Wow, that was a lot of events to cover in one chapter. It's crazy how in 2003 Saddam Hussein was captured, but then you look back at the struggle to find him later on. But we ended up gettin him again. woot woot.
hey tom! what does the Patriot Act and the No Child Left behind Act entail? What significance do these acts have on our generation?
The Patriot Act (the full name is the USA Patriot Act, or "Uniting and Strengthening America Act by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001") was enacted by the U.S. Congress on October 26, 2001, at the request of President George Bush in response to the terrorist acts of September 11. It gives controversial new powers to the Justice Department in terms of domestic and international surveillance of American citizens and others within its jurisdiction. According to its sponsors, the Act was needed to address a situation that had not existed before - the presence of terrorists within national borders - and the need to apprehend and prosecute them, hopefully before rather than after they acted. Opponents of the Act, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union, say that the Act has undone previous checks on civil liberty abuses of the past and unnecessarily endangers privacy and discourages free speech.
Among the Act's provisions, flowing out of the government's ability to legally tap telephone lines in certain cases, is the ability to intercept Internet messages through its Carnivore program. Theoretically, the government has the ability to intercept all messages that are "relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation," a lower standard than the previous one in which a crime had to have been committed. The Act allows the guidelines to apply to all surveillance cases, not just those of suspected terrorists.
Some opponents allege that the Act was on the drawing boards prior to September 11. Many parties agree that the Act was rushed through Congress with a minimum of study and discussion. In addition to the surveillance provisions, the Act includes sections related to money-laundering and immigration and also contains a section that condemns discrimination against Muslims and Arab-Americans.
The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (Public Law 107-110), commonly known as NCLB, is a United States federal law signed on January 8, 2002 that reauthorizes a number of federal programs aiming to improve the performance of U.S. primary and secondary schools by increasing the standards of accountability for states, school districts and schools, as well as providing parents more flexibility in choosing which schools their children will attend. Additionally, it promotes an increased focus on reading and re-authorizes the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA). NCLB is the latest federal legislation which enacts the theories of standards-based education reform, formerly known as outcome-based education which is based on the belief that high expectations and setting of goals will result in success for all students. The act also requires that the schools distribute the name, home phone number and address of every student enrolled to military recruiters. The effectiveness and desirability of NCLB's measures continue to be a matter of vigorous controversy. Up for possible reauthorization in 2007, a new Congress has already started considering major revisions, as one group of 50 Republican senators and representatives introduced legislation in March 2007 that would provide states much greater freedom from NCLB's controls and punishments. On May 3, 2005, Utah governor Jon Huntsman signed a measure into state law that allows that state's districts to ignore provisions of the law that conflict with that state's programs, making it the first state to enact such a law. The Department of Education has threatened to withhold federal education funding as a result.
Wow!! I didn't know how many things actually happened during this time in history!! It's almost crazy to think that it wasn't even that long ago that all this took place!!!
Kosovo is a province in southern Serbia which has been under United Nations administration since 1999. The province is governed by the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) and the local Provisional Institutions of Self-Government, with security provided by the NATO-led Kosovo Force (KFOR). The province is the subject of a long-running political and territorial dispute between the Serbian government and Kosovo's Albanian population.credit: wikipedia
Kosovo is a province in southern Serbia which has been under United Nations administration since 1999. The province is governed by the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) and the local Provisional Institutions of Self-Government, with security provided by the NATO-led Kosovo Force (KFOR). The province is the subject of a long-running political and territorial dispute between the Serbian government and Kosovo's Albanian population.credit: wikipedia
wow i never knew this! this is great but why did the U.N get involved in the dispute?
The 2000 election was the most contriversal ever. Due to the fact that Florida had many different ballots and both canidates needed the electoral votes to win, it got into a number of court cases. In Bush vs. Gore the Supreme Court decided that Florida's vtes were no good and since Bush had more electoral votes without Florida he won. Needless to say it was a huge deal. And yet I don't remember it at all, I was only in 5th grade.
Tom did the chapter before i got to it, but after reading the posts. i must say, for one, jarred, i DO remember the al gore vs. bush election, probably because my family voted for gore. ha. the losing democratic candidate. anyway, after the original election in which it was determined that FL's electoral votes were in fact needed and the election of president could not be based primarily upon the exit polls, a month of controversial court challenges and recounts followed. The Supreme Court of the US finally agreed 7-2 there were Equal Protection issues in using different standards of counting ballots in different counties. Therefore, by voting 5-4 to ban further recounts using alternate procedures, Bush was certified as the winner in Florida by a margin of 537 votes, thereby defeating Gore. It was the third time in American history that a candidate won the vote in the Electoral College without receiving a pluarity of the popular vote; it also happened in the elections of 1876, and 1888.
