....President Clinton and the Democrats are behind [this] latest assault on our privacy rights. On the eve of the first anniversary of the Oklahoma bombing in April, 1996, Congress passed the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996. The Democrats were very disappointed, however, because the bill passed without proposed expansions of wiretapping authority. In May 1996, Reps. Charles Schumer (D-NY) and John Conyers (D-MI) introduced H.R. 3409 "to combat domestic terrorism." The bill, titled the "Effective Anti-Terrorism Tools for Law Enforcement Act of 1996," would expand the powers granted to the FBI to engage in multi- point (roving) wiretaps and emergency wiretaps without court orders, and to access an individual's hotel and vehicle and storage facility rental records. It also relaxed the requirements for obtaining pen register and trap and trace orders in foreign intelligence investigations.
http://www.crimelynx.com/partpol.html
>From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
>Reply-To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Lynn Stewart convicted of aiding terrorists
>Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2005 12:33:23 -0500
>
>andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>
>>This is blaming the victim, Nathan, and piling on
>>irrelevant distractions. It really sounds like you're
>>saying, she asked for it and we should flush her and
>>forget her as an embarassment. Or denounce her for
>>her actions. And you forgot to mention her apologetics
>>for Stalinism.
>
>Stewart said some stuff I don't agree with, and she may have acted badly
>with her client, but I just don't care about any of that right now. The
>point is the federal government wants to scare lawyers away from defending
>"terrorists" (and just about anyone else it doesn't like), and there's
>nothing like a 20-30 year prison term to do that. It's outrageous and
>frightening; it's less a legal issue than a political one, and I have the
>same feeling about apologizing for the government's actions as I do about
>going after Ward Churchill's footnotes: wrong points, wrong time.
>
>And Nathan, I'm surprised you're not playing the partisan card. As a
>radical lawyer told me & Liza over dinner a couple of months ago, a Dem
>admin probably wouldn't have indicted Stewart. Combine this conviction with
>tort reform and you see a real plan to strip the justice system of any of
>its decent and democratic aspects and turn it into a pure instrument of
>repression and plutocracy.
>
>Doug
>___________________________________
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