-- Secret Draft of ‘Patriot II’ Legislation recently revealed -- Justice Department Drafts Sweeping Expansion of Anti-Terrorism Act
Bush	Bush Comprehensive Reference	Ashcroft

updated: 7/6/03
A better site for purposes of stopping Patriot II and reading about all these types of legislation plus taking action to stop these anti-freedom acts:
go to: http://www.SaveYourFreedoms.us

Add your name to a petition which reads:

To Senator Barbara Boxer:
As California voters, we ask you to do everything in your power to stop the draft legislation called Patriot II, including filibustering if necessary.
This is a bottom line issue, we have asked the generator of this petition to alert us to your efforts in this regard.
Hopefully, in the future, we can thank you for helping save what is left of American democracy by opposing Bush and Ashcroft on this legislation.

Click here to add name to petition, it only takes a minute.
We will present this petition to Senator Boxer; an email for each signer will also be sent to the Senator.
(Click here to see how, when and why we are using this method to contact the Senator).

BACKGROUND: (also see 4-5-03 update at bottom)
This is not a parody, this draft legislation is very dangerous to what is left of democracy in America.

The administration calls this proposed legislation Patriot II - we call it UnPatriot II.

This act has the potential to effect all other issues; human rights, environment, economics, animal protection and all other reform issues.
Bush and Ashcroft can and probably will use Patriot II to destroy their critics and critics of their major contributors, corporations who pollute and violate human rights.

Fortunately, some real patriot in the Justice Department leaked this draft legislation recently, so there is still time to act before the Bush administration uses a war or a manufactured emergency to steamroll this legislation through congress.

The Republicans have a majority in both houses of congress, so the only highly probable way to stop this legislation is to use the rules of the Senate which allow Senators to filibuster legislation and would require a super-majority vote to overcome a filibuster.

We are attempting to generate a list of California voters who consider stopping this legislation a bottom line issue (or any close approximation of this legislation).

California Senator Barbara Boxer is normally better on most reform issues than Senator Feinstein so we are going to ask her to filibuster, if necessary. Additionally Boxer is the next Senator up for reelection and needs your help to survive the Bush election money machine.

If Republican Senators Lott and McConnell can stop the original stronger, better version of the McCain / Feingold Campaign reform act through filibuster, which they successfully killed before the 2000 election (i.e. they used filibuster to hurt democracy), then we can at least expect our Senator to filibuster to save the last threads of American democracy.

Update:
This legislation is no longer just a leaked draft; the first official version has appeared and is named by the Ashcroft/Bush Department of Justice DSEA ( Domestic Security Enhancement Act ). It is worse than the first draft; in addition to the above, it now includes increased penalties for encryption of data and more extensive electronic invasion of all Americans personal lives (see eWeek 3-24-03).

On a positive note, Senator Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, is sponsoring a bill to restore some of the freedoms Americans lost in the first Ashcroft/Bush legislation. The bill has an uphill battle in the current Republican controlled House and Senate.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c108:s.609:
http://leahy.senate.gov/bills/index.html

To see a summary of this legislation

For Full Story see http://www.public-i.org/dtaweb/report.asp?ReportID=502&L1=10&L2=10&L3=0&L4=0&L5=0

Another site with useful info about the (un)Patriot Acts
http://www.bordc.org/