Apologies and an offer
- posted by Lis @ 5:05 PM
I'm really impressed with what everybody else here has managed to accomplish.
Unfortunately, I have to acknowledge that I simply don't have the energy to devote to this project.
I started this whole thing and own the domain, but have neither time to contribute content nor a place to host it.

I'm really sorry if I'm letting folks down.
I would like to offer management of the lifeandliberty.info domain to somebody who can give it the care and attention it deserves.
I will keep this discussion board running as long as people are interested in using it, and maybe by the end of the month, I might have a hosting site if there is content to post, but I don't want to make any guarantees I can't live up to.

I think we've got a good thing going here, in spite of my shameful neglect. I'm hoping somebody here will be willing to take over leadership of the project.

Any volunteers?

 
Benjamin Franklin True Patriot Act
- posted by Rich @ 11:04 AM
Congressman Dennis Kucinich has introduced the Benjamin
Frnaklin True Patriot Act HR 3171 http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c108:H.R.3171: which will repeal sections of
the Patriot Act among other things
You can contact Congress at http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/

 
Great Quote for OUR "Congress Speaks" or "Passed by Congress" section
- posted by Daniel @ 12:20 AM
Apologies if you've seen this already and for posting again so soon, but this series opener from the Sacramento Bee contains this wonder Congressional quote:

------------
In fact, it was almost impossible, because many in Congress knew little or nothing about what was actually in the bill.

"The final version of the Patriot Act that was passed into law was rewritten between midnight and 8 o'clock in the morning behind closed doors by a few unknown people, and it was presented to Congress for a one-hour debate and an up or down vote," U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., said in a telephone interview from his Oregon office. "It was hundreds of pages long, and no member of Congress can tell you they knew what they were voting for in its entirety.

"It was time to be stampeded, and who wanted to be against the USA Patriot Act at a time like that?"

As it turns out, there weren't many politicians willing to face voters in the next election and explain why they voted against patriotism. Only one senator -- Democrat Russ Feingold of Wisconsin -- and 66 House members, including DeFazio, voted against it.

-------------------------------------------

 
When we go live, should our group have a name?
- posted by Daniel @ 12:27 AM
One more post and then I promise to quit for awhile unless we get new assignments, of if there's new activitiy at LL.gov.

When we're about to launch LL.info, I think we should try to do press releases about the site, at least to alternative media such as Nation, CounterPunch, Working for Change, Alternet, etc and probably to as many mainstream places we can think of. As a group of librarians and net folks, I'm sure contact info won't be hard to come by.

I think (maybe weirdly) that we might get a better response if we called ourselves something. So the news stories (IF ANY) could lead with "A group of freedom loving librarians calling themselves "___________" are challenging the DOJ's claims head on.

So, two questions to our group:

1) Should we have a group name?
2) If yes to first question, what? Strictly brainstorming we could try:
"Friends of Liberty"
"Truthseekers Unlimited"
"Stop the Spin"
"Truth Liberation Front"
"Librarians United Against Tall Tales"

Any other ideas?

Take care,
Daniel

 
The FIVE PATRIOT related Hearings, with Links
- posted by Daniel @ 12:15 AM
Hi All,

As I mentioned in a comment below, out of the 116 hearings listed on 18 pages at the "Responding to Congress" site of LL.gov, only FIVE have oversight of the PATRIOT Act as their primary focus. Below are the titles of the hearings, plus the links you DO NOT find at LL.gov. I think that when we get LL.info up and running, we should always link if there's something online.

-----------

Serial No. 107-53 -- Patriot Act Oversight: Investigating Patterns of Terrorist Financing, February 12, 2002
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=107_house_hearings&docid=f:78125.wais

S. Hrg. 107-947 -- The USA Patriot Act in Practice: Shedding Light on the FISA Process, September 10, 2002
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=107_senate_hearings&docid=f:87866.wais


S. Hrg. ? -- Tools against Terror: How the Administration is implementing New Laws in the Fight to protect our Homeland, Senate Judiciary Committee, October 9, 2002
NO TRANSCRIPT AVAILABLE. Witness List and some statements available at:
http://judiciary.senate.gov/hearing.cfm?id=495


H. Hrg. ? -- The Constitution and Implementation of the USA Patriot Act, House Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on the Constitution, May 20, 2003.
[Interestingly while the DOJ uses the title above, the Committee gives this title:
"Oversight hearing on “Anti-Terrorism Investigations and the Fourth Amendment After September 11: Where and When Can the Government Go to Prevent Terrorist Attacks?”"
NO TRANSCRIPT AVAILABLE. OTHER RESOURCES:
Webcast - http://boss.streamos.com/real/hjudiciary/constitution/constitution052003.smi
Witness List - http://www.house.gov/judiciary/const052003.htm
Statement of Chairman Steve Chabot - http://www.house.gov/judiciary/chabot052003.htm
Statement of Viet Dinh - http://www.house.gov/judiciary/dinh052003.pdf
Statement of James Dempsey - http://www.house.gov/judiciary/dempsey052003.pdf
Statement of Orin Kerr - http://www.house.gov/judiciary/kerr052003.htm
Statement of Paul Rosenzweig - http://www.house.gov/judiciary/rosenzweig052003.htm


