Hundreds of little- known foreigners have been swept up in a vast dragnet after the terrorist attacks . Some of them have résumés suspiciously like those of the 19 hijackers, and others have spent days, weeks and now months in prison for immigration violations that before Sept. 11 would probably have been ignored or resolved with paperwork.

The creation of military tribunals are the boldest initiative in a series of laws and rewritten federal regulations that, taken together, have created an alternate system of justice in the aftermath of Sept. 11, giving the government far greater power to detain, investigate and prosecute people suspected of involvement in terrorism.

Prisons and jails are increasingly substituting as mental hospitals, say patient advocates, jail administrators and government officials. The number of mentally ill behind bars today is nearly five times the number in state mental hospitals, government figures show.

Spain cannot extradite suspected Islamic extremists to the United States while the death penalty is in force there, judicial sources said on Thursday.

The Justice Department has turned down a congressional request that it identify people detained as a result of the investigation of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Senior Bush administration officials have begun to discuss whether a man in custody in New York should be tried on terrorism charges by a military tribunal rather than a civilian criminal court, senior law enforcement officials said today.

The Portland, Ore., police will not cooperate with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in its efforts to interview 5,000 young Middle Eastern men nationwide because such questioning violates state law, the department's acting police chief, Andrew Kirkland, said yesterday.

Among the more than 1,100 people the government has detained since Sept. 11 are dozens of young Israeli Jews who came to the United States in recent months and took jobs selling trinkets at shopping malls throughout the country.

The American Civil Liberties Union on Tuesday asked an airport in northern California pioneering the use of facial recognition technology to stop scanning passenger faces in a hunt for possible terrorists.

Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, on a wide variety of fronts, the Bush administration has moved to seize power that it has shared with other branches of government.

Connecticut's highest court upped the ante for Michael Skakel's murder trial, ruling that the Kennedy cousin should be tried in adult court for the 1975 murder of Martha Moxley.

Full Text of Connecticut Supreme Court Opinion on Michael Skakel

Spurred by fears of bioterrorism, state legislators across the country are pushing new laws that would permit large-scale quarantine, forcible seizure of hospitals and other businesses, mandatory vaccination or treatment, and destruction of contaminated property without the owners' consent.

The U.S. government has compiled a list of more than 5,000 foreign men living in the United States it wants to question about the Sept. 11 attacks, officials said on Tuesday.

President Bush has signed an order allowing special military tribunals to try foreigners charged with terrorism. A senior administration official said that any such trials would "not necessarily" be public, and that the American tribunals might operate in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Read the full text of the military order signed by President Bush yesterday on the detention, treatment and trial of noncitizens in the war on terrorism.

After decades of pursuing gangsters and drug kingpins to great acclaim, the FBI is rushing to remake itself as the nation's primary line of defense against terrorism, a seismic shift for an agency that historically has not adjusted easily to change.

In neuroscience studies, brain scans of volunteers asked to tell lies showed changes as the subjects tried to suppress what they knew was true. The result might eventually form the basis of highly accurate lie detector tests, scientists said.

The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday fired off a furious letter protesting Attorney General John D. Ashcroft's decision to monitor conversations between lawyers and some clients in federal custody when it is deemed necessary to thwart violence or terrorism.

The Justice Department has decided to listen in on the conversations of lawyers with clients in federal custody, including people who have been detained but not charged with any crime, whenever that is deemed necessary to prevent violence or terrorism.

The Justice Department announced yesterday it will no longer issue a runing tally of the number of people detained around the country as law enforcement officials investigate the Sept. 11 hijackings and try to prevent further terrorist attacks.

Attorney General John Ashcroft announced today that he has ordered the Justice Department to take a wartime posture and has begun to restructure the agency's priorities under a plan that envisions radical reorganization of the Justice Department and key component agencies like the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

The Supreme Court agreed today to decide whether school districts must show that their schools have a serious issue with narcotics before arbitrarily testing students for drugs.

In a high-pressure drama in which her future turned on her willingness to utter a single word, the onetime radical Sara Jane Olson jousted verbally with a judge today but finally, if reluctantly, said in court that she stood by her guilty plea to charges that she had plotted to bomb two police cruisers here 26 years ago.

Under a new federal rule quietly issued last week, the government can listen in on conversations and read mail between people in federal custody and their lawyers if it suspects the communications will further acts of violence or terrorism.

The United Nations torture investigator expressed concern on Tuesday about the potential scope for abusing hundreds of people being held in custody in the United States in connection with the suicide attacks on September 11.

