MOUNT VERNON -- Representatives from the U.S. Attorney's Office, a University of Iowa law professor and a civil liberties attorney will appear Tuesday, Feb. 10, at Cornell College for a debate, "The War on Terror: Are We Losing Civil Liberties to Gain National Security?"
The debate will take place at 7 p.m. in Hedges Conference Room of The Commons. Participants are Charles Larson Sr., U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Iowa, and his assistant, Patrick Reinert, U.S. military court-martial judge, debating Tung Yin of the University of Iowa College of Law and Hanna Weston, a civil liberties attorney in Cedar Rapids.
The debate is sponsored by the Mount Vernon-Lisbon League of Women Voters and Cornell's Public Interest Group and Women's Action Group. The moderator will be Don Cell, Cornell professor emeritus. Admission is free.
After 9/11, Congress passed the Patriot Act giving the U.S. government broader authority over surveillance, immigration, foreign students, intelligence gathering and criminal law jurisdictions. The Department of Homeland Security was established and funded. At home, the inconvenience of airport screening may be modest but the stakes are large for both security and civil liberties in our open society. In the presidential election, national security could be the critical issue for many. What is the true balance sheet between security gained and civil liberties lost? Are we doing it well or can we do better?
Larson and Reinert will defend the U.S. government's case that both our security from terrorists and our civil liberties have been successfully protected. Yin and Weston will argue that the government's methods have been quietly undermining civil liberties, unnecessarily, in a "war" without precedent that has no clear end.
For attorneys, this program qualifies for Continuing Legal Education credit.