H. Hrg. ? --- The USA Patriot Act, House Judiciary Committee, June 5, 2003.
Transcript - http://www.house.gov/judiciary/fulltrans060503.htm
Webcast - http://boss.streamos.com/real/hjudiciary/full/full060503.smi


-------------------
And an interesting hearing that states that further intrusive spying isn't what's needed to keep America safe:
S. Hrg. 107-978
AMERICA STILL UNPREPARED-AMERICA STILL IN DANGER: THE OCTOBER 2002 HART-RUDMAN TERRORISM TASK FORCE REPORT
HEARING before the SUBCOMMITTEE ON TECHNOLOGY, TERRORISM, AND GOVERNMENT INFORMATION of the COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY UNITED STATES SENATE ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS SECOND SESSION __________ NOVEMBER 14, 2002 __________ Serial No. J-107-111
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=107_senate_hearings&docid=f:88882.wais

 
Responding to Congress - or Not
- posted by Daniel @ 11:49 PM
Hi All,

I'm still plowing through the DOJ's "Responding to Congress" section at LL.gov. Part of the slow going is that the PDFs are not searchable, making it difficult to do things like how many times "classified" was used in responses.

I ran across a question and response from the April 2003 questions I wanted to share:

--------------------
37. There have been three successive FBI sweeps since September 11, 2001, to monitor, question, arrest, detain, or deport various immigrants. The first sweep focused on young Arab and Muslim males and occurred in the months following September 11, 2001. The second sweep occurred in March 2002 and centered on thousands of individuals of Middle Eastern and South Asian heritage. The third sweep occurred in March 2003 as part of “Operation Liberty Shield.” Please provide information on each of these operations.

A. When were the plans for such operations first considered by the Department?

B. What guidance was provided to U.S. Attorney’s Offices and/or FBI offices with respect to questions that should be asked of such immigrants?

C. What has been the outcome of each of these plans? Please provide details such as how many were monitored, questioned, arrested, detained, or deported for each operation. Please provide details as to the number and types of terrorism-related investigations and prosecutions that have resulted from these sweeps.

D. Please identify the specific authority relied on to create and implement these plans, including the monitoring, questioning, arrests, detentions, and deportations.

Answer: The answers relating to these questions are classified, and, accordingly, will be delivered to the Committee under separate cover.
---------------------------

So, the public doesn't get to know whether these mass interrogations are actually showing any results? Scary times we live in.

More to come - Daniel

 
Sweet Jesus
- posted by Rob @ 8:55 PM
Not precisely related to the Patriot Act, but I believe this story says a great deal about this country, and none of it good. The same climate that allows the Patriot Act to exist allows this to happen.

Link stolen from Atrios, but I figured it was appropriate for here.

 
New Terror Laws Used Vs. Common Criminals
- posted by Lis @ 1:13 PM
Nothing that we didn't already know, but it's a good rebuttal to those who say the Patriot Act is only against terrorists.

 
Homefront confidential
- posted by Rich @ 1:02 AM
RCFP White Paper Homefront Confidential
http://www.rcfp.org/homefrontconfidential/

 
Can we sign this guy up?
- posted by Rob @ 12:58 AM
Full story here
Vernon Supreme, another protester, sported a rainbow-colored clown wig, foam nose and rubber butt and shouted taunts as he marched around the building.

"John Ashcroft, come out with your pants down — we've got the place surrounded," he said through his bullhorn, prompting laughter from several onlookers.

Supreme, a Cape Ann, Mass., resident who changed his name in 1997, described himself as "the most dangerous clown in America" who attended Tuesday's rally to "protest this fascist scumbag."

"I think he's another cog in a very dangerous machine we've got going on," Supreme said.


I thought I was a pretty dedicated Ashcroft hater, but I've got nothing on Mr. Supreme.

 
Welcome to the party / LL.zip is bloated by pdfs
- posted by Daniel @ 9:27 PM
Rob,

Welcome! I'll leave it to Lis, our leader and owner of lifeandliberty.info to give status reports. Since I had something else to post anyway, I thought I could be first to welcome you to this effort to fight for truth, justice and the authentic American way of INALIENABLE rights.

Everybody - I haven't posted the new LL.zip file yet because LL.gov has become HUGE at over 7Megs - It had been under 1 Meg. I think it's the addition of pdf files for all of the CR statements in the "Congress Speaks" section.

Should I post my 5M zip file of EVERYTHING, or strip out the PDFs and post what's left? Are we even using files from LL.gov?

Thanks,
Daniel

 
Late to the Party
- posted by Rob @ 5:52 PM
Hey, folks. Y'all left the door open, so I thought I'd wander in and make myself comfortable. I do apologize for my appearance here taking so long, but I'm here and ready to help now.

