Quote :

"Hearing on Patriot Act Ends in an Angry Uproar By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK WASHINGTON, June 10 - A hearing on the antiterrorism law known as the USA Patriot Act degenerated into chaos on Friday, as Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. called Democrats "irresponsible," gaveled the session to a premature close and stormed out of the room. "I think this hearing very, very clearly shows what the opponents of the Patriot Act are doing," said Mr. Sensenbrenner, Republican of Wisconsin and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. "They will talk about practically everything but what is in the Patriot Act," he said, before closing: "Thank you all for coming. The committee is adjourned." Representative Jerrold D. Nadler, Democrat of New York, protested, "Point of order!" as the Republican committee members filed out of the room; the staff eventually unplugged his microphone. "Even though the chairman is not going to listen," Mr. Nadler continued, "those of us who question some of the actions of the administration are seeking to make sure that our tradition of liberty and freedom is continued unsullied." After Mr. Nadler spoke, one witness, Dr. James J. Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, continued to testify, but about the hearing itself. "As we are lecturing foreign governments," he said, "I am really troubled by what kind of lesson this is going to teach to other countries in the world.""

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/11/politics/11patriot.html?pagewanted=print&oref=login

Sensebrenner is the congressional fascist that attached the RealID rider onto the Iraq supplemental spending bill last month.

6/11/2005 12:49:57 AM

he should have started wailing on him with a cane

6/11/2005 12:54:32 AM

it's happened before Kris (though very long ago), why not relive history. Andrew Brooks on Charles Sumner back in the 1800s.

[Edited on June 11, 2005 at 1:00 AM. Reason : Possibly the only Sumner/Brooks post ever]

6/11/2005 12:55:51 AM

You can watch the video on C-Span right now, or click here:

http://www.house.gov/apps/list/press/fl20_schultz/judgavelledoff.html

6/11/2005 12:57:54 AM

why shouldn't he adjourn a meeting about situation X when all the libies want to do is talk about unrelated situation Y? why waste your time?

btw, I'd hardly call it an "uproar."

6/11/2005 2:28:38 AM

Yea you're right Aaron, the Patriot Act was a great idea.

6/11/2005 2:45:44 AM

well i agreed with it at its inception, and think it was a good idea at the time. in fact, i'd like to see it renewed, but not permanently, as Bush suggested the other night. Renewing basically means that it will eventually run its course of usefulness and be forgotten eventually (see: alien and sedition acts). but instituting it permanently is unwise, not so much because of the articles within the patriot act, but because of the precedence that it sets.

6/11/2005 3:50:29 AM

Quote :

""Chairman Sensenbrenner proved again today that he is afraid of ideas, and that Republicans will stop at nothing to silence Democrats," Pelosi said. "It is quite ironic that at a hearing on the impact of the Patriot Act on civil liberties, the Republicans attempted to suppress free speech.""

http://www.jsonline.com/news/nat/jun05/332943.asp

6/11/2005 7:57:36 AM

Quote :

"it's happened before Kris (though very long ago), why not relive history. Andrew Brooks on Charles Sumner back in the 1800s."

haha
i'm not laughing cause the event, but because you thought he didn't know that and didn't realize thats what he was refering to

6/11/2005 8:12:09 AM

^Yeah, it was pretty obvious.

[Edited on June 11, 2005 at 8:30 AM. Reason : ]

6/11/2005 8:29:47 AM

^^yeah, i thought that after i did it too. oh well, it's there in case someone didn't know.

6/11/2005 6:14:09 PM

Quote :

"It is quite ironic that at a hearing on the impact of the Patriot Act on civil liberties, the Republicans attempted to suppress free speech."

yes. the Republicans "suppressed" free speech that was entirely unrelated to the Patriot Act. That is irony

6/11/2005 6:20:15 PM

Gitmo is directly related to the Patriot Act dumbass

The Patriot Act is what gives the admin permission to imprison people without a trial.

6/11/2005 7:04:13 PM

No one is "repressing" free speech... just you are held accountable to what you say

6/11/2005 9:23:31 PM

so crying like a baby is holding someone accountable

6/11/2005 9:47:34 PM

[user]nutsmakr[/user], stormtroopers are on the way to your house.

