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BC-PITTS-COLUMN:MI _ op-ed, xst (860 words)

Our moral failure `happening all over again'

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By Leonard Pitts Jr.

Knight Ridder Newspapers

(KRT)

I doubt you've heard what the judge said.

About the Patriot Act and the loss of civil liberties, I mean. As near as I can tell, federal Judge A. Wallace Tashima's comments on Saturday to a conference at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles were reported only by the L.A. Times and the Associated Press.

I also doubt many of us would be all that concerned even if we had heard. The Land of the Free can be rather ambivalent about its freedoms. Or, perhaps more accurately, our attitude toward them is often at odds with our words.

Consider that 89 percent of us said the right to due process was either ``crucial'' or ``very important'' in a Gallup poll last year. Then consider the indignation that did not erupt over the detention of hundreds of Muslim men swept up after 9/...