Using NewsHour Extra Feature Stories

Overview: NewsHour Extra features stories can help students identify and interpret key issues in current events. This activity anticipates one class period, but the follow-up essay might be assigned as homework, or in another period.

Warm Up: Use initiating questions to introduce the topic and find out how much your students know.

Main Activity: Have students read NewsHour Extra's feature story and answer the questions on the reading comprehension handout.

Discussion: Use discussion questions to encourage students to think about how the issues outlined in the story affect their lives and express and debate different opinions.

Follow-up: Students can write an 500-word editorial on the topic expressing their views and send it to NewsHour Extra [extra@newshour.org] for possible publication.

Evaluation: Students are graded on their answers to reading comprehension questions and/or their editorial.

Story: Patriot Act Continues to Spark Debate, 9/17/03
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/features/july-dec03/patriotact_917.html

Initiating Questions:

1. If you were a government official investigating a suspected terrorist, what areas of his or her life would you want to know about?

2. As a citizen, what areas of your life do you not want the government to know about?

Reading Comprehension Questions: (click here for printout)

1. What expanded powers would the President like to include in the Patriot Act?

The expanded powers would allow officials to bypass a judge or grand jury in order to obtain subpoenas in time-sensitive terrorism investigations. It would also deny bail to terrorism suspects and open up the federal death penalty for terror-related crimes that result in death.

2. What is the ACLU's position on the Patriot Act?

The Patriot Act's most outspoken critic, the American Civil Liberties Union, or ACLU, an 80-year-old civil rights watchdog organization, called the act a "surveillance monster" and argued that there were "virtually no rules" governing the new powers.

The act slowly eliminates judicial oversight and upsets checks and balances, ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero told Newsweek magazine.

3. What is Attorney General John Ashcroft's position on the Patriot Act?

During his tour Ashcroft pointed to the triumphs the government has made under the act since Sept. 11, 2001. Among them, federal prosecutors have brought more than 250 criminal charges under the law, resulting in more than 130 convictions or guilty pleas.

"We have used tools provided in the Patriot Act to fulfill our first responsibility -- that of protecting the American people," Ashcroft said. "We've used these tools to provide the security that ensures liberty."

4. How do lawmakers hope to make changes to the Patriot act? Why is this significant?

Lawmakers, hoping to avoid the heated debates that surrounded the passage of the original Patriot Act, are expected to quietly attach additions to the Patriot Act to spending bills, which are usually easier to pass in Congress.

Discussion Activity (more research might be needed):

1. What civil liberties would you be willing to give up for national security? Why?

2. Do you think that America is safer now that it has the Patriot Act?

3. Research the changes that President Bush would like to make to the Patriot Act? Do you agree with these changes? Why or why not?

Write a 300-500 word essay on any of these topics providing clear examples. Send your completed editorial to NewsHour Extra [extra@newshour.org]. Exceptional essays might be published on our Web site.