Political Quotes

“I wanted to begin by pointing out that this is perhaps one of the most important measures that we will determine from the Committee on the Judiciary's point of view, because it is antiterrorist legislation that expands the law in many directions; and from our point of view, we have been trying to put safeguards around these expansions. We have dropped the two worst provisions from the administration proposal, the illegal use of foreign evidence and the pretrial restraint provision. I commend the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Sensenbrenner), my chairman, who has worked night and day on this matter; and I think that in the overall, we have had good cooperation. The measure before us corrects unconstitutional immigration provisions. We have corrected the immigration provision that allows indefinite detention without evidence. We have modified or narrowed any number of other controversial provisions, more than a couple dozen. We have added a 4-year sunset provision for most of the surveillance operations. We have added a new Inspector General for Civil Liberties and Civil Rights inside the Department of Justice. We have new Federal tort relief for improper government release of wiretap information. We have added new resources to ease the delays in patrolling and protecting the northern border, and we have immigration relief for persons being sponsored by the victims of those in the September 11 attack.”