Speaker

In Large, Tony Lang from the FBI came to talk about his job and how it relates to what we are learning about: the Patriot Act, the Military Commisions Act, and the Constitution. He had a unique perspective, being in the FBI. I thought it was interesting when he was talking about how they listen in on people's phone conversations and read emails. We talked about that in class a bit. He explained how he became an FBI agent, too. He talked about the Military Commissions Act and the Patriot act, but also about other things, like how they extract infformation out of people. There was kind of a discussion about whether they should be allowed to do that, like torture people if they think they have information. These are all controversial topics, most of them dealing with the issue of personal rights and freedoms versus precautions for the safety of the country. Usually, I think that protecting the country is more important, but then again I'd rather not have people listening to my phone conversations or rifling through my locker. I thought it was all really interesting and he had time for people to ask questions.

Questions for the speaker

1. Do you think that in times of war, such as right now, it's fair to limit people's individual rights and invade their privacy, like in the patriot act and the military commissions act?

2. Do you think that all the extra precautions that the government has taken since 9/11 has helped to make the country more safe?

Bill of Rights article

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/law/11/20/scotus.handguns/index.html?iref=newssearch

I chose the second amendment, the right to keep arms. The article I found is about a recent ban on handguns in Washington, D.C. The Supreme Court has decided to discuss the matter. I ruling is expected to come by late June, so it will probably be a topic discussed by the 2008 presidential candidates. Some argue that allowing people to have handguns will only increase the amount of violence in D.C., while other say that it is against their constitutional rights to deny them the right to protect themselves. Last year, the city had 137 gun-related murders. An ongoing discussion is how to interpret the amendment: "A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." This could mean that only state militias are allowed to bear arms, not individual people. You’d think that someone would have made a decision on this by now. I guess the founding fathers didn’t think that we would be using our right to bear arms to kill each other. Because this deals with the constitution, the Supreme Court has to make the decision. This applies to us, too, because if the law changes and no one is allowed to have guns, it will affect everyone. We saw in “Bowling for Columbine” that it’s not hard to get ahold of a gun in this country, and that that can lead to things like school shootings.