and clients into the Federal Register. He has also refused repeated requests to explain himself before Congressional committees, finally relenting to a nominal appearance in December. At one House briefing, according to Time magazine, he told congressmen they could call an 800 number if they had any questions about what Justice is up to.
This kind of high-handedness and secrecy has been a hallmark of the administration beginning Jan. 20, not Sept. 11. The Cheney energy task force faced a lawsuit from the General Accounting Office rather than reveal its dealings with Bush-Cheney campaign contributors like those at the now imploding Enron Corporation. The president's commission on Social Security reform also bent the law to meet in secret. But since the war began, the administration has gone to unprecedented lengths to restrict news coverage of not only its own activities but also Osama bin Laden's. A Bush executive order diminishing access to presidential papers could restrict a future David McCullough or Michael Beschloss from reconstructing presidential histories. To consolidate his own power, Mr. Ashcroft even seized authority from Mary Jo White, the battle-proven U.S. attorney who successfully prosecuted both the 1993 World Trade Center terrorists and the bin Laden accomplices in the 1998 African embassy bombings. He has similarly shunted aside state and local law-enforcement officials by keeping them in the dark before issuing his vague warnings of imminent terrorist attacks.

Thanks to a journalist, Sara Rimer of The Times, we now know that one of the attorney general's secret detainees was in fact a local official: Dr. Irshad Shaikh, a Johns Hopkins- educated legal immigrant who serves as the city health commissioner of Chester, Pa. Dr. Shaikh's door was broken down by federal agents who suspected he might be an anthrax terrorist. It's all too easy to see why Mr. Ashcroft wants to hide embarrassing fiascoes like this. But it's also likely that the attorney general wants to hide the arrests he is not making along with the errant ones that he is.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/24/opinion/24RICH.html?todaysheadlines&pagewanted=all