Comment If You Care, Then Write! Now! (Score 2, Informative) 797
Folks, a reminder -- arguing about this here isn't going to accomplish much. The people making the decisions aren't reading Slashdot.
If you have an opinion, then now is the time to express it where it matters. Send a calm, reasoned note off to your Congressperson, expressing your concerns. Postal mail generally gets more attention than email, but the sheer bulk of email can matter as well. As a reminder, you can find (and write to) your Representative via this page:
http://www.house.gov/writerep/
and find your Senators' email addresses from this one:
http://www.senate.gov/contacting/index_by_state.cf m
Personally, I recommend urging calm and balance at this point. If you come off as an extremist, odds are you won't be listened to. Most Congresspeople right now are feeling an enormous pressure to Do Something Now. Make clear to them that, while the people may well want action taken against the terrorist threat, we're also paying attention to what those actions are. The appropriate steps need to be carefully designed to have the maximum effect upon actual threats, while minimizing the effect on civil liberties. Legislators are used to compromise; if you make it clear that their constituency cares about both sides of the issue, it may get through to them that extremism here is a bad idea.
(I'm quite certain that at least one or two truly stupid laws are going to come out of this mess. But injecting a note of calm may help to keep the number and severity down...)
If you have an opinion, then now is the time to express it where it matters. Send a calm, reasoned note off to your Congressperson, expressing your concerns. Postal mail generally gets more attention than email, but the sheer bulk of email can matter as well. As a reminder, you can find (and write to) your Representative via this page:
http://www.house.gov/writerep/
and find your Senators' email addresses from this one:
http://www.senate.gov/contacting/index_by_state.c
Personally, I recommend urging calm and balance at this point. If you come off as an extremist, odds are you won't be listened to. Most Congresspeople right now are feeling an enormous pressure to Do Something Now. Make clear to them that, while the people may well want action taken against the terrorist threat, we're also paying attention to what those actions are. The appropriate steps need to be carefully designed to have the maximum effect upon actual threats, while minimizing the effect on civil liberties. Legislators are used to compromise; if you make it clear that their constituency cares about both sides of the issue, it may get through to them that extremism here is a bad idea.
(I'm quite certain that at least one or two truly stupid laws are going to come out of this mess. But injecting a note of calm may help to keep the number and severity down...)