6/11/2005 11:37:38 PM

the patriot act is too nice of a name.

they should have just called it DORA like Britan did during WWI. See? You can do it without drawing in the names of national heros and the nation's best football team.

6/16/2005 8:54:26 PM

Agreed. I become suspicious any time legislation is referred to as the "Patriot Act" or "Freedom Act" or "Glorious New World Order Act".

6/16/2005 9:28:45 PM

http://movies.crooksandliars.com/Sensenbrenner_ends_Comittee.wmv


here's a video of it.

the best part is that the rest of the committee had their mics cut.

6/16/2005 11:22:56 PM

Or "New Deal" Acts. What the fuck was wrong with the previous Deal!?!?

6/17/2005 12:29:37 AM

It starved thousands and left many americans without any form of retirement?

6/17/2005 12:40:25 AM

CUT HIS MIC

6/17/2005 12:41:26 AM

Fucking republicans....

This is why I consider myself a non-partisan conservative.

6/17/2005 2:11:28 AM

people, stop calling shit fascist if it's not. look that shit up somewhere and study it before throwing it around like liquor flavored candy at a michael jackson slumber party.

6/17/2005 5:55:51 AM

Quote :

"A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism."

I wouldn't call it fascism... but it's like 60% there

6/17/2005 6:42:02 AM

Hmm, none of those are true. Not even the "Beligerant nationalism"

And threatenning the oposition with losing the next election is NOT suppression through terror or censorship, merely a functional constitutional democracy.

6/17/2005 9:29:42 AM

It's not fascism

Its arrogance.

6/17/2005 12:45:38 PM

Quote :

"GOING DARK CENSORED BY U.S. GOV "

http://www.rotten.com/

Quote :

"Rotten.com: our gapingmaw.com and other sites shut in anticipation of 2257 Amended Section 2257 recordkeeping regulations go into effect at midnight tonight. The federal law requires website owners to keep records documenting, among other things, that "every performer portrayed in a visual depiction of actual sexually explicit conduct" is over the age of 18. In anticipation, porn sites and others that offer adult content are preparing to make their sites compliant -- or taking them offline. Today, several sites in the Rotten.com family are going dark for that reason, including ratemyboner.com (like amihotornot for amateur snapshots of a particular male anatomical part in a particular state) and gapingmaw.com (which you could call an industrial-strength grossout blog). Section 2257 is ostensibly aimed at preventing the exploitation of minors in pornography. However, some free speech advocates argue it provides the conservative Bush administration with the power to silence other websites deemed offensive. Here's the full text of the law: Link to U.S. Code : Title 18 : Section 2257. "

http://www.boingboing.net/2005/06/22/rottencom_our_gaping.html

6/23/2005 4:06:17 PM

This is fucking ridiculous.

Who wants to start a site with unregistered elderly people fucking?

OMG I DON'T HAVE RECORDS OF THEIR AGE.

6/23/2005 4:09:29 PM

Quote :

