Senators Reid, Levin, Rockefeller, Biden and Durbin have proposed an Amendment to the Homeland Security Appropriations Bill which is on the Senate Floor this morning. (received by e-mail.)It reads:

No federal employee who discloses or has disclosed classified information, including the identity of a covert agent of the Central Intelligence Agency, to a person not authorized to receive such information shall be entitled to hold a security clearance for access to such information.

A vote is expected today.

Hearings on re-authorizing the Patriot Act will be held today by two House Committees, the House Judiciary Committee and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. The ACLU says there has been a bait and switch (received by e-mail).

The ACLU called for legislation that would protect freedoms, noting that in the aftermath of 9/11, the House Judiciary Committee had initially produced a bipartisan bill, with unanimous support, which was mindful of civil liberties. However, that bill was switched with a measure containing powers long sought by the Department of Justice - and which became the Patriot Act.

"Congress has a unique opportunity to fix the mistakes they made with the Patriot Act the first time around," said Lisa Graves, ACLU Senior Counsel for Legislative Strategy. "Unfortunately, the proposals we're seeing mimic the same flaws of the initial Patriot Act - they continue to place extraordinary powers in the hands of the executive with very diminished oversight by both Congress and the judiciary. Congress should enact modest changes - like the bipartisan Safe Act, which strikes the right balance in securing the nation and protecting our freedoms."

More available here.

by TChris

This is how bipartisan negotiations over the Patriot Act have gone in the House:

"[T]he Republicans have told us for some time they are working on a bill, they asked for our suggestions, and they ended up saying that none of our suggestions were acceptable," the [senior Democratic] aide [on the House Judiciary Committee] said. "So they're now dropping a bill that we see as a total reauthorization of the Patriot Act with only very slight tweaks."

This is how bipartisan negotiations over the Patriot Act have gone in the Senate:

While negotiations to broker a bipartisan deal continued late Monday, Democratic officials said the compromise appeared to have stalled because of disagreement over whether to impose new restrictions on the government's ability to demand library records and other powers.

Bipartisan negotiations failed, in large part, because the Justice Department refused to agree to any lessening of the broad powers it gained under the Patriot Act. In fact, the Department wants even greater power, "including the F.B.I.'s expanded use of terrorism subpoenas without a judge's approval and ... expanded monitoring of certain mailings."

Elected representatives need to muster the courage to "just say no" to the Justice Department. They should work instead to pass the bipartisan SAFE Act.

Bump and Update: The Rhode Island Senate on Thursday overrode the Governor's Wednesday veto of the medical marijuana bill passed Tuesday by the state legislature. Now, if the Rhode Island House follows suit, it will become law.

Thanks to Tom Angell, Communications Director of Students for Sensible Drug Policy, who wrote me and said:

Check out my mom in Thursday's New York Times, In Rhode Island, Uncertainty About Medical Marijuana Law

Now that's what I call family values.

Senator Pat Roberts (R-KS) formally introduced legislation today designed to reauthorize and expand the Patriot Act. The ACLU today denounced the proposal, and called upon lawmakers to bring the act in line with the Constitution by restoring proper checks and balances.

Anthony D. Romero, ACLU Executive Director, says:

"The Roberts proposal comes at a time when many realize that the Patriot Act needs to be reformed, not expanded. His bill would give law enforcement extraordinary powers, like allowing the FBI to issue and execute its own "administrative subpoenas," or records search orders, without meaningful checks and balances, even when the government is not investigating criminal activity. His committee rejected fair-minded proposals to limit this awesome power to emergencies. If enacted, the Roberts bill would weaken the Fourth Amendment and all its protections. This effort is completely out of step with growing bipartisan concerns that the Patriot Act went too far and needs to be reformed - not expanded."

In a rebuke to President Bush, with a nod to the First and Fourth Amendments, the House of Representatives today voted to ban the use of the Patriot Act for searches of library and book store records. Here's the roll call of the vote.

The House voted Wednesday to block the FBI and the Justice Department from using the anti-terror Patriot Act to search library and book store records, responding to complaints about potential invasion of privacy of innocent readers.

Despite a veto threat from President Bush, lawmakers voted 238-187 to block the part of the anti-terrorism law that allows the government to investigate the reading habits of terror suspects.

