Let's hear you Bushbots defend THIS!

[The Dunedan]

These are direct citations from the Domestic Security Enhancement Act, sometimes known as the Partiot Act 2. Cut-and-pasted from the Sierra Times webforum.





SECTION 501 (Expatriation of Terrorists) expands the Bush administration's "enemy combatant" definition to all American citizens who "may" have violated any provision of Section 802 of the first Patriot Act. (Section 802 is the new definition of domestic terrorism, and the definition is "any action that endangers human life that is a violation of any Federal or State law.") Section 501 of the second Patriot Act directly connects to Section 125 of the same act.]The Justice Department boldly claims that the incredibly broad Section 802 of the First USA Patriot Act isn't broad enough and that a new, unlimited definition of terrorism is needed.

Under Section 501 a US citizen engaging in lawful activities can be grabbed off the street and thrown into a van never to be seen again. The Justice Department states that they can do this because the person "had inferred from conduct" that they were not a US citizen. Remember Section 802 of the First USA Patriot Act states that any violation of Federal or State law can result in the "enemy combatant" terrorist designation.

SECTION 201 of the second Patriot Act makes it a criminal act for any member of the government or any citizen to release any information concerning the incarceration or whereabouts of detainees. It also states that law enforcement does not even have to tell the press who they have arrested and they never have to release the names.

SECTION 301 and 306 (Terrorist Identification Database) set up a national database of "suspected terrorists" and radically expand the database to include anyone associated with suspected terrorist groups and anyone involved in crimes or having supported any group designated as "terrorist." These sections also set up a national DNA database for anyone on probation or who has been on probation for any crime, and orders State governments to collect the DNA for the Federal government.

SECTION 312 gives immunity to law enforcement engaging in spying operations against the American people and would place substantial restrictions on court injunctions against Federal violations of civil rights across the board.

SECTION 101 will designate individual terrorists as foreign powers and again strip them of all rights under the "enemy combatant" designation.

SECTION 102 states clearly that any information gathering, regardless of whether or not those activities are illegal, can be considered to be clandestine intelligence activities for a foreign power. This makes news gathering illegal.

SECTION 103 allows the Federal government to use wartime martial law powers domestically and internationally without Congress declaring that a state of war exists.

SECTION 106 is bone-chilling in its straightforwardness. It states that broad general warrants by the secret FSIA court (a panel of secret judges set up in a star chamber system that convenes in an undisclosed location) granted under the first Patriot Act are not good enough. It states that government agents must be given immunity for carrying out searches with no prior court approval. This section throws out the entire Fourth Amendment against unreasonable searches and seizures.

SECTION 109 allows secret star chamber courts to issue contempt charges against any individual or corporation who refuses to incriminate themselves or others. This sections annihilate the last vestiges of the Fifth Amendment.

SECTION 110 restates that key police state clauses in the first Patriot Act were not sunsetted and removes the five year sunset clause from other subsections of the first Patriot Act. After all, the media has told us: "This is the New America. Get used to it. This is forever."

SECTION 111 expands the definition of the "enemy combatant" designation.

SECTION 122 restates the government's newly announced power of "surveillance without a court order."

SECTION 123 restates that the government no longer needs warrants and that the investigations can be a giant dragnet-style sweep described in press reports about the Total Information Awareness Network. One passage reads, "thus the focus of domestic surveillance may be less precise than that directed against more conventional types of crime."

*Note: Over and over again, in subsection after subsection, the second Patriot Act states that its new Soviet-type powers will be used to fight international terrorism, domestic terrorism and other types of crimes. Of course the government has already announced in Section 802 of the first USA Patriot act that any crime is considered domestic terrorism.

SECTION 126 grants the government the right to mine the entire spectrum of public and private sector information from bank records to educational and medical records. This is the enacting law to allow ECHELON and the Total Information Awareness Network to break down any and all walls of privacy. The government states that they must look at everything to "determine" if individuals or groups might have a connection to terrorist groups. As you can now see, you are guilty until proven innocent.

SECTION 127 allows the government to takeover coroners' and medical examiners' operations whenever they see fit. See how this is like Bill Clinton's special medical examiner he had in Arkansas that ruled that people had committed suicide when their arms and legs had been cut off.

SECTION 128 allows the Federal government to place gag orders on Federal and State Grand Juries and to take over the proceedings. It also disallows individuals or organizations to even try to quash a Federal subpoena. So now defending yourself will be a terrorist action.

SECTION 129 destroys any remaining whistle blower protection for Federal agents.

SECTION 202 allows corporations to keep secret their activities with toxic biological, chemical or radiological materials.

SECTION 205 allows top Federal officials to keep all their financial dealings secret, and anyone investigating them can be considered a terrorist. This should be very useful for Dick Cheney to stop anyone investigating Haliburton.

SECTION 303 sets up national DNA database of suspected terrorists. The database will also be used to "stop other unlawful activities." It will share the information with state, local and foreign agencies for the same purposes.

SECTION 311 federalizes your local police department in the area of information sharing.

SECTION 313 provides liability protection for businesses, especially big businesses that spy on their customers for Homeland Security, violating their privacy agreements. It goes on to say that these are all preventative measures - has anyone seen Minority Report? This is the access hub for the Total Information Awareness Network.

SECTION 321 authorizes foreign governments to spy on the American people and to share information with foreign governments.

