Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA) has agreed to sponsor a federal bill, LERA, that would substantially increase good time for federal prisoners. His office sent out this progress report today, which we received from the Federal Prison Policy Project with permission to reprint:

Mr. Scott has agreed to develop and introduce a bill based on the concepts in what is referred to as LERA (Literacy, Education and Rehabilitation Act). This bill would establish a good conduct credit system in the federal prison system which would provide for credit classifications of 15 days for every 30 days served for exemplary performance, 10 for 30 for satisfactory performance, 5 for 30 for marginal performance in programs or work assignments, with no credits while in disciplinary or segregation status. Sentences would be reduced by the number of credit days accumulated.

The bill is currently being drafted by the office that does legislative drafts for the Congress and we are likely to have a draft completed by the second week in December. Sometime around the first of the year, the bill will be circulated to House Member offices to offer them an opportunity to cosponsor it. The bill will likely be filed sometime in late January or early February after Members return for the 2nd Session of this Congress.

[comments now closed]

Rep. C.L. "Butch" Otter's amendment that would prohibit funding for sneak and peek searches is officially dead. The attempt to scale back the Patriot Act provision that authorized the delayed notification of search warrants will not make it through Congress this year. And the Justice Department sounds pretty cocky that it won't ever make it through Congress:

Otter, an Idaho [Republican] congressman, was successful in July at getting the House to approve a prohibition on the use of federal funds for such searches, which are executed without the property owner's or resident's knowledge and with warrants delivered afterward.

Senate and House leaders, though, refused to place that provision in the massive omnibus spending bill coming up before Congress next week, killing it for the year.

Otter's measure would have prevented federal dollars from being spent to implement warrants that delay notification that a covert search is being conducted. The Patriot Act.... permits agents to search the home of a suspected drug dealer, or plant a listening device in the car of a reputed mobster, or copy a computer hard drive of a terror suspect, without notifying the suspect until a later date.

Otter says he will try again next year.

The Justice Department, however, says it doesn't expect that Congress will ever pass Rep. C.L. "Butch" Otter's legislation banning "sneak and peek" searches.

The SAFE Act is still on the drawing board. Officially known as S. 1709, the Security and Freedom Enhanced (SAFE) Act of 2003, it needs your support. Send a letter to your Senator today.

The small town of Gueda Springs, Kansas, has no local police force. For self protection, the city council has passed an ordinance that with few exceptions, requires homeowners to keep guns:

This ordinance fulfills the duty to protect by allowing each individual householder to provide for his or her protection," said Councilman John Brewer.

"This is simply using the U.S. Constitution - Second Amendment in particular - to the city of Geuda Springs' advantage."

The ordinance is not the first in the country. Kennesaw, Georgia passed a similar law 21 years ago--and it's still in force.

The town sounds a little defensive about the bill:

Many Geuda Springs residents refused to talk about it, and others were tightlipped, saying outsiders should stay out of it. "It's nobody's business but our own," said Phillip Russell, who owns a motorcycle shop in the town. "Everybody out of town is making this their business."

The town has 210 residents. Failure to comply results in a $10 fine.

The Senate has now joined the House in passing the new anti-terror bill we've discussed here and here. In addition to expanding the use of non-judicially approved national security letters (which are like subpoenas) to businesses such as car dealerships, casinos and pawnbrokers, the bill also :

• requires Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet to prepare a report as soon as possible on what intelligence agencies have learned from their experiences in Iraq. An internal review has been under way. Both the House and Senate intelligence committees have been conducting their own inquiries on prewar intelligence.

• creates a new intelligence office in the Treasury Department to improve coordination with intelligence agencies on fighting terrorist financing.

• creates pilot programs to examine whether analysts from one agency should have access to raw data from another and to improve information sharing with state and local governments.

• authorizes agencies to continue research on computerized terrorism surveillance projects formerly operated by the Defense Department. Those projects were widely criticized on civil liberties grounds, prompting Congress to remove them from the Pentagon. A report accompanying the bill said that research on the programs can proceed even though Congress has prevented the programs from being implemented. But it said any experiments can be conducted only on government foreign intelligence databases. It also required an examination of the programs' legal and civil liberty implications.

