The ranking members of the House Judiciary Committee have sent Attorney General John Ashcroft a letter requesting details about the implementation of the USA PATRIOT Act, including a provision that gives the FBI the right to obtain a secret court order to search the records of bookstores, libraries and newspapers. The letter from James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) and John Conyers (D-MI) is the first official inquiry into a potential threat to First Amendment rights that has bothered booksellers and others since the passage of the PATRIOT Act in October, only weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks. See ABFFE Update, Nov. 1, 2001.

The Sensenbrenner/Conyers letter, asks Ashcroft questions about how the Justice Department is implementing 50 provisions of the PATRIOT Act, http://judiciary.house.gov/. With respect to the business records section of the act, it asks how many court orders have been issued to bookstores, libraries and newspapers. (Reporters' notes can also be subpoenaed under the PATRIOT Act even if they are protected by state "shield laws" designed to protect their confidentiality.) The letter also asks whether the Justice Department has put in place any safeguards like requiring supervisory approval before the records are sought or "requiring a determination that the information is essential to an investigation and could not be obtain through any other means."

Sensenbrenner has asked Ashcroft to provide answers to his questions at a hearing on Thursday.

Following a protest by parents and civil liberties groups, including ABFFE, the New York Commissioner of Education has promised that his department will stop censoring the literary passages used in the state's Regents proficiency examinations. The commissioner acted after it was revealed that 19 of the 24 excerpts that had appeared on the tests in the last three years had been purged of nearly all references to race, religion, ethnicity, sex, nudity, and alcohol as well as even the mildest profanity. Censored works included Annie Dillard's "An American Childhood," Isaac Bashevis Singer's "In My Father's Court," Anne Lamott's "Bird by Bird," and Anton Chekov's "An Upheaval." Despite the commissioner's assurances, critics remain concerned. One of the criticisms of the test is that material was removed without indicating where. The state may try to defuse criticism by using ellipses to indicate deletions or it could choose passages that do not contain any potentially offensive material because they are so boring. Neither alternative is acceptable to the critics of the test.

Following an adverse ruling by the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals last May, lawyers for the Margaret Mitchell estate announced that they were going to the U.S. Supreme Court with their claim that Alice Randall's "The Wind Done Gone" violated the copyright protecting "Gone With The Wind." Last month, without conceding defeat, the Mitchell estate abandoned its effort to collect damages from the publisher, Houghton Mifflin. Houghton reports that it has sold over 200,000 hardcover and paperback copies of the book. Despite the court victory, however, Michael Gerber, a parodist and the author of the forthcoming "Barry Trotter and the Unauthorized Parody," told librarians at their recent convention in Atlanta, that publishers are increasingly unwilling to publish parodies because of their fear of being sued for violating copyrights. ABFFE filed two amicus briefs opposing the effort to ban the publication of "The Wind Done Gone." It also co-sponsored the ALA program at which Gerber spoke, "Barry Trotter Done Gone: The Perils of Publishing Parody."

Mitchell Kaplan of Books & Books, Coral Gables, Florida, Matt Miller of Denver's Tattered Cover and Wendy Strothman, the executive vice president of Houghton Mifflin, were recently elected to three-year terms on the ABFFE Board of Directors. Kaplan, who is vice president and secretary of the American Booksellers Association, will serve as vice president of ABFFE. Miller retired from the ABA board this year. Strothman, who recently announced that she was stepping down from her position at Houghton, formerly directed Beacon Press. She is a former member of the Association of American Publishers' Freedom to Read Committee. The new directors are replacing Ann Christophersen of Women & Children First in Chicago, Joyce Meskis of Tattered Cover and Rhett Jackson of the Happy Bookseller in Columbia, SC.