Republican Congressman Stands Up to Scummy

Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit

AP via Yahoo Asia - Sunday June 2, 1:42 AM 
http://asia.news.yahoo.com/020601/ap/d7jsgf080.html

House Committee Chair Questions FBI Powers

WASHINGTON (AP)--The House Judiciary Committee chairman said
Saturday the Justice Department has gone too far in giving the FBI
new authority to monitor Americans and risks a return to the "bad old
days" of abuses in domestic surveillance.

Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., told CNN he wants Attorney General
John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller to testify before his
committee about why "regulations on domestic spying that have worked
so well for the last 25 or 26 years have to be changed."

"I believe that the Justice Department has gone too far,"
Sensenbrenner said, adding that the regulations that are being
relaxed had been developed under a Republican president, Gerald Ford,
to bring an end to FBI excesses.

Sensenbrenner was reacting to a Bush administration decision last
week to issue new surveillance guidelines that allow the FBI to
monitor Internet sites, libraries, churches and political
organizations to help prevent acts of terrorism. Ashcroft said the
new power is needed to effectively combat terrorism, and would not
allow abuses like those of the past.

Sensenbrenner countered that there was no need "to throw respect for
civil liberties into the trash heap" in order to improve the FBI's
ability to fight terrorism.

"We want to make sure that the FBI, which hasn't had a good track
record lately, doesn't go on the other side of the line," he said.

Sensenbrenner said the surveillance guidelines that had been in place
for a quarter-century had worked well, and added, "The question that
I ask, and which I believe that Mr. Ashcroft and Mr. Mueller have to
answer, is 'Why do we need to change them now?'"

"I get very, very queasy when federal law enforcement is effectively
saying, going back to the bad old days when the FBI was spying on
people like Martin Luther King," whose private life was subjected to
electronic surveillance.
 
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