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I'm glad to see they are revising the Patriot Act.  I wish they would revise the Anti-Terrorism Bill (our equivalent) :(

It's good they are going back on the privacy infringements but it still leaves all the dodgy detainment pieces unaffected :-/  And the basic racial (O.K. - more accurately 'ethnic') profiling is untouched too.  And they'll still be allowed to deport or to imprison anyone 'suspected' of giving 'material support' to government-designated terrorists :-/ without trial - i mean, does that mean that they don't need a shred of evidence?  Just seems like a convenient way to get rid of anyone that could be 'troublesome'....
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The "Patriot Act" is the anti-terrorism bill passed shortly after 9/11.

As to the rest, you're right, but it is a start.  Long live the Bill of Rights.

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No, i mean in the U.K. we have a similar document but it's just called the Anti-Terrorism Bill.  It focuses more on 'radical groups' rather than individual 'suspects'; the outlawing of the groups and the jailing of anyone who publicly associates themselves with it, rather than detainment/deportation of 'suspects'.
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Hadn't heard about that.  Thanks for the info.  Sorry for the misunderstanding.  

You guys don't have a "Bill of Rights" do you?  Just the Common Law, precident etc.  is that right?

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Closest thing we have to a constitution is the Magna Carta :-/  It's kind of scary really, basically when a government is in power they can pass near-enough any law they want without consulting 'the people'.  Although we do have European laws on Human Rights and so on; they seem to come into conflict with national laws sometimes but it seems European laws have priority - at least in the cause of Human Rights.
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We signed up to a European treaty on human rights, which define to an insufficient degree of precision what rights a person has: that's why we've seen so many test cases recently seeing how far that legislation can be pushed.

It gets more complicated: the judiciary also have a role in that if the government of the day passes legislation which contradicts existing law without explicitly revoking it, they can decide that the new legislation is unlawful - it's happened recently (no wonder David Blunkett gets annoyed with the judges ;-)).

...but the Magna Carta isn't much of a constitution: it's a document that tells the king he can't push the nobles around.

Phil

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Here is another one. Congress voted to allow people to import meds from other countries.


http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=584&ncid=584&e=3&u=/nm/20030725/pl_nm/congress_drugs_dc


The vote was a bit more along party lines on this one but it still is unusual. Personally, I think this one is just a bandaid instead of fixing the problem by putting a limit on how much pharmacutical companies can charge-like other countries do. But at least, it is a step in the right direction.



Cat
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Yeah, I think health care should be a right, as it is in Cuba, not a priviledge based on ability to pay.  How do you Canadians and  Brits feel about this?  You both have a national health system, right?  How much is worth to the welfare of your societies?  Opinions?

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Yeah, that's what always thought about the Magna Carta.  But this European Union stuff is new to me, and a very interesting development.  How do Nationalists respond?
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By and large they bleat on and on about losing control to Brussels.  Legislation from the European Parliament varies from the mundane through to the very good: recent acts include the Human Rights legislation, which contains some very worthwhile stuff, and the Working Time Directive to limit how long people should spend at work - especially good for programmers like me who have to code all the technicalities ;-)

You get lots of silly stories, too, in the newspapers about EU legislation - some people seem to believe anything they read (classic one a few months ago saying the EU was going to define exactly what a banana could be, what the required curvature should be and that straight bananas could not be called "bananas"... I'd love to know who invents these kind of stories :-))

Phil

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You get lots of silly stories, too, in the newspapers about EU legislation - some people seem to believe anything they read (classic one a few months ago saying the EU was going to define exactly what a banana could be, what the required curvature should be and that straight bananas could not be called "bananas"... I'd love to know who invents these kind of stories :-))

In Puerto Rico a banana is what we in the states think of.  But there are Platanos, and Guianos, and... and... dozens of other varieties of basically, the same fruit.  I can get maybe four varieties in my local S.M. in Vt. wow.

Phil
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