WE, the people, should be watching our government. They should NOT be watching us. While they were watching us, they were not watching our economy, our infrastructure, our security, our children's health and education, our ports and chemical plants, our energy production and certainly not our environment. There has been all this negligence while they were pretending to be concerned about our nation. I plan on working to change that and below, you will see how and why. Restoring Our Rights
A whole litany of our constitutional rights have been subverted or completely removed by the partisan Congresses of the past few years voting in lock-step with President Bush's demands. I intend to strive tirelessly to repeal or fix all the offending legislation that has stripped us of the rights our fathers, sons, brothers, sisters, grandparents and other relatives have all fought and died for. These will include:
The Military Commissions Act of 2006 –
which took away our right not to be unlawfully detained or held without trial. (see story) Our right to habeas corpus is this right. It is guaranteed through our Constitution, but it has been thrown away. It also gave the President unlimited power to designate "enemy combatants" and define torture. At present, anyone, American citizen or not, can be unlawfully detained, 
tortured and held without trial with no legal recourse. I will demand that we reject this bad law and restore these rights.
The Patriot Act –
which took away our right to privacy in our homes, our libraries, our associations, our banking, our medical records, our mail, our email and our telephone conversations. This act expanded the definition of terrorism to include domestic terrorism which was then used as justification for unconstitutional invasions of privacy in all these areas. It also infringes on our rights to free speech and to assemble peacefully. This act has been used to undermine the basic freedoms and constitutional rights for which our brave men and women in the armed forces have fought and died. (see story)
As a librarian for 15 years, I found the ability of the FBI to simply demand patron reading records without a warrant particularly egregious! We had to warn new patrons interested in utilizing maintaining a reading list that the list could be confiscated by authorities with no provocation or notice. Needless to say, this dampened even the most innocuous citizen’s enthusiasm for this technology. That list could be used to place our citizens in one of the detention camps, like that pictured above, being built by KBR all throughout the nation! (see story)
Our laws already provided sufficient authorization for any international or domestic surveillance required to monitor or find terrorists or terrorist activity. The previous laws required court sanctioned warrants, although emergency wiretapping was permitted with the warrant being sought up to 72 hours later. This law also brought about the infamous “No Fly List” under which so many innocent citizens have had their ability to travel restricted or removed entirely. I will actively work to repeal this very unpatriotic act.
The Animal
Violent protest and acts of vandalism were and are already unlawful. This act wrongly labels peaceful protest by animal rights activists as “terrorism” and grants more rights to the businesses than to the citizens of this country. (see story) Americans have long had the right to protest laws, situations and actions they feel are unjust or wrong. Not any more. Protesters who picket in front of a furrier can now be arrested as terrorists simply for causing some shoppers to rethink their cruel purchase. This undermines our rights to assemble, free speech, of association and misuses the word “terrorist” for political purposes only. By labeling protesters as terrorists, this law also permits the indefinite detention and imprisonment of those citizens without legal recourse under the law. Again, this is a bad law that needs to be repealed in its entirety.
Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007 –
which has actually taken the bold step of criminalizing our very thoughts! The language in this bill is so vague; it leaves open the interpretation of what is “radical” to whoever is in the White House. (see story) This bill can essentially label as a terrorist anyone, any religion or any group who may be sitting around discussing how awful the war is and preparing a peaceful protest against it. They can consider this “promoting an extremist belief system” and utilize the other laws mentioned above to then arrest and detain our citizens indefinitely, and again, without legal recourse.
This law has nothing whatsoever to do with actual terrorism or terrorists. Rather, it is primarily designed to protect corporate interests from concerned citizen protest against policies and actions that threaten our freedoms, our rights, our health and our environment. Consider it the companion bill to the AETA listed above. That it was passed almost unanimously indicates either that those in Congress at the time truly didn’t read it or that we are now most assuredly a nation that values corporate interests over those of its citizens. This bill MUST be repealed! I will push for a revote after insisting that my colleagues read it in its entirety.
The current administration, as well as the rubber stamp Congressional sessions that have taken place while under his reign, has eliminated Constitutional rights held inviolate for over 250 years.
They have undermined our most basic constitutional rights. They make a mockery of the extreme sacrifice given by our brave men and women of the military, both past and present.
These are the rights that other nations throughout the world have strived to emulate. The present war in
I will actively work to get those laws, and others like them, repealed or at least fixed to reflect true American values and uphold our Bill of Rights.
