Throughout his career, Mr. Conyers have stood fast to the belief that we can be both secure and free. It is a red herring to say we must sacrifice our precious civil rights and civil liberties in order to keep our nation safe from domestic and international terrorism; in fact, the very purpose of our war on terrorism should be to safeguard our freedoms. He could not imagine a more hollow victory than to win the war on terrorism and to lose our democracy at the same time.

In the weeks after the September 11 attacks, Mr. Conyers believed that our anti-terrorism laws did not provide the government with enough authority to learn of and prevent attacks before they happened as opposed to investigating them after they occurred. That is why he worked diligently with his Republican colleagues on the U.S. House Judiciary Committee and with the Justice Department to do a thorough review of the laws that needed to be updated. After weeks of bipartisan and diligent discussions, he crafted a compromise bill that ultimately was voted out of the Judiciary Committee by an unprecedented, unanimous vote of 36-0.

Unfortunately, the Bush Administration was not satisfied with a bill that gave it everything it needed; it sacrificed his good faith negotiations and bipartisanship for a bill that had everything it wanted. What the Administration wanted was the ability to conduct secret searches of suspects (also known as "sneak-and-peek" searches), to monitor our reading habits by getting records from libraries and bookstores, and to detain non-citizens indefinitely. To accomplish this, the Administration and the House Republican leadership threw away the bipartisan bill from the Committee and wrote a new one in secret; the new bill, known as the USA PATRIOT Act, was given to the Congress the very morning it was voted on and was not disclosed to the public until much later. The secrecy in which it was written and the extreme provisions it contained were what called for Mr. Conyers to vote against the frightfully-named USA PATRIOT Act.

Unfortunately, the Administration's war on terrorism proved that his vote was the right one. When Mr. Conyers asked the Justice Department how it has used its sneak-and-peek authority, it cannot tell of one act of terrorism that has been prevented. When Mr. Conyers asked the Department how often it has sought patron records from libraries and bookstores, it responds by saying the very number of times is classified so that the information cannot be disclosed to the public.

The Administration's assault on our civil liberties did not stop with the USA PATRIOT Act, however. Without consulting with Congress or hearing from the American people, the Justice Department began closing deportation hearings to family members, the public, and the press in violation of the U.S. Constitution. Mr. Conyers joined with civil liberties and civil rights groups in suing the Department to open the hearings. In ruling in his favor, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit said "Democracies die behind closed doors." This was an important victory for all of us, as it placed checks on the government's ability to act in secret. As a result of this decision, the Department is reconsidering its blanket decision to hold secret hearings.

These are just a few of the examples of how Mr. Conyers has used his time in Congress to protect the precious rights that all of us cherish as Americans.