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THE LAW LOFT
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2001
SPECIAL ALERT
IT’S OFFICIAL
FINAL VOTE ON
ANTI-TERRORISM BILL
DUE NEXT WEEK
What happened today:
Late this afternoon Senate Judiciary Committee chairman,
Senator Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, came out onto the floor of
the Senate and said:
“We’ve completed action on the anti-terrorism bill.
Now we are just down to the drafting. I feel safe to say the House
and Senate will vote on a package improved on the earlier version passed
in either body
“We are drafting a massive anti-terror bill that both
Republicans and Democrats can agree on. We are given a deeply flawed
proposal by the administration. We are going to pass it [the new
version] next week.”
So, what does this tell us?
Are we all done; is it all over?
No and no! It’s not over. To quote the old saying,
‘the Devil is in the details.” What Leahy’s remarks tell us, is
that over the period of the next three or four days a massive drafting
job of critical importance to the entire future of the American people
and the Bill of Rights will be completed. Under these circumstances the
difference between “the” and “a” in just the right place can
either save or give away massive amounts of the civil rights of ordinary
Americans.
What Senator Leahy’s remarks also tell us is that
contrary to the normal rules that bind conferees preparing a final
conference report, they are re-writing text even in areas where the
House passed text and the Senate passed text do not differ. This
presents both an enormous challenge and an enormous opportunity to the
grassroots.
If we move rapidly and strongly this weekend, we can
probably save whole chunks of our rights possibly enough to live through
the current conflict and restore the full Bill of Rights in the end. And
conversely, if we sit on our hands this weekend, we will sustain losses
to the Bill of Rights capable of unleashing a whirlwind of government
sponsored surveillance, intimidation, blackmail and terror that will
leave no one in a strong enough position to restore our rights.
What to do now:
Pull out the stops, fight for freedom. Phone, fax,
e-mail or best of all, visit your Congressman/woman at his/her local
office. Then phone, fax, e-mail or visit both senators and tell them:
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• Pare it down! You have no need to
surveil everyone, all the time. Cut down the scope of all
surveillance provisions, especially the FISA ones to monitoring
of terrorists, whether domestic, foreign state sponsored or
independent and their co-conspirators
• Insist on minimization procedures, that
includes forcing the intelligence community to report to
Congress and FISA courts to keep real records
• Re-Write, re-institute and strengthen
exclusionary rules. Don’t let prosecutors prosecute
anyone, anywhere any time for spitting on the sidewalk based on
broad surveillance or black bag seizures
• Create nasty civil penalties against
agencies for violations of constraints on exercise of new powers
• Tighten the definitions of terrorist and
terrorist conspirator, we know what the words mean, so do you. |
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