Monday, February 10, 2003

Domestic Security Enhancement QUOTE OF THE DAY "It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive." - - Earl Warren (1891 - 1974) RHINO HERE: Last week, Bill Moyers featured an amazing interview on his ground-breaking PBS-TV series, "NOW" with the founder of The Center For Public Integrity, Charles Lewis. If you missed it, turns out an unknown whistle-blower in shrub gang member John Ashcroft's Justice Department passed a document to Lewis entitled, "The Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003" which outlines a significant broadening of law enforcement powers, including domestic intelligence gathering, surveillance, & law enforcement prerogatives, while decreasing public access to information and judicial review authority. Apparently he document had been seen by very few people but it's all ready to go, likely waiting for the war to start and fears to mount before ramming it through Congress. Understand this as the sequel. In other words, if you liked their "Patriot Act", you're gonna love their Domestic Security Enhancement. The Center for Public Integrity, is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, tax-exempt organization, founded by Charles Lewis following a successful 11-year career in network television news. Their mission statement reads: "... to provide the American people with the findings of our investigations and analyses of public service, government accountability and ethics related issues." FOR MORE ON THE WORK OF THE CENTER, GO TO http://publicintegrity.org/dtaweb/index.asp?L1=40&L2=0&L3=0&L4=0&L5=0 NOW with Bill Moyers Have I mentioned recently that I'd love to have Bill Moyers as my President? And Gary Trudeau as his Vice? Moyers is easily one of the most respected journalists in America. His PBS series, "NOW" includes in-depth interviews & articulate commentary. With NOW Moyers asks America weekly, who's winning & who's losing in the body politic. Executive producer John Siceloff says "Our goal is to illuminate news and ideas that can help viewers become more engaged and active citizens at the grassroots of democracy." FOR MORE ABOUT "NOW". GO TO: http://www.pbs.org/now/ Excerpt From & Link To Moyers' Interview With Charles Lewis On Sequel To Patriot Act: ...MOYERS: So many of these powers latent in this draft legislation were powers that were taken away from the intelligence community some years ago because they were abused. LEWIS: That's right. MOYERS: Do you see any protection in here against potential abuse? LEWIS: I don't think there's very much — there's a lot more authority and power for government. There's less oversight and information about what government is doing. That's the headline and that's the theme. And the safeguards seem to be pretty minimal to me. MOYERS: I just go through here, you know? "Will give the Attorney General the unchecked power to deport any foreigner?" LEWIS: Right. MOYERS: Including lawful permanent resident aliens. It would give the government the power to keep certain arrests secret until an indictment is found never in our history have we permitted secret arrests. It would give the government power to bypass courts and grand juries in order to conduct surveillance without a judge's permission. I mean these do really further upend the balance between liberty on the one hand and security on the other. LEWIS: Well, they do. They reduce judicial oversight with the secret intelligence courts instead of saying the court may do this now it's the court will do this. They can have ex parte conversations where they go into the judge without anyone else around. In terms of information about detainees, not only can they detain anyone they'd like to detain, there is no public information about it. Journalists cannot find out the names of... we detained over a thousand people after September 11th because we thought they might all be terrorists. Not one of them was really found with any criminal charges to be a terrorist. And we don't know the names of almost all those people, still. And so it does appear that everything that folks might be concerned about with the Patriot Act, this is times five or times ten is what I look at it. I see it very serious... FOR THE COMPLETE TRANSCRIPT OF THE INTERVIEW, GO TO: http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript_lewis2.html THE BOTTOM LINE is an in depth article describing many of the details of the proposed "Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003"& the potential ramifications. 8:37:07 AM    comment

Justice Dept. Drafts Sweeping Expansion of Anti-Terrorism Act Center Publishes Secret Draft of 'Patriot II' Legislation By Charles Lewis and Adam Mayle (WASHINGTON, Feb. 7, 2003) -- The Bush Administration is preparing a bold, comprehensive sequel to the USA Patriot Act passed in the wake of September 11, 2001, which will give the government broad, sweeping new powers to increase domestic intelligence-gathering, surveillance and law enforcement prerogatives, and simultaneously decrease judicial review and public access to information. The Center for Public Integrity has obtained a draft, dated January 9, 2003, of this previously undisclosed legislation and is making it available in full text (12 MB). The bill, drafted by the staff of Attorney General John Ashcroft and entitled the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003, has not been officially released by the Department of Justice, although rumors of its development have circulated around the Capitol for the last few months under the name of "the Patriot Act II" in legislative parlance. "We haven't heard anything from the Justice Department on updating the Patriot Act," House Judiciary Committee spokesman Jeff Lungren told the Center. "They haven't shared their thoughts on that. Obviously, we'd be interested, but we haven't heard anything at this point." Senior members of the Senate Judiciary Committee minority staff have inquired about Patriot II for months and have been told as recently as this week that there is no such legislation being planned. Mark Corallo, deputy director of Justice's Office of Public Affairs, told the Center his office was unaware of the draft. "I have heard people talking about revising the Patriot Act, we are looking to work on things the way we would do with any law," he said. "We may work to make modifications to protect Americans," he added. When told that the Center had a copy of the draft legislation, he said, "This is all news to me. I have never heard of this." After the Center posted this story, Barbara Comstock, director of public affairs for the Justice Dept., released a statement saying that, "Department staff have not presented any final proposals to either the Attorney General or the White House. It would be premature to speculate on any future decisions, particularly ideas or proposals that are still being discussed at staff levels." TO READ THE IN DEPTH REPORT ON THIS SECRET DOCUMENT, GO TO: http://publicintegrity.org/dtaweb/report.asp?ReportID=502&L1=10&L2=10&L3=0&L4=0&L5=0 "RHINO'S BLOG" is the responsibility of Gary Rhine. (rhino@kifaru.com) Feedback, and requests to be added or deleted from the list are encouraged. SEARCH BLOG ARCHIVES / SURF RHINO'S LINKS, AT: http://www.rhinosblog.info RHINO'S OTHER WEB SITES: http://www.dreamcatchers.org (INDIGENOUS ASSISTANCE & INTERCULTURAL DIALOG) http://www.kifaru.com (NATIVE AMERICAN RELATIONS VIDEO DOCUMENTARIES) Articles are reprinted under Fair Use Doctrine of international copyright law. http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html All copyrights belong to original publisher. 8:23:05 AM    comment

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