Joe Biden: “I rise to speak to the Feinstein amendment and suggest that what the Senator from California has raised here…”

“I rise to speak to the Feinstein amendment and suggest that what the Senator from California has raised here, paraphrasing director Freeh, is a debate that we should be having. I do not think there are many people, and I do not think there are any people here in this body, who would suggest that the examples the Senator has given are examples we should not be concerned with. As evidenced by the Senator's comments, she also is mindful that although there are exceptions to the first amendment they are few, and we should, in drafting legislation, keep the first amendment in mind. It is in that regard that I rise to discuss very briefly, the case of the United States versus Featherston, the fifth circuit case that the Senator mentioned. In that case, the court upheld a conviction of two leaders of a militia group who showed their followers how to make explosives. The purpose of the demonstration they put on was to prepare the group for the coming revolution. Now, the statute at issue makes it a crime to teach someone how to make a bomb, knowing, intending or having reason to know that the bomb will be unlawfully used in a civil disorder as defined as a public act of violence involving three or more people. In upholding the statute's constitutionality, however, the court read the language in the statute more narrowly than the language appears on its face.”