A lawyer who was appointed to represent a murder defendant in a 1992 trial in Virginia had represented the murder victim in an unrelated case just a week earlier, an unusual situation that led to a wide-ranging Supreme Court argument today about lawyers' ethical obligations to clients.

While the White House claims that most of the hundreds of people arrested on criminal charges as part of the investigation into the Sept. 11 terror attacks have been released from jail,the Justice Department said the majority of those detained for all reasons, including immigration violations as well as criminal charges, remain in custody.

Muhammad Rafiq Butt, a native of Pakistan, was arrested for being in the country illegally, one of hundreds who had been picked up on the basis of tips from an anxious public in the days after the Sept. 11 attack on the trade center. He was found dead him around 10:30 on the morning of Oct. 23, lying face up on his cot, inside a first-floor cell in the Hudson County Correctional Center in New Jersey.

A seven-page document, which has not been previously disclosed, is being used repeatedly by prosecutors in detention hearings across the country.

Molded by wartime politics and passed a week and a half ago in furious haste, the new anti-terrorism bill lays the foundation for a domestic intelligence-gathering system of unprecedented scale and technological prowess, according to both supporters and critics of the legislation.

A sentence of 50 years to life for shoplifting nine videotapes violated the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment, a federal appeals court ruled yesterday -- the first time any court has found a California "three strikes" sentence unconstitutional.

Backing away from remarks by Attorney General John Ashcroft, the Justice Department suggested today that it did not know whether three Arab men now in custody in Michigan had advance knowledge of the terror attacks of Sept. 11.

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan said yesterday in a newly filed court document that among the offenses being investigated by the grand jury looking into the Sept. 11 terror attacks was whether there was a "seditious conspiracy to levy war against the United States."

A Manhattan judge dismissed all charges yesterday against Oliver Jovanovic, a Columbia University doctoral student accused five years ago of the sexual torture of a woman he met on the Internet.

The judge in the trial of alleged former Symbionese Liberation Army member Sara Jane Olson on Thursday ordered a hearing for next week after the defendant spoke to the media about her plea deal Wednesday.

Under the revised Federal Sentencing Guidelines which went into effect today, terrorists convicted of actually sending anthrax or any biological or chemical agent through the mail could face 30 years to life in prison, compared with a maximum of 17 1/2 years under the old rules.

At 7 p.m. next Tuesday, Terry Clark is to become the first prisoner executed by New Mexico in 41 years.New Mexico's inexperience with executions has prompted objections over other issues, including two unusual steps the state has taken in preparing to carry out the sentence.

After two decades as a fugitive from charges that as a young radical she had plotted to bomb two police cars here in 1975, Sara Jane Olson abandoned years of denials and pleaded guilty today to two felony counts before a stunned courtroom.

Forced again by the threat of anthrax to alter its time-honored work patterns, the Supreme Court announced yesterday that it will not be able to consider a long list of pending appeals and other motions this week as planned.

Attorney General John D. Ashcroft yesterday announced new measures designed to keep terrorists out of the United States, including an expansion of the list of foreign groups whose members will be automatically barred from entering the country.

Congress Today

This week's schedule for the House and Senate, including Committee Meetings

The multi-organizationally supported request for disclosure of information concerning the individuals "arrested or detained" in the wake of the September 11 attack.

Before one more execution is carried out, the federal government and each state that imposes capital punishment have an obligation to ensure that the sentence of death will be imposed with justice, fairness and due process. To address this concern, Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) has introduced the "National Death Penalty Moratorium Act of 2001" (S. 233). This legislation would impose a morotirum on federal executions while creating a National Commission on the Death Penalty to review fairness in the administration of capital punishment.

Read the proposed Grand Juror's Bill of Rights--then contact your elected officials and urge passage!

Calling it a victory for basic due process rights, the American Civil Liberties Union applauded the overwhelming defeat in the Senate today of a measure that would have further stripped away the safeguards that exist to prevent the incarceration and deportation of legal residents on the basis of secret evidence.

At first glance, the anti-terrorism legislation recently signed into law by President Bush appears to only be a means to give law enforcement officials the necessary tools to find terrorists and prevent future attacks. But in reality, the USA Patriot Act continues an alarming trend known as court-stripping--removing authority from the judiciary--in times of crisis.

Text of the Anti-Terrorism Bill signed into law by George W. Bush on October 26, 2001.