The House bill is H.R. 2417, and you can read it here by typing in its number. The research programs authorized by the bill are expected to cost $40 billion.

With the bill expanding Patriot Act rights moving full speed through Congress this week, people sound surpised--as if they thought things were going to get better. We think they will get worse. The Victory Act has yet to be introduced, but that doesn't mean it's dead:

“Vital Interdiction of Criminal Terrorist Organizations Act of 2003” or the VICTORY Act”.

Certain provisions in the draft bill expand the scope of money laundering offenses, increase the government’s ability to seize and forfeit assets, and increase the use of administrative subpoenas. Among the objectionable provisions are those that:

• Change the requirement that in order to obtain a conviction for money laundering and forfeiture the government must prove that the defendant conducted a transaction with the proceeds of a specified unlawful activity.

• Create an offense for someone to transport more than $10,000 in interstate commerce without having to prove that the money came from a particular crime and that the defendant actually knew the money was illegal proceeds.

• Authorize the Attorney General to freeze bank accounts for investigation and without proof that may be subject to forfeiture.

• Authorize the pretrial restraint of substitute assets.

• Diminish the due process protections presently afforded under the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act, Pub. L No 106-185, 114 Stat. 202, 106th Cong.
  (2000).

• Extend the Attorney General’s ability to use administrative subpoenas to any investigation with respect to terrorism or the apprehension of a fugitive, that is, anyone accused or convicted of committing any federal or state felony.

Just received this from NORML:

As the 2003 Congressional legislative session comes to a close, Rep. Mark
Souder, one of the most ardent drug warriors in Congress, intends to introduce legislation to drastically increase penalties for certain marijuana offenses. The bill also enacts new draconian penalties that could sentence compassionate Americans that grow and provide medical marijuana to decades in federal prison.

The "Drug Sentencing Reform Act" would tie the hands of judges by making it harder for them to grant sentences below federal sentencing guidelines when
special circumstances call for it. This will mean longer sentences for non-violent marijuana offenses, with taxpayers like you picking up the cost!

Further, the bill calls for new draconian penalties for growing, distributing, and providing 'high-potency' marijuana to others. This means that someone caught with a bag of high grade marijuana would actually face a stiffer sentence than someone with an equal amount of shwag! The potency provision will be especially damaging to medical marijuana patients and providers who rely on higher potency marijuana to alleviate their suffering from AIDS, cancer, and other maladies.

If this wasn't bad enough, Souder's proposed bill mandates that most people
on parole, probation, or supervised release be subjected to random drug testing, even when their original offense is non-drug related. If enacted, thousands of non-violent Americans could be sent to prison for years for smoking marijuana in the privacy of their own home and then failing a drug test.

We know that Rep. Souder wants to introduce this bill within the next couple of weeks, and that he is currently seeking co sponsorship from other Representatives. Please take five minutes to send your member of Congress a letter asking them to oppose this dangerous legislation by visiting here.

Sens. Orrin Hatch and Ted Kennedy have joined forces to promote a federal hate crimes bill. We strongly oppose it. Conservative Republicans are usually on our side on this one, and we hope they hold their ground despite Hatch's defection on the issue. The Dems are out to lunch on this misguided, ill-advised bill. They should be the ones taking the following position:

They [Republicans] are concerned that the bill would violate free-speech rights and give the Department of Justice free rein to step over local authorities to prosecute many types of violent crimes. Many worry that the expansion of federal authority could include crimes such as any rape, which is usually targeted at women. "It actually punishes someone for what he thinks," said one Senate staffer whose boss opposes any form of the legislation. "That's pretty scary."

Here are our bullet points for opposing hate crime legislation, from an article we wrote in 2000 (and reprinted on TalkLeft last June):

Attorney Clay S. Conrad has an excellent article in the new National Review titled "Justice Goes to Pot." Conrad also is the author of a leading book on jury nullification. He writes about Sen. Richard Durbin's soon to be introduced Truth in Trials Act, which we strongly support.

