You've probably heard about the 'Homeland Security' bill that Bush is trying to rush through Congress during the last hours of the lame duck session.

Quite simply, this is an incredibly scary bill. The House passed the bill last week, and now the Senate is being asked to rubber-stamp it TODAY -- on Monday Nov 18th. They've only had a few days to master the complexities of this 500 page bill, which has all kinds of weird riders attached to it -- last minute additions that have nothing to do with security.

We're asking everyone to call their Senators first thing Monday morning, before any votes, and demand that this bad bill be stopped.

Just call your Senators at:

Senator Phil Gramm
DC Phone: 202-224-2934
Local Phone: 214-767-3000

Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison
DC Phone: 202-224-5922
Local Phone: 713-653-3456

Ask them to put the brakes on the Homeland Security bill. Ask them to take the time to know what they are actually voting on. Ask them to amend the bill to protect our privacy from the government's new "total information awareness" program (see below). Ask them to defeat the new riders that have nothing to do with security -- for example, protecting companies that move their corporate addresses offshore to avoid taxes. Ask them to protect the rights of federal workers.

Let us know you're making these calls at:

http://www.moveon.org/callmade2.html?id=912-1455855-GE0Y1kkTypCvSd6mJ82fJA

Senator Tom Daschle, under great pressure to pass this bill, is trying to amend the worst provisions. If the bill is amended it is likely it will be stalled until the next Congressional session, so compatible House legislation can be passed. This will at least give time for the bill to be read and for Congress to come to an informed decision.

What's wrong with this legislation?

Although couched as a "reorganization," this legislation is fundamentally a direct attack on federal workers' rights to organize. The Bush administration is using the fear of terrorism to essentially break the federal employees' unions. It's a transparent and cynical maneuver, but it's working. In a separate announcement last week, the Bush administration outlined plans to also contract out nearly a million federal jobs -- another way to convert a huge number of middle class jobs into unprotected, minimum wage jobs, and to reward the Bush administration's corporate benefactors.

What you probably haven't heard is that the bill contains provisions that directly attack our civil liberties, giving government immense new powers to invade our privacy. Conservative columnist William Safire highlights these points in a recent New York Times column we've attached below.

Just to top it off, this bill also contains last minute riders. They've even included a provision to ensure that our government can do business with the companies that avoid paying their fair share of taxes by renting a post office box in Bermuda or another offshore tax haven.

Who knows what else lurks in these 500 pages? Senator Byrd gave an impassioned speech last week to ask the Senate to at least slow down this bill so it could be fully understood.

Of course, what this all goes to prove is that when the radical right feels it's on a winning streak, bipartisanship goes out the window. It's time for Senators to draw the line. This can be stopped in the Senate.

Please make your calls first thing Monday morning.

Thank you,

-Wes Boyd
President, MoveOn.org
November 18, 2002

You Are a Suspect

By WILLIAM SAFIRE

WASHINGTON

If the Homeland Security Act is not amended before passage, here is what will happen to you:

Every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine subscription you buy and medical prescription you fill, every Web site you visit and e-mail you send or receive, every academic grade you receive, every bank deposit you make, every trip you book and every event you attend -- all these transactions and communications will go into what the Defense Department describes as "a virtual, centralized grand database."

To this computerized dossier on your private life from commercial sources, add every piece of information that government has about you -- passport application, driver's license and bridge toll records, judicial and divorce records, complaints from nosy neighbors to the F.B.I., your lifetime paper trail plus the latest hidden camera surveillance -- and you have the supersnoop's dream: a "Total Information Awareness" about every U.S. citizen.

This is not some far-out Orwellian scenario. It is what will happen to your personal freedom in the next few weeks if John Poindexter gets the unprecedented power he seeks.

Remember Poindexter? Brilliant man, first in his class at the Naval Academy, later earned a doctorate in physics, rose to national security adviser under President Ronald Reagan. He had this brilliant idea of secretly selling missiles to Iran to pay ransom for hostages, and with the illicit proceeds to illegally support contras in Nicaragua...

see more of this piece at http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/14/opinion/14SAFI.html