Current News | Introduction | Colloidal Silver | Chemtrails | Sylphs | Emerging Diseases | Forbidden Cures |Ozone | Immunity Boosting | Nutrition | The CIA Translate this page:In the play, "A Man for All Seasons," Sir Thomas More questions the bounder Roper whether he would level the forest of English laws to punish the Devil. "What would you do?" More asks, "Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?" Roper affirms, "I'd cut down every law in England to do that." To which More replies: "And
when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you, where would
you hide, Roper,
[Editor's Note: Only one United States
Senator, Russ Feingold, stood up to defend the Constitution, the Bill of
Rights,
By Senator Russ Feingold
Statement Of U.S. Senator Russ Feingold On The Anti-Terrorism Bill From The Senate Floor October 25, 2001 Mr. President, I have asked for this time to speak about the
anti-terrorism bill before us, H.R. 3162. As we address this bill,
This has been a tragic time in our country. Before I discuss
this bill, let me first pause to remember, through one small story,
The
card read, " Happy Birthday Mommy. Although you died and are no longer
with me, I feel as if I still have
After reading the card, the man felt as if he were "drowning
in the names of dead mothers, fathers, sons and daughters." The
We all also had our own initial reactions, and my first and most
powerful emotion was a solemn resolve to stop these
The first caution was that we must continue to respect our Constitution
and protect our civil liberties in the wake of the
The second caution I issued was a warning against the mistreatment
of Arab Americans, Muslim Americans, South Asians,
I suppose I was reacting instinctively to the unfolding events
in the spirit of the Irish statesman John Philpot Curran, who
During those first few hours after the attacks, I kept remembering
a sentence from a case I had studied in law school. Not
But upon reviewing the case itself, Kennedy v. Mendoza-Martinez,
I found that Justice Arthur Goldberg had made this
"It
is fundamental that the great powers of Congress to conduct war and to
regulate the Nation's
I have approached the events of the past month and my role in
proposing and reviewing legislation relating to it in this spirit.
The Founders who wrote our Constitution and Bill of Rights exercised
that vigilance even though they had recently fought
There have been periods in our nation’s history when
civil liberties have taken a back seat to what appeared at the
Mr. President, even in our great land, wartime has sometimes
brought us the greatest tests of our Bill of Rights. For
In 1917, the Postmaster General revoked the mailing privileges
of the newspaper the Milwaukee Leader because he felt
During World War II, President Roosevelt signed orders to incarcerate
more than 110,000 people of Japanese origin, as
Earlier this year, I introduced legislation to set up a commission
to review the wartime treatment of Germans, Italians, and
Now some may say, indeed we may hope, that we have come a long
way since the those days of infringements on civil
As it seeks to combat terrorism, the Justice Department is making
extraordinary use of its power to arrest and detain
For example, the FBI arrested as a material witness the San Antonio
radiologist Albader Al-Hazmi, who has a name like
Now, it so happens that since early 1999, I have been working
on another bill that is poignantly relevant to recent events:
Even as America addresses the demanding security challenges before
us, we must strive mightily also to guard our values
We who don’t have Arabic names or don’t wear
turbans or headscarves may not feel the weight of these
Was it not at least partially bias, however, when passengers
on a Northwest Airlines flight in Minneapolis three
Of course, given the enormous anxiety and fears generated by
the events of September 11th, it would not have been difficult
Of course, there is no doubt that if we lived in a police state,
it would be easier to catch terrorists. If we lived in a country
But that probably would not be a country in which we would want
to live. And that would not be a country for which we
Preserving our freedom is one of the main reasons that we are
now engaged in this new war on terrorism. We will lose that
That is why I found the antiterrorism bill originally proposed
by Attorney General Ashcroft and President Bush to
The Administration's proposed bill contained vast new powers
for law enforcement, some seemingly drafted in haste
It is one thing to shortcut the legislative process in order
to get federal financial aid to the cities hit by terrorism. We did that,
Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed at least to some extent,
and while this bill has been on a fast track, there has been time
As I will discuss in a moment, I have concluded that this bill
still does not strike the right balance between empowering law
For example, it is entirely appropriate that with a warrant the
FBI be able to seize voice mail messages as well as tap a
There are other non-controversial provisions in the bill that
I support: those to assist the victims of crime, to
In the end, however, my focus on this bill, as Chair of
the Constitution Subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee in the
For example, the original Administration proposal contained a
provision that would have allowed the use in U.S. criminal
Another provision would have broadened the criminal forfeiture
laws to permit, prior to conviction, the freezing of assets
The foreign wiretap and criminal forfeiture provisions were dropped
from the bill that we considered in the Senate. Other
So the bill before us is certainly improved from the bill that
the Administration sent to us on September 19, and wanted us to
First, the bill contains some very significant changes in criminal
procedure that will apply to every federal criminal
Notice is a key element of Fourth Amendment protections. It allows
a person to point out mistakes in a warrant and to
Another very troubling provision has to do with the effort to
combat computer crime. The bill allows law enforcement to
As drafted in the Senate bill, however, the provision might permit
an employer to give permission to the police to monitor
I am also very troubled by the broad expansion of government
power under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act,
This bill changes that requirement. The government now will only
have to show that intelligence is a "significant purpose" of
It seems obvious that with this lower standard, the FBI will
try to use FISA as much as it can. And of course, with terrorism
The significance of the breakdown of the distinction between
intelligence and criminal investigations becomes apparent when
Now we're not talking here about travel records pertaining to
a terrorist suspect, which we all can see can be highly
But under this bill, the government can compel the disclosure
of the personal records of anyone: perhaps someone
And under this new provisions all business records can be compelled,
including those containing sensitive personal
Under this provision, the government can apparently go on
a fishing expedition and collect information on virtually anyone.
Let me turn to a final area of real concern about this legislation,
which I think brings us full circle to the cautions I expressed
First, the Administration's original proposal would have granted
the Attorney General extraordinary powers to
While this protection is an improvement, the provision remains
fundamentally flawed. Even with this seven-day charging
Now, I am pleased that the final version of the legislation includes
a few improvements over the bill that passed the Senate.
The bill also continues to deny detained persons a trial or
hearing where the government would be required to prove that the
Another provision in the bill that deeply troubles me allows
the detention and deportation of people engaging in innocent
This language creates a very real risk that truly innocent
individuals could be deported for innocent associations with
And speaking of the First Amendment, under this bill, a lawful
permanent resident who makes a controversial speech that
Despite assurances from the Administration at various points
in this process that these provisions that implicate associational
Now here's where my cautions in the aftermath of the terrorist
attacks and my concern over the reach of the
When concerns of this kind have been raised with the Administration
and supporters of this bill they have told us,
The anti-terrorism bill that we consider in the Senate today
highlights the march of technology, and how that march cuts both
"The
progress of science in furnishing the Government with means of espionage
is not likely to stop with
We must grant law enforcement the tools that it needs to stop
this terrible threat. But we must give them only those
In the play, "A Man for All Seasons," Sir Thomas More
questions the bounder Roper whether he would level the forest of
"And
when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you; where would
you hide, Roper,
We must maintain our vigilance to preserve our laws and our basic rights. We in this body have a duty to analyze, to test, to weigh new
laws that the zealous and often sincere advocates of security
Protecting the safety of the American people is a solemn duty
of the Congress; we must work tirelessly to prevent more
I yield the floor.
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