Word: bill
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Television and radio are putting on even bigger exhibitions, covering the entire country. CBS is presenting Bicentennial minutes that run between programs, while PBS has 90 three-minute reports from Bill Moyers. Moyers is also doing eleven one-hour specials, interviewing such constitutional experts as Supreme Court Justices Harry Blackmun, Sandra Day O'Connor and William Brennan. ABC's entertainment division is preparing a one-hour tribute titled The Splendiferous Wham-Bam Constitution Special that will feature a number of stars, including Michael J. Fox and Barbra Streisand. On a serious note, both the ABC and NBC news divisions will...
...tribute to the Constitution's adaptability that since the Bill of Rights was added in 1791, only 16 more amendments have been ratified. Yet new contexts have arisen that Madison and his contemporaries could not foresee. The Bill of Rights, for example, says nothing directly about the right of privacy, what Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis called the "right to be let alone." In the 18th century, the power of Government to intrude on the individual was acknowledged in the Fourth Amendment ban on unreasonable searches and seizures. But the bureaucracies, technologies -- and social problems -- of the late 20th century...
...efforts by lawmakers to address concerns about computerized invasions of privacy are still embryonic. A bill to create "data integrity boards" to oversee Government computer matching programs is expected to pass Congress this year. But civil libertarians argue that tighter restrictions are needed. The alternative, they say, is a frightening drift toward an Orwellian society in which Big Brother is always watching. Says Jerry Berman, director of the Project on Privacy and Technology of the American Civil Liberties Union: "If you have a surveillance system looking over a wide range of activities, the message is clear: don't deviate. That...
...tougher constitutional question, however, is whether such fairness ought to be mandated by the Government or whether that violates a broadcaster's First Amendment rights. In early June the House and Senate, by wide margins, passed a measure that would codify the fairness doctrine into statute law. But the bill was vetoed by President Reagan, who called the doctrine "antagonistic to the freedom of expression guaranteed by the First Amendment." Efforts to override the veto were abandoned last week, and the deregulation-minded FCC may soon be free to repeal the rule...
...words set down by the framers mapped out first principles of government in spare but sweeping lines. The amendments added since the Bill of Rights have actually done little to alter the document's intrinsic meaning, though they took such dramatic steps as abolishing slavery, expanding the right to vote and permitting a federal income tax. A few of the additions even seem gratuitous, like graffiti on a public monument -- Prohibition and the amendment to be rid of it -- and the urge rises to go at them with a sponge...