This just in from Marijuana Policy Project:

The U.S. House of Representatives today voted down an amendment that would have placed a one-year moratorium on federal raids against medical marijuana patients, but patients and their supporters were cheered by an all-time record vote in support of the proposal. The amendment, supported by a broad array of organizations, including the American Nurses Association and the United Methodist Church, was defeated 161-264, receiving 13 more votes than an identical proposal received last year.

The bipartisan amendment, introduced by U.S. Reps. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) and Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), sought to prohibit the U.S. Justice Department -- which includes the Drug Enforcement Administration -- from spending taxpayer money to arrest or prosecute medical marijuana patients in the 10 states where medical marijuana is legal: Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington.

According to Marijuana Policy Project, a critical vote in the House on medical marijuana will take place Tuesday. Take a moment to visit MPP or NORML and urge your Representatives to support the Hinchey-Rohrabacher medical marijuana amendment to the Justice and other departments' appropriations bill when it comes to the House floor on Tuesday, June 14. The Amendment would:

....prohibit the DOJ and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) from spending taxpayers' dollars for the purpose of pursuing "any criminal or civil penalty or remedy against any person for the production, distribution, or use of marijuana for medicinal purposes in a state that authorizes that production, distribution, or use."

Background here. Marijuana Policy Project's action page is here.

Bump and Update: Senators Richard Durbin (D-IL) and Larry Craig (R-ID)respond to Bush's speech on the Patriot Act (received by e-mail):

We voted for the PATRIOT Act and agree with President Bush that it should be reauthorized. But we must strike a careful balance -- improving our nation’s security while also protecting individual Americans’ liberties.”

“Congress should revise the PATRIOT Act to protect the constitutional rights of American citizens while preserving the powers law enforcement needs to fight terrorism. The Craig-Durbin Security and Freedom Enhancement (SAFE) Act would accomplish this goal. It is a narrowly-tailored bipartisan bill that would revise several provisions of the PATRIOT Act. The SAFE Act would not repeal a single provision of the PATRIOT Act. It would retain all of the additional authorities created by the PATRIOT Act but place important limits on these authorities.”

“We are on opposite sides of the political spectrum, but we have come together to safeguard the civil liberties that every American values. We want to mend the PATRIOT Act, not end it. The great challenge of our age is combating terrorism while remaining true to our Constitution. The SAFE Act will help us to meet that challenge.”

In an end run around the Fourth Amendment, and putting our civil liberties under siege, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence met in secret today and approved expansions to the Patriot Act that wil allow the Government to obtain records without a court order or grand jury subpoena - and more.

The ACLU sent out this press release earlier today, objecting to both the secret hearing and the expanded powers.

"Americans have a reasonable expectation that their federal government will not gather records about their health, their wealth and the transactions of their daily life without probable cause of a crime and without a court order," Graves added. "We can give law enforcement the tools they need to protect us without sidestepping our Constitution’s fundamental checks and balances."

The bill would give the FBI "administrative subpoena" authority, permitting the bureau to write and approve its own search orders for any tangible thing held by a third party deemed relevant to an intelligence investigation, without prior judicial approval. This unilateral power would let agents seize personal records from medical facilities, libraries, hotels, gun dealers, banks and any other businesses without any specific facts connecting those records to any criminal activity or a foreign agent. This would drastically undermine the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.

Update: NORML has more on the bill.

From Marijuana Policy Project:

The U.S. Supreme Court puts the medical marijuana issue in Congress' court ... Urge your member of Congress to vote for the Hinchey-Rohrabacher medical marijuana amendment!

In November, 2004, Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL) introduced a bill to provide an affirmative defense in federal prosecutions for people who comply with state law in the use of medical marijuana. From the press release by the Marijuana Policy Project:

U.S. Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL), joined by Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Jim Jeffords (I-VT), have introduced the first-ever Senate bill to ensure that federal juries hear the full story when medical marijuana patients and providers, operating legally under state law, are tried on federal marijuana charges.

S. 2989 is similar to H.R. 1717, the "Truth in Trials Act," introduced by a bipartisan House coalition last year and inspired in part by the case of Ed Rosenthal. In January 2003, Rosenthal was found guilty of felony marijuana cultivation charges by a jury that was not allowed to consider that the marijuana was for medical use by seriously ill patients and was grown with the authorization of the city of Oakland, California.