Overview of Changes to Legal Rights

In addition to the people we lost at the World Trade Center and at the Pentagon a year ago, we’ve lost some things that are also fundamentally important to our nation. We are no long a free country… our basic rights as Americans have been eroded in the name of “security” when in reality our president seems to be attempting to overthrow our democracy and create a dictatorship. The most important values we have as a country are gone, not at the hands of Osama bin Laden, or of terrorists, but at the hands of the Terrorist who sits in the Oval Office today, a man who arrived there not because he was elected but because he stole the seat.
Overview of Changes to Legal Rights — By The Associated Press
September 5, 2002, 11:44 AM EDT
Some of the fundamental changes to Americans’ legal rights by the Bush administration and the USA Patriot Act following the terror attacks:
* FREEDOM OF ASSOCIATION: Government may monitor religious and political institutions without suspecting criminal activity to assist terror investigation.
* FREEDOM OF INFORMATION: Government has closed once-public immigration hearings, has secretly detained hundreds of people without charges, and has encouraged bureaucrats to resist public records requests.
* FREEDOM OF SPEECH: Government may prosecute librarians or keepers of any other records if they tell anyone that the government subpoenaed information related to a terror investigation.
* RIGHT TO LEGAL REPRESENTATION: Government may monitor federal prison jailhouse conversations between attorneys and clients, and deny lawyers to Americans accused of crimes.
* FREEDOM FROM UNREASONABLE SEARCHES: Government may search and seize Americans’ papers and effects without probable cause to assist terror investigation.
* RIGHT TO A SPEEDY AND PUBLIC TRIAL: Government may jail Americans indefinitely without a trial.
* RIGHT TO LIBERTY: Americans may be jailed without being charged or being able to confront witnesses against them.
READ MY LIPS MR. BUSH: NO WAR WITH IRAQ

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