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Index for this page...(Be aware some links below may have expired.)
Posted April 27, 2003 Secretly-Drafted Anti-Terrorist Bill Threatens Liberty The USA Patriot Act, rammed through Congress after the September 11 terror bombings, was a horrendous assault on civil liberties. U.S. Congressman Ron Paul denounced it as "undermining the Constitution." But that wasn't enough for the Bush Administration's Justice Department, which for several months has been secretly preparing a sequel bill, the "Domestic Security Enhancement Act" to go even beyond the Patriot Act in infringing on liberty. Information about this proposed bill -- which opponents have dubbed "Patriot Act II" has now leaked out, and copies have been obtained and posted online. It is a massive bill that proposes to give the federal government broad, sweeping new powers to increase domestic spying, further restrict privacy, further remove citizen protection from government abuses, and even in some circumstances deprive Americans of their U.S. citizenship. It intrudes on such fundamental freedoms as free speech, privacy, freedom of association and religion. Some specifics:
That's the tip of a very big iceberg. In addition, the ACLU has denounced the draft bill because it would:
There's more. The ACLU has provided a summary and a section-by-section analysis of the whole sorry mess. See: http://www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/SafeandFree.cfm?ID=11817&c=206&Type=s. The above information was provided by James W. Harris of the Advocates for Self-Government. James W. Harris is co-editor of the Liberator Online. If you wish to subscribe to the Liberator Online, visit: http://www.self-gov.org/liberator/maintain.html.
Posted April 27, 2003 Marijuana Trial Jury Feels Duped by Government On Friday January 31, a 12-member federal jury unanimously found marijuana advocate Ed Rosenthal guilty of cultivation and other serious drug crimes. During the trial, the government depicted Rosenthal as a major drug manufacturer. However, the jury was not told the full truth about the case -- and now they are shocked and furious. Some are now publicly repudiating their verdict. Rosenthal is a world-renowned marijuana expert, and the 100-plus plants he was growing were for the city of Oakland's medical marijuana program. That program resulted from the 1996 medical marijuana initiative approved by California's voters. The jury was told none of this. The judge denied requests by Rosenthal's lawyers to call witnesses to testify that Rosenthal was growing medical marijuana, on the grounds that federal law does not allow the growing of marijuana for medical reasons. Now jurors say they would have acquitted him had they been told all the facts. "I feel like I made the biggest mistake in my life," juror Marney Craig told reporters. "We convicted a man who is not a criminal. We unfortunately had no idea of who he was or what he did. It was like a kangaroo court." "If we'd known he was hired by the city, I would have said this guy didn't deserve any of this," said juror Pamela Klarkowski. "I feel used. It's horrible. We didn't get the whole picture. I feel the jury was railroaded into making this decision. Had I known that information, there is no way I could have found that man guilty." "I'm hearing all of these things after the fact," another juror said. "That sheds a whole new light on it." "Some of us jurors are upset about the way the trial was conducted in that we feel Mr. Rosenthal didn't have a chance and therefore neither did state's rights or patient's rights," jury foreman Charles Sackett said. "I would have liked to have been given the opportunity to decide with all the evidence." Sackett and other jurors say they hope the case is overturned on appeal. In fact, several jurors are taking the extraordinary step of writing Rosenthal to apologize. Rosenthal, 58, faces up to an 85-year prison term when sentenced June 4 -- for the "crime" of growing marijuana for sick people in a state whose voters legalized that practice. Source: Associated Press - Source: California Press-Democrat - The above information was provided by James W. Harris of the Advocates for Self-Government. James W. Harris is co-editor of the Liberator Online. If you wish to subscribe to the Liberator Online, visit: http://www.self-gov.org/liberator/maintain.html.
Posted January 1, 2003 "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" is undergoing a name change. Striving to reach absurd heights of tolerance, a touring production is tampering with the title of the classic. After discussions with a disability adviser, Oddsocks Productions has decided to call its version of Victor Hugo's 1831 novel "The Bellringer of Notre Dame." The story of deformed bellringer Quasimodo and his love for a beautiful gypsy girl, Esmeralda, has been translated into 20 languages and adapted many times for stage and screen. But never has the book's title created the kind of stir it has now. The Left Coast Report believes we're going to have to look more closely at a lot of the classics and make the necessary tolerance adjustments: Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "The Rime of the Young-at-Heart Mariner," Rudyard Kipling's "The Rainforest Book," Charles Dickens' "A Holiday Carol," Hans Christian Andersen's "The Everybody's Beautiful Duckling" and the just-can't-wait-to-read Dostoevski's "Crime and Rehabilitation." The above information is courtesy of The Left Coast Report which is put together by James L. Hirsen and the staff of NewsMax.
Posted January 1, 2003 Federal Computer Database to Spy on All Americans The following information was provided by James W. Harris of the Advocates for Self-Government. Alarming new federal government plans for spying on all Americans are straight out of George Orwell's 1984. The feds are busily creating a massive database that will create files on virtually every American from cradle to grave. The Pentagon's creepy new Office of Information Awareness is building a system called "Total Information Awareness." Total Information Awareness will, among other things, monitor virtually every purchase and financial transaction made by American citizens to seek "patterns indicative of terrorist activity." This consumer information will be merged with government database information including visa records, passports, arrest records or reports of "suspicious activity" previously given to law enforcement agencies. The program will also pursue development of biometric technology to enable the further identification and tracking of individuals. According to federal spokesmen, such things as large cash withdrawals, or the purchase of one-way airline tickets or firearms, could trigger investigations via the Total Information Awareness database. The database will know your reading habits, phone and Internet use (thus creating a First Amendment chilling effect), know when you buy a gun (thus creating de facto national gun registration), and so on. No warrant, no suspicion of criminal activity is required for this information-gathering. According to the ACLU, Total Information Awareness will "effectively provide government officials with immediate access to our personal information: all of our communications (phone calls, emails and web searches), financial records, purchases, prescriptions, school records, medical records and travel history....Under this program, our entire lives would be catalogued and available to government officials." The Office of Information Awareness's unbelievable logo seems to flaunt the Orwellian nature of the agency: a huge eye atop a pyramid scanning the globe, with the Latin motto "Knowledge is Power." See it for yourself at http://www.reason.com/0210/artifact.shtml. As Reason magazine noted: "If you wanted to play on the fears of every paranoiac in the country, you couldn't do much better than the Office of Information Awareness's logo." Of course, given the unprecedented nature of the Total Information Awareness program, it's hardly paranoid to be alarmed by this sinister agency. If that wasn't enough to set you shivering, the Total Information Awareness program was conceived by, and is headed by, the notorious John Poindexter, the former national security adviser to President Reagan who was convicted on five counts of misleading Congress and making false statements during the Iran-Contra investigation. "John has a real passion for this project," one government official told Fox News. (Why aren't we surprised?) Total Information Awareness is a police-state measure, pure and simple. It violates the spirit, if not the letter, of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, and it will mean a society in which federal agents are constantly monitoring every move of every citizen. The government -- of course -- defends Total Information Awareness as a necessary tool to fight terrorism. British statesman William Pitt (1759-1806) had the proper response to that: "Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves." Increasingly it seems the biggest threat to American liberties isn't from terrorists, but rather from government officials intent on doing to our Constitutional liberties what the 9-11 terrorists did to the World Trade Center. Sources:
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