K-S has the right of it. The only drama left before the Senate votes on the "anti-terrorism" wiretap bill Thursday is whether the final vote on this ever-growing, 400KB bill will be 99-1 (Feingold) or 100-1. Two weeks ago, the House approved (http://www.politechbot.com/p-02654.html) the bill by a 339 by 79 vote with a five-year expiration date. Then the Senate decided to get persnickety and demanded that all these anti-financial privacy "money laundering" sections must be added, and insisted that the expiration date be shortened, and so on. The doughty defenders of liberty in the House reponded by approving the rewritten, expanded bill today by -- a 357 to 66 vote. (http://clerkweb.house.gov/cgi-bin/vote.exe?year=2001&rollnumber=398) So making the bill more Draconian, onerous, and nasty convinced precisely 13 *more* 'critters to vote for the revised version. Right. With the exception of folks like Ron Paul (who, I'm pleased to say, voted nay), there seems to be little hope left for our legislative system. When you have 99-1 votes in the Senate (http://www.politechbot.com/p-02651.html), can anyone seriously say that either the Democrats or Republicans can be trusted to preserve our privacy and follow the demands of the Constitution? -Declan On Wed, Oct 24, 2001 at 04:05:04PM -0700, keyser-soze@hushmail.com wrote:
Brock,
You the problem in the cross hairs. But what's to be done when your elected representative and fellow citizens are either too scared or don't care to discuss a plain reading of the constitution? These ugly measures may cause some of us to assume that maybe the American revolution isn't over and that the ghost of George III and his Tories now reside in D.C. Thank God so many of us own firearms and are therefore citizens and not merely subjects.
--------------------------------------------------- http://www.msnbc.com/news/646793.asp
First, brand all the children
Cyber-liberties swept away by tidal wave of security concerns
OPINION By Brock N. Meeks MSNBC
WASHINGTON, Oct. 24 - Anthrax, Afghanistan, al-Qaida, Ashcroft and anti-terrorism legislation. We aren't even through the first letter of the geopolitical alphabet before jumping all the way to "S" as in "screwed" as in what's happening to civil liberties in the online world.