"WASHINGTON, July 17 - The Federal Bureau of Investigation has collected at least 3,500 pages of internal documents in the last several years on a handful of civil rights and antiwar protest groups in what the groups charge is an attempt to stifle political opposition to the Bush administration. The F.B.I. has in its files 1,173 pages of internal documents on the American Civil Liberties Union, the leading critic of the Bush administration's antiterrorism policies, and 2,383 pages on Greenpeace, an environmental group that has led acts of civil disobedience in protest over the administration's policies, the Justice Department disclosed in a court filing this month in a federal court in Washington. The filing came as part of a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act brought by the A.C.L.U. and other groups that maintain that the F.B.I. has engaged in a pattern of political surveillance against critics of the Bush administration. A smaller batch of documents already turned over by the government sheds light on the interest of F.B.I. counterterrorism officials in protests surrounding the Iraq war and last year's Republican National Convention. F.B.I. and Justice Department officials declined to say what was in the A.C.L.U. and Greenpeace files, citing the pending lawsuit. But they stressed that as a matter of both policy and practice, they have not sought to monitor the political activities of any activist groups and that any intelligence-gathering activities related to political protests are intended to prevent disruptive and criminal activity at demonstrations, not to quell free speech. They said there might be an innocuous explanation for the large volume of files on the A.C.L.U. and Greenpeace, like preserving requests from or complaints about the groups in agency files. But officials at the two groups said they were troubled by the disclosure. "I'm still somewhat shocked by the size of the file on us," said Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the A.C.L.U. "Why would the F.B.I. collect almost 1,200 pages on a civil rights organization engaged in lawful activity? What justification could there be, other than political surveillance of lawful First Amendment activities?" Protest groups charge that F.B.I. counterterrorism officials have used their expanded powers since the Sept. 11 attacks to blur the line between legitimate civil disobedience and violent or terrorist activity in what they liken to F.B.I. political surveillance of the 1960's. The debate became particularly heated during protests over the war in Iraq and the run-up to the Republican National Convention in New York City last year, with the disclosures that the F.B.I. had collected extensive information on plans for protests. In all, the A.C.L.U. is seeking F.B.I. records since 2001 or earlier on some 150 groups that have been critical of the Bush administration's policies on the Iraq war and other matters. The Justice Department is opposing the A.C.L.U.'s request to expedite the review of material it is seeking under the Freedom of Information Act, saying it does not involve a matter of urgent public interest, and department lawyers say the sheer volume of material, in the thousands of pages, will take them 8 to 11 months to process for Greenpeace and the A.C.L.U alone. The A.C.L.U., which went to court in a separate case to obtain some 60,000 pages of records on the government's detention and interrogation practices, said the F.B.I. records on the dozens of protest groups could total tens of thousands of pages by the time the request is completed. The much smaller files that the F.B.I. has already turned over in recent weeks center on two other groups that were involved in political protests in the last few years, and those files point to previously undisclosed communications by bureau counterterrorism officials regarding activity at protests. Six pages of internal F.B.I. documents on a group called United for Peace and Justice, which led wide-scale protests over the Iraq war, discuss the group's role in 2003 in preparing protests for the Republican National Convention. A memorandum by counterterrorism personnel in the F.B.I.'s Los Angeles office circulated to other counterterrorism officials in New York, Boston, Los Angeles and Washington makes passing reference to possible anarchist connections of some protesters and the prospect for disruptions but also quotes at much greater length from more benign statements protesters had released on the Internet and elsewhere to prepare for the Republican convention. One section of the F.B.I. memo, for instance, quotes from a statement put out by protesters to rally support for convention protests: "Imagine: A million people on the street, representing the diversity of New York, and the multiplicity of this nation - community organizers, black radicals, unions, anarchists, church groups, queers, grandmas for peace, AIDS activists, youth organizers, environmentalists, people of color contingents, global justice organizers, those united for peace and justice, veterans, and everyone who is maligned by Bush's malicious agenda - on the street - en masse." A second file turned over by the F.B.I. on the American Indian Movement of Colorado includes seven pages of internal documents and press clippings related to protests and possible disruptions in the Denver area in connection with Columbus Day. In that case, a 2002 memorandum distributed to F.B.I. counterterrorism officials from agents in Denver said that "although the majority of demonstrators at the Columbus Day events will be peaceful, a small fraction of individuals intent on causing violence and property damage can be expected." An agent in Denver requested that the F.B.I. open a preliminary investigation "to allow for identification and investigation of individuals planning criminal activity during Columbus Day, October 2002," the memorandum said. The file does not indicate what came of the request. The documents are similar in tone to a controversial bulletin distributed among F.B.I. counterterrorism officials in October 2003 that analyzed the tactics, training and organization of antiwar demonstrators who were then planning protests in Washington and San Francisco. The 2003 memo led to an internal Justice Department inquiry after an F.B.I. employee charged that it improperly blurred the line between lawfully protected speech and illegal activity. But the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel found that the bulletin raised no legal problems and that any First Amendment impact posed by the F.B.I.'s monitoring of the political protests was negligible and constitutional. Still, the debate over the F.B.I.'s practices intensified last year during the presidential campaign. The F.B.I. questioned numerous political protesters, and issued subpoenas for some to appear before grand juries, in an effort to head off what officials said they feared could be violent and disruptive convention protests. And the Justice Department opened a criminal investigation and subpoenaed records regarding Internet messages posted by critics of the Bush administration that listed the names of delegates to the Republican convention. Leslie Cagan, the national coordinator for United for Peace and Justice, a coalition of more than 1,000 antiwar groups, said she was particularly concerned that the F.B.I.'s counterterrorism division was discussing the coalition's operations. "We always assumed the F.B.I. was monitoring us, but to see the counterterrorism people looking at us like this is pretty jarring," she said. At Greenpeace, which has protested both the Bush administration's environmental record and its policies in Iraq, John Passacantando, executive director of the group's United States operation, said he too was troubled by what he had learned. "If the F.B.I. has taken the time to gather 2,400 pages of information on an organization that has a perfect record of peaceful activity for 34 years, it suggests they're just attempting to stifle the voices of their critics," Mr. Passacantando said. Greenpeace was indicted as an organization by the Justice Department in a highly unusual prosecution in 2003 after two of its protesters went aboard a cargo ship to try to unfurl a protest banner. A federal judge in Miami threw out the case last year."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/18/politics/18protest.html