Congressional site with all legislation introduced following September 11, 2001 attacks

Continuously Updated Conventional Political Headlines

Latest news articles on the Drug front by the Media Awareness Project

Roll Call's weekly news update covering events on Capitol Hill

The latest headlines from the political front, updated twice daily by The Hotline and the National Journal

Everything you need to effectively educate and lobby your elected officials about the Innocence Protection Act of 2001...from the Justice Project

Full text of S. 486, Innocence Protection Act of 2001, introduced in the Senate by Sen. Patrick J. Leahy and others on March 7, 2001. An identical bill was introduced in the House.

Full text of S. 191, Bill to Abolish the Federal Death Penalty, Introduced in the Senate by Sen. Russ Feingold on January 31, 2001

WHOA! The problem is the premise. We are having one of those circular arguments about how many civil liberties we can trade away in order to make ourselves safe from terrorism, without even looking at the assumption - can we can make ourselves safer by making ourselves less free? There is no inverse relationship between freedom and security.

Apart from questions about military tribunals, Mr. Leahy and his colleagues should use the opportunity to require the elusive Mr. Ashcroft to account for some of the Justice Department's other dubious \ departures from American principles, such as the new policy of wiretapping conversations between some prisoners and their lawyers.

The right to be represented by a lawyer is fundamental to life in a democratic culture. That right has no meaning if the confidentiality of lawyer-client communications is not respected.

Two months into the war against terrorism, the nation is sliding toward the trap that we entered this conflict vowing to avoid. Civil liberties are eroding, and there is no evidence that the reason is anything more profound than fear and frustration.

With most Americans unaware, the Congress of the United States, yielding to the pressure of the U.S. attorney general and the the President, have passed an anti-terrorism bill in one of the worst breakdowns in the legislative process in the history of our representative government.

As president, Bush, terrorized by the terrorists, is abandoning more and more of the fundamental rights and liberties that he—and his unquestioning subordinates—assured us they were fighting to preserve.

It is actually hard to keep up with the almost daily constitutional transgressions that are passing as policy in the Justice Department. The rule of law has become the rule of Ashcroft. And the Justice Department is a misnomer once again.

Trial by military commission is not justice - at least not justice as the United States understands it and preaches it to the world.

That many details of the new anti-terrorism law are in contempt of the Bill of Rights is unknown to most Americans because, with few exceptions, the press—particularly its television and radio divisions—has not been paying enough attention.

The recent passage and signing of the Patriot Act has effectively nullified at least six amendments of the Bill of Rights addendum to the U.S. Constitution. As a result of this, America is longer America, but a police state, pure and simple. This Patriot Bill is, in fact, a massive violation of the Constitution it purports to uphold and improve.

Stoked by tragedy and dread, the creativity of our paranoia is in overdrive right now. We must take a deep collective breath and be wary of persecuting those who conform to our fears instead of prosecuting foes who were and will be smart enough to play against such prejudices.

The new law, known as the USA Patriot Act, reaches into every space that Americans once imagined was private. This seismic shift in the government's power of search and seizure also extends to the examination of records. Authorities can browse medical, financial, educational or even library records without showing evidence of a crime. The law overrides existing state and federal privacy laws if the FBI claims that the information is connected to an intelligence investigation.

Most alarming to supporters of democratic principles was the way the bill was enacted: the absence of public hearings, of any markup in the Senate (coupled with the sham markup conducted in the House), of meaningful floor debate, of committee reports that explain the bill, and of a real conference between the two houses. One can only hope that Congress will conduct rigorous oversight of the new powers it is granting to the president--and that it will refuse to follow the same procedures or to be intimated when the next antiterrorism bill is sent to Capitol Hill.

Throughout American history, threats to domestic security have triggered unjustified assaults on civil liberties. Today the most basic civil liberty of all – the right to judicial review of executive authority – is uniquely vulnerable. Anti-terrorism laws passed by Congress in 1996 and again in 2001 reflect growing hostility to the role of judges in our constitutional system.

TalkLeft Magazine Picks

TalkLeft Also Recommends:

Terrorism & The Constitution-Sacrificing Civil Liberties in the Name of National Security
by James X. Dempsey, David Cole

Buy the Book Today!

Traces the history leading up to the Anti-terrorism Act of 1996 "one of the worst assults on civil liberties in decades." The authors review of the abuses occuring today-denials od due process, detentions of aliens based on secret evidence, investigations of support for lawful humanitarian activity - culminates with recommendations for a counterterrorism strategy that would conform to the Constitution - one focused on individual culpability for acts of violence rather than on political ideology.

Actual Innocence: Five Days to Execution and Other Dispatches from the Wrongly Convicted by Barry Scheck, Peter Neufeld, Jim Dwyer. Reads like a novel but much scarier because it's all true. A page-turner!

Order Your Copy Today!

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