I urge you to support S. 1739, a bill to amend the material witness statute
so as to prevent the Bush government's habit of using it to evade the Fifth
Amendment's guarantee of due process.  S. 1739 would place strict limits
on detention without charge, ten days for grand jury investigations and
thirty days for trials, with judicial review every five days.  The material
witness statute dates to 1984, and its provisions are indeed Orwellian.
Congress ought to have foreseen that it would be only a matter of time before
the White House was occupied by an executive willing to abuse it.

A similar debate on indefinite detention has played out recently in the United
Kingdom, a staunch ally of the United States in matters connected to terrorism.
The British Parliament declared that the right to due process cannot be
traded for a bit of expediency in combating possible terrorism.  Will the
United States have the courage to make the same stand for individual freedoms?