Because we all know that peaceniks and civil libertarians are potential terrorists...

7/18/2005 11:32:50 AM

You can file a Freedom of Information Act still and find out what theyre looking at, right?

I mean, I know the ACLU here was doing one for a few groups recently.

[Edited on July 18, 2005 at 12:11 PM. Reason : .]

7/18/2005 12:11:08 PM

7/18/2005 12:42:31 PM

We're not going to stand here while you bad-mouth THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!

Gentlemen....

7/18/2005 11:06:01 PM

Quote :

"If the F.B.I. has taken the time to gather 2,400 pages of information on an organization that has a perfect record of peaceful activity for 34 years, it suggests they're just attempting to stifle the voices of their critics," Mr. Passacantando said. "

Ah yes, good ol peaceful greenpeace. Nothing like a good bout of breaking and entering and tresspass for a perfect record of peaceful activity:

http://www.autoblog.com/entry/1234000143045876/

http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=48&story_id=21835&name=Belgian+news+in+brief%2C+11+July+2005+

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/greenpeace-activist-defies-military-exclusion-zone/2005/06/24/1119321902936.html?oneclick=true

I'm not sure why this suprises anyone at all, or even alarms anyone. a couple thousand pages of "documents" is nothing.

7/19/2005 1:07:35 AM

Quote :

"Ah yes, good ol peaceful greenpeace. Nothing like a good bout of breaking and entering and tresspass for a perfect record of peaceful activity: http://www.autoblog.com/entry/1234000143045876/ http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=48&story_id=21835&name=Belgian+news+in+brief%2C+11+July+2005+ http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/greenpeace-activist-defies-military-exclusion-zone/2005/06/24/1119321902936.html?oneclick=true I'm not sure why this suprises anyone at all, or even alarms anyone. a couple thousand pages of "documents" is nothing."

Chaining themselves to inanimate objects as a form of protest, does not qualify as a violent activity.


[Edited on July 19, 2005 at 1:46 PM. Reason : ,]

7/19/2005 1:45:36 PM

But breaking and entering does. Unless you think the factory owners just opened the gates for them.

