Articles

From our friends at the BORDC,

It's not too late to give Congress a piece of your mind within your legislators' home district before the August recess ends on September 4! BORDC has found a list of many of the town hall meetings scheduled across the country, and we'd like to share it with you, asking that you use it to speak out about the recently passed Orwellian "Protect America Act"!

Please go to your local meeting with as many allies as you can gather and tell your representatives that warrantless wiretapping violates our fundamental rights to privacy, and threatens each of us. We're being treated as terrorist suspects by our own government when it demands the right to eavesdrop on our conversations and emails with no particularized suspicion.

A government of the people, for the people, and by the people can't survive if it is shrouded in secrecy from the people.

As the 110th Congress wrapped up its first session with every member raring to get away for August recess, the Bush administration bullied a Democratically- controlled Congress into passing a law that amends the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to give the executive branch even more power to spy on Americans without a court warrant. And a spineless Congress caved.

It's up to each of us to stop Congress from acting out of fear. Your elected representatives are being called on by the White House to vote this week to expand the administration's powers to spy on your telephone and e-mail communications without warrants. Using the threat of a terrorist attack, the administration is urging reform of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which is meant to protect Americans from warrantless government spying.

The Bush Administration's proposed bill to "modernize" the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) would make its recent promise to end its warrantless wiretapping program virtually meaningless. For example, the bill's proposed redefinition of "electronic surveillance" would allow warrantless surveillance of all Americans' international calls and emails--so long as by sweeping up the content of everyone's communications they are not targeting anyone in particular.

The revolution inside John Ashcroft's Justice Department—an array of new crime-prevention powers embodied in the Patriot Act—has been fueled by the attorney general's ambition, intelligence, and unusually extreme beliefs about everything from the similarities between himself and Jesus to the post-9/11 role of law enforcement, to the purported demonic properties of calico cats. But as nervous sources share stories of his Missouri governorship, and former staffers and Senate allies speak out, JUDY BACHRACH discovers that Ashcroft has also sparked a growing backlash, one with surprisingly bipartisan power