Tuesday, October 04, 2005
CAMPAIGN FOR READER PRIVACY - by Jim Hightower
Time for another Gooberhead Award [Beanie Cap Breakdown] – presented periodically to those in the news who have their tongues running 100 miles an hour... but forgot to put their brains in gear.
Today's Goober is from that giant storehouse of Gooberheads: congress. He's F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., a Wisconsin Republican who chairs the house judiciary committee. F. James is the sort of fellow who claims to see a terrorist in every shadow, and he's been padding his right-wing political credentials by trying to outlaw shadows.
His latest product is a nasty piece of legislation that extends Section 215 of the liberty-busting USA Patriot Act for 10 more years. This infamous section allows FBI gumshoes to ransack your and my library and bookstore records without bothering to get a judge's permission and without even informing us that we've been searched.
Known as "Fahrenheit 215" by some librarians and booksellers, this section burns a hole in our Fourth Amendment privacy rights. Oh well, you might think, this is only about terrorists. Uh-uh, Pollyanna – the Patriot Act is so broad that federal agents can define almost anyone as a "terrorist" and use section 215 to search your private records in investigations that have nothing to do with terrorism.
Despite having the word "sense" in his name, Sensenbrenner doesn't seem to have a lick of common sense in his head, for he insists that terrorists are using our libraries as safe havens and, therefore, the FBI must be allowed to probe secretly into all of our reading materials. "We put Americans' lives at risk," says F. James, "if we foolishly provide sanctuaries – even in our public libraries – for terrorists to operate."
This is Jim Hightower saying... What a Goober! The good news is that the senate wants to reject this Gooberheadedness and put some real restrictions on Section 215. For more information, click on the Campaign for Reader Privacy: www.readerprivacy.org.
Section 215 Patriot Act "House Extends Section 215 for Another Decade," www.ala.org, July 22, 2005.
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Time for another Gooberhead Award [Beanie Cap Breakdown] – presented periodically to those in the news who have their tongues running 100 miles an hour... but forgot to put their brains in gear.
Today's Goober is from that giant storehouse of Gooberheads: congress. He's F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., a Wisconsin Republican who chairs the house judiciary committee. F. James is the sort of fellow who claims to see a terrorist in every shadow, and he's been padding his right-wing political credentials by trying to outlaw shadows.
His latest product is a nasty piece of legislation that extends Section 215 of the liberty-busting USA Patriot Act for 10 more years. This infamous section allows FBI gumshoes to ransack your and my library and bookstore records without bothering to get a judge's permission and without even informing us that we've been searched.
Known as "Fahrenheit 215" by some librarians and booksellers, this section burns a hole in our Fourth Amendment privacy rights. Oh well, you might think, this is only about terrorists. Uh-uh, Pollyanna – the Patriot Act is so broad that federal agents can define almost anyone as a "terrorist" and use section 215 to search your private records in investigations that have nothing to do with terrorism.
Despite having the word "sense" in his name, Sensenbrenner doesn't seem to have a lick of common sense in his head, for he insists that terrorists are using our libraries as safe havens and, therefore, the FBI must be allowed to probe secretly into all of our reading materials. "We put Americans' lives at risk," says F. James, "if we foolishly provide sanctuaries – even in our public libraries – for terrorists to operate."
This is Jim Hightower saying... What a Goober! The good news is that the senate wants to reject this Gooberheadedness and put some real restrictions on Section 215. For more information, click on the Campaign for Reader Privacy: www.readerprivacy.org.
Section 215 Patriot Act "House Extends Section 215 for Another Decade," www.ala.org, July 22, 2005.
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