Jerry Nadler: “Last year candidate George Bush pledged to seek repeal of the secret courts provision of the 1996 antiterrorism bill…”

“Last year candidate George Bush pledged to seek repeal of the secret courts provision of the 1996 antiterrorism bill because he claimed to understand that the law was passed hastily and that this provision at least endangered civil liberties without contributing to national security. Now the President, the same George Bush, and the leadership of this House is insisting that we again enact hastily, and again in the name of national security and antiterrorism, act so hastily as probably to endanger our civil liberties without necessarily helping our security. The bill we passed in the Committee on the Judiciary was a balanced bill that would have enhanced our security without endangering our civil liberties. Now we have a 187-page bill with a lot of provisions in it. What I am about to say I hope is accurate, but I cannot be sure, because we have only had time to glance quickly through this bill. We have not had time to properly review it, to send it out to law schools, to send it out to civil libertarians to get comments back so we can make an intelligent judgment. We cannot wait until Tuesday. We passed out the bill from committee last week. We wasted a whole week, but now we cannot wait 3 days. We must rush to judgment on this bill. Let me give three provisions of this bill that look, to a hasty reading, dangerous.”