General & Politics danielsousa on 05 Dec 2007 08:43 pm
Letter to a Senator
I recently wrote a letter to my state Senators concerning a bill coming up for vote in the Senate soon. It’s been all over digg, and I saw a cookie cutter letter on someone’s blog and decided to modify the letter to reflect my own concerns. I read over the text of the bill (it was really very short and can be found here), and modified the letter and e-mailed it two both my Senators.
Unfortunately I don’t have the complete text, since I sent the e-mail through a form on their websites. Basically I expressed concern over the vague language describing terrorism or radical violence as “threatened, planned or intended violence” against Americans. Even worse was a section explaining how the internet was used to provide terrorist message and propaganda to the American public. And making terrorist materials easily accessible to the public. I had flashes of china-like censorship of the internet.
I got the following response, likely from a member of his staff (which is expected, he’s really busy):
Dear Mr. De Sousa:
Thank you for taking the time to contact me regarding H.R. 1955, the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007. I appreciate hearing from all Pennsylvanians about the issues that matter most to them.
H.R. 1955 was introduced in the House of Representatives on April 19, 2007 and was agreed to on October 23, 2007. The bill was received in the Senate and referred to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, of which I am not a member. Please be assured that should this bill come before the full Senate, I will have your views in mind.
Again, thank you for sharing your thoughts with me. Please do not hesitate to contact me in the future about this or any other matter of importance to you.
If you have access to the Internet, I encourage you to frequently visit my web site, http://casey.senate.gov. In the months ahead, I will continue to develop the site in order to allow you to stay up-to-date on my work in Washington. If you wish to e-mail me, you can do so on the web site.
Sincerely,
Bob Casey
United States Senator
Anyway, hopefully the text of the document will get modified in committee and things will be better.