ALAWON: American Library Association Washington Office Newsline Volume 9, Number 59 June 27, 2000 In this issue: Progress on Filtering in Senate Action Still Needed: Library supporters who have not already done so should call their Senators and urge them to oppose McCain's filtering amendment (No. 3610) to the Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill (H.R. 4577). Those who have already contacted their Senators about the McCain amendment may wish to call again and request support for Santorum's amendment (No. 3635) which is a community control alternative to federal filtering mandates. The Capitol Switchboard phone number is 202-224-3121. Update: The Senate took up the Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill once again today, and for a brief time this morning they dealt with the mandatory filtering issue raised by Sen. McCain (R-AZ). McCain offered him amendment and spoke to it saying he was willing to take a stand on the "vital importance of the need to protect our children's moral innocence." Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) also spoke mentioning, as an alternative to federally mandated filtering, an approach he and Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) have presented in the past, requiring Internet Service Providers to make filtering available to their customers. Leahy stopped short of offering this approach as a second-degree amendment to McCain's measure. McCain's amendment was set aside with time for debating reserved. In a surprising move a few minutes later, Sen. Rick Santorum (R- PA) also offered his Neighborhood Children's Internet Protection Act as an amendment to H.R. 4577. He spoke of his amendment as an alternative to McCain's approach, which he described as having "Washington come down and hammer you saying 'Here's what you have to do.'" He acknowledged that some filters do not work. Santorum's amendment requires that E-rate recipients either develop an Internet Use Policy, or install filtering software. When Santorum originally introduced this measure as a freestanding bill (S. 1545), ALA acknowledged this as a more reasoned approach to child safety on the Internet than the federal filtering mandates backed by others on Capitol Hill. At this time, votes have not been taken on either the McCain or the Santorum amendments. Votes may be taken this evening or may be postponed until tomorrow when consideration is expected to continue. ****** ALAWON (ISSN 1069-7799) is a free, irregular publication of the American Library Association Washington Office. All materials subject to copyright by the American Library Association may be reprinted or redistributed for noncommercial purposes with appropriate credits. To subscribe to ALAWON, send the message: subscribe ala-wo [your_firstname] [your_lastname] to listproc@ala.org or go to http://www.ala.org/washoff/alawon. To unsubscribe to ALAWON, send the message: unsubscribe ala-wo to listproc@ala.org. ALAWON archives at http://www.ala.org/washoff/alawon. ALA Washington Office, 1301 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W., Suite 403, Washington, D.C. 20004-1701; phone: 202.628.8410 or 800.941.8478 toll-free; fax: 202.628.8419; e-mail: alawash@alawash.org; Web site: http://www.ala.org/washoff. Executive Director: Emily Sheketoff. Office of Government Relations: Lynne Bradley, Director; Mary Costabile, Peter Kaplan, Miriam Nisbet and Claudette Tennant. Office for Information Technology Policy: Rick Weingarten, Director; Jennifer Hendrix, Carrie Russell and Saundra Shirley.