Durbin is currently seeking cosponsors for a bill that allows federal juries to be informed when defendants facing medical marijuana charges were in fact complying with state medical-marijuana laws. A similar measure is pending in the House (introduced by Sam Farr, D., Calif.). Federal prosecutors say if these bills pass and juries learn that marijuana involved in a case is for medical use, they will commit "jury nullification of the law" — acquitting plainly guilty criminals.

This just in via email:

Wednesday, by a vote of 357-67, the House of Representatives approved H.R. 3214, the Advancing Justice Through DNA Technology Act of 2003, a comprehensive package of programs that provides over $1 billion over the next five years to assist Federal and State authorities in solving crimes and protecting the innocent.

H.R. 3214 includes the Innocence Protection Act of 2003, which would help ensure eligible inmates access to DNA testing to establish their innocence and would authorize grants to the States to improve the quality of legal representation in capital cases.

As hard as we have lobbied for an Innocence Protection Act the past several years, this bill is not a cure-all and contains several changes and omissions from the Innocence Protection Acts introduced in recent Congresses. We regret the degree to which protections have been watered down in order to achieve political compromise and passage. Still, this is an achievement for which the primary champions of the legislation, Senator Patrick Leahy (D-MA) and Congressmen William Delahunt (D-MA) and Ray LaHood (R-IL), deserve praise.

Here is the position of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers ( NACDL) on the legislation, with which we whole-heartedly agree.

We support H.R. 1709, the “Security and Freedom Ensured Act of 2003” also referred to as the “SAFE Act,” introduced to cut back on excess surveillance powers authroized in the Patriot Act, which have made it easier for law enforcement agencies to monitor the innocent activities of American citizens with minimal or no judicial oversight. The bill would:

• Place reasonable limitations on the government’s authority to obtain roving wiretaps under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 by requiring that the warrant identify either the target of the wiretap or the place to be wiretapped an by requiring that surveillance be conducted only when the suspect is present at the place to be wiretapped.

• Impose reasonable limits on the government’s ability to obtain sneak and peak warrants for physical evidence by limiting the instances when a court can authorize such warrants, set a reasonable time for notification of the covert search.

• Provide privacy protections for library, bookseller and other personal records under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 by requiring that the government specify that there are specific and articulable facts giving rise believe that the person to whom the records relate is a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power and requiring that a court must find that there are such specific and articulable facts before a subpoena may be issued.

• Provide privacy protections for computer users at libraries under national security authority by excluding libraries for the reach of Title 18 U.S.C. § 2709.

• Amend Section 224 of the PATRIOT Act to sunset Sections 213 (sneak and peak warrants), 216 (application of pen registers and trap and trace devices to electronic communications), 219 (single-jurisdiction, nationwide search warrants for terrorism), and 505 (national security letters) on December 31, 2005.

Last month we wrote about Rep. David Obey (D-WI), the top-ranking Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, and his call for Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz to resign.

Via Tom Paine.com, Rep. Obey makes news again today with a letter to the Chairman of the Subcommittee on Labor-Health and Human Services-Education, outlining how the Republicans are using the old pork barrel technique to stymie the legislative proposals of Democrats who don't vote their way. Obey charges the Republicans are creating

....a slush fund to intimidate members into voting against adequate funds for programs that they believe are important for the American people. The clear message is that if you support the Republican cuts in education, health research and assistance to seniors, you will get projects to help with your reelection. If you vote your conscience and support more funding for education and health you will get stiffed. This is nothing more than systematic bribery with public funds to enforce the "Robin Hood in reverse" policies of your party.

Last month we wrote about Rep. David Obey (D-WI), the top-ranking Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, and his call for Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz to resign.

Via Tom Paine.com, Rep. Obey makes news again today with a letter to the Chairman of the Subcommittee on Labor-Health and Human Services-Education, outlining how the Republicans are using the old pork barrel technique to stymie the legislative proposals of Democrats who don't vote their way. Obey charges the Republicans are creating

....a slush fund to intimidate members into voting against adequate funds for programs that they believe are important for the American people. The clear message is that if you support the Republican cuts in education, health research and assistance to seniors, you will get projects to help with your reelection. If you vote your conscience and support more funding for education and health you will get stiffed. This is nothing more than systematic bribery with public funds to enforce the "Robin Hood in reverse" policies of your party.