SECTION 322 removes Congress from the extradition process and allows officers of the Homeland Security complex to extradite American citizens anywhere they wish. It also allows Homeland Security to secretly take individuals out of foreign countries.

SECTION 402 is titled "Providing Material Support to Terrorism." The section reads that there is no requirement to show that the individual even had the intent to aid terrorists.

SECTION 403 expands the definition of weapons of mass destruction to include any activity that affects interstate or foreign commerce.

SECTION 404 makes it a crime for a terrorist or "other criminals" to use encryption in the commission of a crime.

SECTION 408 creates "lifetime parole" (basically, slavery) for a whole host of crimes.

SECTION 410 creates no statute of limitations for anyone that engages in terrorist actions or supports terrorists. Remember: any crime is now considered terrorism under the first Patriot Act.

SECTION 411 expands crimes that are punishable by death. Again, they point to Section 802 of the first Patriot Act and state that any terrorist act or support of terrorist act can result in the death penalty.

SECTION 421 increases penalties for terrorist financing. This section states that any type of financial activity connected to terrorism will result to time in prison and $10-50,000 fines per violation.

SECTION 427 sets up asset forfeiture provisions for anyone engaging in terrorist activities. There are many other sections that I did not cover in the interest of time. The American people were shocked by the despotic nature of the first Patriot Act. The second Patriot Act dwarfs all police state legislation in modern world history.

[Milton Bradley]

I don't need to see any more to know that its time to revolt.


When will the rest of you like minded people have seen enough?


My loyalty to my government ended at the exact same instant that my constitutional rights died.


How about yourself?


Will anybody sane attempt to justify this type of legislation?

[The Dunedan]

Full text of the DSEA can be found here:
http://www.publicintegrity.org/dtaweb/down...20703_Doc_1.pdf

[Scribbler1]

Revolt? Against what, the sheep who allow this kind of thing? And how is this revolt accomplished when the majority of people in this country would say up is down if the government told them so?

Maybe not revolt, but leave the country altogether if you can't get comfortable with all this.

[Osborn F Enready]

I will never leave, and revolt will be the last acceptable alternative over laying spread eagled, sorry.

[kharmajunkie]

Does anyone smell a major manipulation of our population being attempted from the start of the first Patriot Act up through to this latest version? When you read PA2 it comes off so over the top that I can see it failing to pass while renewing the original Patriot Act because it seems so benign after seeing PA2 on paper.

[PatrickHenry]

September 11, 2001. The trigger event to stampede us into a police state. Still think Osama did it?

[The Dunedan]

Kharma:
That's what I'm betting as well. Although with the Republicrats firmly entrenched in Washington, and with this bill being so secretive, you never know.

[Osborn F Enready]

Notice the overwhelming lack of Bush supporters posts in here.


hmmmmm, isn't that a big suprise?

[Texans 4 Furors]

None of them have dared touch it. Unbelievable.

[JohnLockeRocks]

Want to hear something funny? Travis County, where Austin, the capital of Texas, is located, voted Blue. In fact, it's the most liberal county in Texas, save the Valley counties along the border.

Bush couldn't even get the town where his old office was located. How's that for a laugh?

[Texans 4 Furors]

Originally posted by JohnLockeRocks, Want to hear something funny? Travis County, where Austin, the capital of Texas, is located, voted Blue. In fact, it's the most liberal county in Texas, save the Valley counties along the border. Bush couldn't even get the town where his old office was located. How's that for a laugh?

Austins is a pretty strange town. But I think the libertarian vote in Travis County might have played more of a role in that fact than the Dems. Travis County is like the Libertarian stronghold. They are all Badnarik's boys.

[commonsense]

Of course any federal power-grab, regardless of its ostensible "emergency need" i.e. "terrorism" is indefensible.
I only consider Bush to be the far lesser of two evils because the far-reaching destruction wrought by liberalism would have been given the "green-light" to spread in every area of our bloated and self-serving bureaucracies, especially the most harmful of them all---"education"---had Kerry and the dems won in november.
Liberalism, despite its lies to the opposite, is the cause of nearly every example of social ill and human suffering in our country, and although I don't give it much hope, the so-called "mandate" of the republican victory may be a stepping-stone to wider understanding of the Libertarian principles that founded this country.
In the meantime, although the creation of the dept. of "Homeland Security" is troubling, it parallels the unconstitutional laws we already have against drug-trafficking and will be open to being combatted in the courts, it may be helping against actual terrorists in some way, (if there really are any) and although it is the same kind of bureaucratic power-grab I abhor since the time of Johnson (and if you want to get really technical, Teddy Roosevelt!).... it still does less damage to the hope of a newe Libertarian emergence in popular thought than would the expansion of our socialist academia-dominated "indoctrination system of "education".

[Scribbler1]

Originally posted by kharmajunkie, Does anyone smell a major manipulation of our population being attempted from the start of the first Patriot Act up through to this latest version? When you read PA2 it comes off so over the top that I can see it failing to pass while renewing the original Patriot Act because it seems so benign after seeing PA2 on paper.

Whoa, that one slipped right by me. That is a CLASSIC method to sell something unpopular, which is to introduce something so incredibly bad that people will gladly support something not so bad. And we all know how much the people love the lesser of two evils.

Good catch, KJ.