So, basically, where are we right now and what can I do?

 
Correction to last post / volunteer to read mail
- posted by Daniel @ 10:27 AM
Sorry. It's early here in Alaska. In my last post I said:

"We all know that the story is a bit more complicated than that and how Justice had to be dragged kicking and screaming to answer questions -- and even then only provided "classifed" answers. "

I meant to say "classified" answers to many basic questions. Some of their responses were public.

Also, when LL.info is up, I feel strongly that we should have a feedback link. I volunteer to monitor the e-mail, guestbook, commenting or whatever we use, at least for the first month. We might say in advance that we won't respond to flame mail.

We should offer feedback simply because LL.gov does not.

Take care,
Daniel

 
New at LL.gov
- posted by Daniel @ 10:23 AM
LL.gov has added a new section, "Responding to Congress" which starts with "The USA PATRIOT Act has been the subject of rigorous, and appropriate, Congressional oversight. This oversight is important and helpful, and it is a necessary part of our democratic process of government."

It seems to imply that the whole Q&A history of the Act is:

Justice Department participates in Congressional Hearings on Patriot Act and the War on Terrorism
September 2001 - July 2003
[view document]

Justice Department responds to oversight questions from House Judiciary Committee
Response to June 13, 2002 questions
[view document]

Justice Department responds to oversight questions from House Judiciary Committee
Response to April 1, 2003 questions
[view document]

We all know that the story is a bit more complicated than that and how Justice had to be dragged kicking and screaming to answer questions -- and even then only provided "classifed" answers.

UNLESS someone else has started to research this page, I will start putting together a more truthful chronology. I think there are already pieces elsewhere.

Something else that is new - LL.gov now has links to Congress Members complete Congressional Record statements.

Possibly interesting is that the links lead to files on LL.gov itself and not to the CR pages on GPO Access. This could be for reliability OR to prevent people from paging past favorable statements and seeing less supportive statements.

I will be replacing the zip of LL.gov in the next several days.

All for now. - Daniel

 
Ashcroft poster/DOJ resignation
- posted by Rich @ 12:25 AM
Here's a good Ashcroft poster
http://homepage.mac.com/jydesign/watching/ashcroft-watching.jpg
Lisa's "favorite" DOJ spokeswoman Barbara Comstock is leaving to join the lobbying and public relations firm Blank Rome Government Relations LLC
http://apnews1.iwon.com//article/20030908/D7TEEUG80.html
DNS Help www.winnetmag.com

 
Yes, the site has been down -- sorry
- posted by Lis @ 9:25 AM
Technical difficulties with our DNS host.
osmond-riba.org is temporarily up hosted at Earthlink, and then we'll be moving hosts more permanently late next week. At that point I hope to get lifeandliberty.info up as well.

Sorry 'bout all this, particularly in leaving you all in the dark, but without the blog (or email) I wasn't able to communicate

 
Elisabeth's main site seems down
- posted by Daniel @ 7:17 PM
Hi all,

I'm just checking to see if anyone else is having trouble accessing Lis' web site at the URL above. I haven't been able to see pages there for the past few days.

I also wanted to thank Rich Allen for his last LISNEWS posting, in addition to what's here.

If Lis has other net access to read this, I hope you and your hubby are doing ok. - Daniel

 
LL.gov files available for downloading
- posted by Daniel @ 1:00 AM
Hi All!

In case anybody wanted to modify COPIES of the pages at LL.gov, I have posted a zip file of the whole site at http://daniel.cornwall.home.att.net/LL.zip

This should be completely legal as US Government Documents are public domain materials.

If you have trouble unzipping and extracting the files, please send me an e-mail at daniel.cornwall at att.net and let me know which pages you'd like.

I'm still excited about doing something with this, even if we can't get the www.lifeandliberty.info address to work, though that's still preferable.

 
USA PATRIOT Riding Into The Sunset
- posted by Daniel @ 12:54 AM
I thought this note from arch conservative Paul M. Weyrich was worth noting. The full article can be read at http://www.washingtondispatch.com/article_6518.shtml, and here is a good quote from it in reference to the "Otter Amendment":

"The reply I got, one Ashcroft repeated during a visit to Idaho last week, startled me. It was sweeping in its arrogance. I was told that this was all a mistake. They at Justice and Homeland Security didn't have time to weigh in, and had they done so the result would have been completely different.

I said to my young friends: "That was the most arrogant statement coming from a government official that I have heard in years. What you are saying is that these Republican Congressmen are so stupid, and
understand nothing about the bill, that if only YOU could have had your say, they all would have turned around their votes.""

It's alway nice to see fire from all sides.

 
Ashcroft unplugged/S1552
- posted by Rich @ 11:42 PM
John Ascroft unplugged by John Turley
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/08/31/IN277420.DTL
Protecting the Rights of Individuals Act S.1552
http://www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/SafeandFree.cfm?ID=13292&c=206
The ACLU has a section on their web site so you can send
faxes to your US Senators in support of S.1552