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GOP Silences Dems at Patriot Act Hearing
Sat Jun 11, 2005 18:08
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FOCUS | GOP Silences Dems at Patriot Act Hearing
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/061105Y.shtml
VIDEO SPECIAL | GOP Walks Out on Patriot Act Hearing
http://www.truthout.org/multimedia.htm
GOP Chairman Walks Out of Meeting
By Jim Abrams
The Associated Press
Friday 10 June 2005
Washington - The Republican chairman walked off with the gavel, leaving Democrats shouting into turned-off microphones at a raucous hearing Friday on the Patriot Act.
The House Judiciary Committee hearing, with the two sides accusing each other of being irresponsible and undemocratic, came as President Bush was urging Congress to renew those sections of the post-Sept. 11 counterterrorism law set to expire in September.
Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., chairman of the panel, abruptly gaveled the meeting to an end and walked out, followed by other Republicans. Sensenbrenner declared that much of the testimony, which veered into debate over the detainees at Guantanamo Bay, was irrelevant.
Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., protested, raising his voice as his microphone went off, came back on, and went off again.
"We are not besmirching the honor of the United States, we are trying to uphold it," he said.
Democrats asked for the hearing, the 11th the committee has held on the act since April, saying past hearings had been too slanted toward witnesses who supported the law. The four witnesses were from groups, including Amnesty International USA and the American Immigration Lawyers Association, that have questioned the constitutionality of some aspects of the act, which allows law enforcement greater authority to investigate suspected terrorists.
Nadler said Sensenbrenner, one of the authors of the Patriot Act, was "rather rude, cutting everybody off in mid-sentence with an attitude of total hostility."
Tempers flared when Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., accused Amnesty International of endangering the lives of Americans in uniform by referring to the prison at Guantanamo Bay as a "gulag." Sensenbrenner didn't allow the Amnesty representative, Chip Pitts, to respond until Nadler raised a "point of decency."
Sensenbrenner's spokesman, Jeff Lungren, said the hearing had lasted two hours and "the chairman was very accommodating, giving members extra time."
James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, speaking immediately after Sensenbrenner left, voiced dismay over the proceedings. "I'm troubled about what kind of lesson this gives" to the rest of the world, he told the Democrats remaining in the room.
House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, in a statement, said the hearing was an example of Republican abuse of power and she would ask House Speaker Dennis Hastert to order an apology from Sensenbrenner.
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WATCH DEMOCRACY BEING THWARTED AT THE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE
http://www.therandirhodesshow.com/index_weekend.php
============================
Until Tuesday, the number of U.S. newspaper articles reporting on the Downing Street memo could be counted on two hands, including two articles in the New York Times, two in the Washington Post (print edition), and one each in Newsday, the Los Angeles Times, the Minneapolis Star Tribune and the Chicago Tribune. None of these ran on Page 1. In fact, both the Star Tribune and the Chicago Tribune articles focused on how little commotion the memo had caused in the United States, with the Chicago daily noting, "The White House has denied the premise of the memo, the American media have reacted slowly to it and the public generally seems indifferent to the issue or unwilling to rehash the bitter prewar debate over the reasons for the war."
Looking back, Jim Cox, USA Today's senior assignment editor for foreign news, says not reporting on the memo was a mistake. "I wish we'd had something in early on, and I wish we'd been able to move the memo story forward. I feel like we missed an opportunity, and that's my fault," he tells Salon. But Cox takes issue with readers who complain that Americans have been kept in the dark about the memo's revelation that Bush had made up his mind on going to war long before he approached the United Nations and asked for a coalition to be formed. "The memo doesn't say something we haven't heard in one way or another over the last two and a half years," Cox says.
If the mainstream media showed little interest in the memo and its ramifications, those outside elite newsrooms did. On Tuesday, a query on the blog search engine Technorati retrieved 3,039 sites on which the Downing Street memo was being discussed.
"It's something that's struck a chord among NPR listeners and newspaper readers," Dvorkin says. "It may have been blog-induced in the beginning, but now it has legs of its own."
Across the country readers have been badgering their local newspapers to examine the memo story. None of the published correspondence appears to be form letters or so-called Astroturf letters designed to mimic grass-roots support for a particular issue. The letters have appeared in the Sunday Oregonian (Portland), Los Angeles Times, Raleigh News and Observer, Arizona Republic, Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, Anchorage Daily News, Ithaca (N.Y.) Journal, Greensboro (N.C.) News and Record, Berkshire (Mass.) Eagle, Newport (Va.) News Daily Press, Allentown (Pa.) Morning Call, Dubuque (Iowa) Telegraph Herald, Bangor (Maine) Daily News, Springfield (Ill.) State Journal-Register, Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, Modesto (Calif.) Bee and Tulsa World, among others.
With the exception of the Los Angeles Times, at the time the letters were published not one of the newspapers, according to the LexisNexis database, had reported on the memo.