7/19/2005 2:15:53 PM

Wal-Mart Turns in Student’s Anti-Bush Photo, Secret Service Investigates Him

Quote :

"Selina Jarvis is the chair of the social studies department at Currituck County High School in North Carolina, and she is not used to having the Secret Service question her or one of her students. But that’s what happened on September 20. Jarvis had assigned her senior civics and economics class “to take photographs to illustrate their rights in the Bill of Rights,” she says. One student “had taken a photo of George Bush out of a magazine and tacked the picture to a wall with a red thumb tack through his head. Then he made a thumb’s down sign with his own hand next to the President’s picture, and he had a photo taken of that, and he pasted it on a poster.” According to Jarvis, the student, who remains anonymous, was just doing his assignment, illustrating the right to dissent. But over at the Kitty Hawk Wal-Mart, where the student took his film to be developed, this right is evidently suspect. An employee in that Wal-Mart photo department called the Kitty Hawk police on the student. And the Kitty Hawk police turned the matter over to the Secret Service. On Tuesday, September 20, the Secret Service came to Currituck High.“At 1:35, the student came to me and told me that the Secret Service had taken his poster,” Jarvis says. “I didn’t believe him at first. But they had come into my room when I wasn’t there and had taken his poster, which was in a stack with all the others.” She says the student was upset. “He was nervous, he was scared, and his parents were out of town on business,” says Jarvis. She, too, had to talk to the Secret Service. “Halfway through my afternoon class, the assistant principal got me out of class and took me to the office conference room,” she says. “Two men from the Secret Service were there. They asked me what I knew about the student. I told them he was a great kid, that he was in the homecoming court, and that he’d never been in any trouble.” Then they got down to his poster. “They asked me, didn’t I think that it was suspicious,” she recalls. “I said no, it was a Bill of Rights project!” At the end of the meeting, they told her the incident “would be interpreted by the U.S. attorney, who would decide whether the student could be indicted,” she says. The student was not indicted, and the Secret Service did not pursue the case further. “I blame Wal-Mart more than anybody,” she says. “I was really disgusted with them. But everyone was using poor judgment, from Wal-Mart up to the Secret Service.” A person in the photo department at the Wal-Mart in Kitty Hawk said, “You have to call either the home office or the authorities to get any information about that.” Jacquie Young, a spokesperson for Wal-Mart at company headquarters, did not provide comment within a 24-hour period. Sharon Davenport of the Kitty Hawk Police Department said, “We just handed it over” to the Secret Service. “No investigative report was filed.” Jonathan Scherry, spokesman for the Secret Service in Washington, D.C., said, “We certainly respect artistic freedom, but we also have the responsibility to look into incidents when necessary. In this case, it was brought to our attention from a private citizen, a photo lab employee.” Jarvis uses one word to describe the whole incident: “ridiculous.”"

http://progressive.org/mag_mc100405



[Edited on October 5, 2005 at 4:23 PM. Reason : .]

10/5/2005 4:23:10 PM

haha. thats hilarious. but seriously, I doubt the person at wal-mart knew much about the school project, so suspicion could be warranted. I mean, keep in mind that the student didn't actually get in trouble, and he wasn't harassed or anything like that. The secret service came in, made sure everything was OK, and then left. They probably thought it was stupid, too, once they saw that it was nothing.

Had the student actually gotten in trouble, you'd have a point. Instead, this is little more than trying to say that a policeman checking a report of a "suspicious person" and finding workmen on the site doing work is actually a case of police brutality or is indicative of a police state.

10/5/2005 6:06:45 PM

^are you fucking dumb? the kid took a stupid picture of himself giving bush the thumbs down. WHO FUCKING CARES? I think that if the Secret Service showed up at my house, I'd be pretty damn scared.

suspicion OF WHAT?

[Edited on October 5, 2005 at 6:17 PM. Reason : .]

10/5/2005 6:17:08 PM

but dude, thats just it. she doesn't know WHO took the picture, or why. The column doesn't list whether or not the kid's face is in the picture. Thus, you don't know WHO took it, why they took it, or what, if anything, they plan to do. I GUARANTEE you that if it had not been a kid that had taken the picture and it was instead some wacko who later took a pot shot at the president that people would be crying bloody murder and saying WHY DIDN'T THEY SEE THE SIGNS???

just one of those things

10/5/2005 6:23:33 PM

Amazing.
http://streaming.americanprogress.org/ThinkProgress/2005/energy_vote.320.240.mov.html

10/8/2005 12:35:13 AM

whats amazing? that politics as usual is going on? wow, what a shocker...

remind me again what that has to do w/ the patriot act or fascism?

10/8/2005 5:03:41 PM