WASHINGTON, April 22 (IslamOnline.net) - Arcata, California State, has become the first city in the U.S. to pass an ordinance that outlaws voluntary compliance with the USA PATRIOT Act, as civil rights groups and think tanks lashed out at what they see as freedom-compromising measures in the country.

Arcata, one of the first cities to pass resolutions against global warming and a unilateral war in Iraq, has joined the rising chorus of municipalities across America to pass a resolution urging local law enforcement officials and others contacted by federal officials to refuse requests under the USA PATRIOT Act that they believe violate an individual's civil rights under the U.S. Constitution, according to a Washington Post report on April 21.

The USA PATRIOT Act (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism) of 2001, adopted in the jingoism of post 9/11, is widely seen as restricting civil liberties.

Such bravado notwithstanding, came as intolerance is sweeping America.

The Pentagon address by the anti-Islam Rev. Frankling Graham on Easter Friday, April 18, the nomination of anti-Islam Daniel Pipes to the federally-funded U.S. Institute of Peace are just a few of such acts.

In Denver, under terms of a settlement between the city and the American Civil Liberation Union (ACLU) of Colorado on April 17, the police declared that it will no longer photograph, record license plate numbers or intercept e-mail of peaceful demonstrators.

The ACLU was established in 2002 on behalf of groups and individuals that included the American Friends Service Committee, an 85 year-old pacifist Quaker group, and a 73-year-old Franciscan nun.

"This agreement is particularly significant at this time when the White House falsely claims that Americans must sacrifice their civil liberties if they are going to be safe from terrorism," ACLU Legal Director Mark Silverstein said in a statement.

"As this agreement demonstrates, effective law enforcement does not require giving up our constitutional rights..."

"There has to be some point where we draw a line and say we're going to stop redrawing the line between liberty and security," Tim Lynch, director of the Project on Criminal Justice at the libertarian Cato Institute, said in a briefing attended by about 150 congressional staffers, lobbyists and members of the press in Capitol Hill on April 21.

Susan Chamberlin, Cato's director of government affairs, warned, “You're never going to have the day come when Congress passes a law that says, 'okay, starting now, we're a police state and law enforcement has every power we can think of.' Instead, what we see is incremental upward adjustments in the power of law enforcement and the power of our military such that somebody born in the United States last week is born into a considerably less free, and arguably not more safe, United States than his parents."

The demise of free speech is not just being noted by civil rights organizations and think tanks.

American actor and director Tim Robbins, in a keynote address to journalists at the National Press Club in Washington, early April, said “In the 19 months since 9/11, we have seen our democracy compromised by fear and hatred. Basic inalienable rights, due process, the sanctity of the home have been compromised in a climate of fear. A unified American public has grown bitterly divided and a world population that had profound sympathy and support for us has grown contemptuous and distrustful, viewing us as we once viewed the Soviet Union, as a rogue state.”

Robbins and his equally outspoken wife, Susan Sarandon, stated that even their relatives are being ostracized for the couple’s expressions against war and the curtailment of civil liberties, and have received threatening e-mails and telephone calls.

Robbins warned that a “chill wind is blowing in this nation. A message is being sent through the White House and its allies... If you oppose this administration, there can and will be ramifications.”

The United Way cancelled Sarandon's appearance at a conference on women's leadership. Robbins and Sarandon were told that they and the First Amendment were not welcome at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.

A famous middle-aged singer told Robbins that he could not speak himself because he fears repercussions from Clear Channel.

In Washington, veteran journalist Helen Thomas found herself banished to the back of the White House press briefing room and uncalled on after asking spokesman Ari Fleischer whether the U.S. showing prisoners of war at Guantánamo Bay on television violated the Geneva Convention.

The journalist appealed to all Americans that in the midst of what she called all this madness.

"Where is the political opposition? We need leaders, not pragmatists that cower before the spin zones of former entertainment journalists. We need leaders who can understand the constitution, congressmen who don't in a moment of fear abdicate their most important power, the right to declare war, to the executive branch."

She added that in this time when "a citizenry applauds the liberation of a country as it lives in fear of its own freedom, when people all over the country fear reprisal if they use their right to free speech, it is time to get angry. And it doesn't take much to shift the tide.”

“Our ability to disagree, and our inherent right to question our leaders and criticize their actions, define who we are," Robbins concluded.