BORDC Issues the 'War on Terror' and the Constitution

"The 'War on Terror' and The Constitution," a new booklet by the
Bill of Rights Defense Committee (BORDC), is a concise summary of how
key anti-terrorism laws and policies enacted since September 11, 2001,
affect Americans' constitutional rights. The new laws are organized
into chapters corresponding to sections of the U.S. Constitution and
articles of the Bill of Rights. Stories in each chapter show how the
lives of innocent Americans and foreign detainees have been affected.
BORDC is issuing the 24-page booklet on Constitution Day, the 220th
anniversary of the U.S. Constitution.

Nancy Talanian,
BORDC's director and the booklet's author, sees the booklet as a
roadmap to show Americans the current status of their rights and
liberties compared to where they should be according to the
Constitution. "Armed with that knowledge," she said, "they can work
with one another and with their legislators to restore the essential
rights they have come to expect."

Nat Hentoff, a
nationally recognized authority on the Bill of Rights, agrees. "No
matter who the next president is or what the composition of the next
Congress is," he said, "the extent and the depth of what the Bush
administration has done to the Constitution and to our standing in the
world will remain unless and until enough Americans know how much
remains to be done-and this booklet by the Bill of Rights Defense
Committee provides the basic tools with which the citizenry can begin
to act to make this America again."

According to
Talanian, "We now have substantial proof that human failures within our
government, not the laws and policies in place prior to September 11,
2001, contributed to the terrorist attacks on that day. Furthermore,
no proof has been offered to substantiate executive branch claims that
new laws and policies such as the USA PATRIOT Act have made this
country safer. One could argue that the government is wasting
resources prying into the lives of innocent people and storing millions
of their private records in databases and treating potentially all of
us as terrorism suspects."

"The 'War on Terror' and the Constitution" (24 pages, $3.00) is available from the Bill of Rights Defense Committee at https://www.bordc.org/store.php. Download the booklet (PDF, 6.7 MB) at https://www.bordc.org/resources/war_on_terror.pdf.

In
2002, BORDC spearheaded a nationwide campaign that put city, county,
and state governments on record for upholding their residents'
constitutional rights. The passage of eight statewide resolutions and
more than 400 local resolutions and ordinances led Congress to
strengthen its oversight when it reauthorized the PATRIOT Act in 2006.
BORDC's current focus is on the People's Campaign for the Constitution,
a grassroots effort to hold members of Congress accountable to their
oaths to uphold the Constitution.