FULL STORY:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/060905E.shtml
TRUTHOUT INDEX:
http://www.truthout.org/index.htm
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/061105Y.shtml
VIDEO SPECIAL | GOP Walks Out on Patriot Act Hearing
http://www.truthout.org/multimedia.htm
GOP Chairman Walks Out of Meeting
By Jim Abrams
The Associated Press
Friday 10 June 2005
Washington - The Republican chairman walked off with the gavel, leaving Democrats shouting into turned-off microphones at a raucous hearing Friday on the Patriot Act.
The House Judiciary Committee hearing, with the two sides accusing each other of being irresponsible and undemocratic, came as President Bush was urging Congress to renew those sections of the post-Sept. 11 counterterrorism law set to expire in September.
Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., chairman of the panel, abruptly gaveled the meeting to an end and walked out, followed by other Republicans. Sensenbrenner declared that much of the testimony, which veered into debate over the detainees at Guantanamo Bay, was irrelevant.
Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., protested, raising his voice as his microphone went off, came back on, and went off again.
"We are not besmirching the honor of the United States, we are trying to uphold it," he said.
Democrats asked for the hearing, the 11th the committee has held on the act since April, saying past hearings had been too slanted toward witnesses who supported the law. The four witnesses were from groups, including Amnesty International USA and the American Immigration Lawyers Association, that have questioned the constitutionality of some aspects of the act, which allows law enforcement greater authority to investigate suspected terrorists.
Nadler said Sensenbrenner, one of the authors of the Patriot Act, was "rather rude, cutting everybody off in mid-sentence with an attitude of total hostility."
Tempers flared when Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., accused Amnesty International of endangering the lives of Americans in uniform by referring to the prison at Guantanamo Bay as a "gulag." Sensenbrenner didn't allow the Amnesty representative, Chip Pitts, to respond until Nadler raised a "point of decency."
Sensenbrenner's spokesman, Jeff Lungren, said the hearing had lasted two hours and "the chairman was very accommodating, giving members extra time."
James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, speaking immediately after Sensenbrenner left, voiced dismay over the proceedings. "I'm troubled about what kind of lesson this gives" to the rest of the world, he told the Democrats remaining in the room.
House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, in a statement, said the hearing was an example of Republican abuse of power and she would ask House Speaker Dennis Hastert to order an apology from Sensenbrenner.
-------
WATCH DEMOCRACY BEING THWARTED AT THE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE
http://www.therandirhodesshow.com/index_weekend.php
============================
Until Tuesday, the number of U.S. newspaper articles reporting on the Downing Street memo could be counted on two hands, including two articles in the New York Times, two in the Washington Post (print edition), and one each in Newsday, the Los Angeles Times, the Minneapolis Star Tribune and the Chicago Tribune. None of these ran on Page 1. In fact, both the Star Tribune and the Chicago Tribune articles focused on how little commotion the memo had caused in the United States, with the Chicago daily noting, "The White House has denied the premise of the memo, the American media have reacted slowly to it and the public generally seems indifferent to the issue or unwilling to rehash the bitter prewar debate over the reasons for the war."
Looking back, Jim Cox, USA Today's senior assignment editor for foreign news, says not reporting on the memo was a mistake. "I wish we'd had something in early on, and I wish we'd been able to move the memo story forward. I feel like we missed an opportunity, and that's my fault," he tells Salon. But Cox takes issue with readers who complain that Americans have been kept in the dark about the memo's revelation that Bush had made up his mind on going to war long before he approached the United Nations and asked for a coalition to be formed. "The memo doesn't say something we haven't heard in one way or another over the last two and a half years," Cox says.
If the mainstream media showed little interest in the memo and its ramifications, those outside elite newsrooms did. On Tuesday, a query on the blog search engine Technorati retrieved 3,039 sites on which the Downing Street memo was being discussed.
"It's something that's struck a chord among NPR listeners and newspaper readers," Dvorkin says. "It may have been blog-induced in the beginning, but now it has legs of its own."
Across the country readers have been badgering their local newspapers to examine the memo story. None of the published correspondence appears to be form letters or so-called Astroturf letters designed to mimic grass-roots support for a particular issue. The letters have appeared in the Sunday Oregonian (Portland), Los Angeles Times, Raleigh News and Observer, Arizona Republic, Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, Anchorage Daily News, Ithaca (N.Y.) Journal, Greensboro (N.C.) News and Record, Berkshire (Mass.) Eagle, Newport (Va.) News Daily Press, Allentown (Pa.) Morning Call, Dubuque (Iowa) Telegraph Herald, Bangor (Maine) Daily News, Springfield (Ill.) State Journal-Register, Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, Modesto (Calif.) Bee and Tulsa World, among others.
With the exception of the Los Angeles Times, at the time the letters were published not one of the newspapers, according to the LexisNexis database, had reported on the memo.
FULL STORY:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/060905E.shtml
TRUTHOUT INDEX:
http://www.truthout.org/index.htm
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