House OKs AMBER Alert bill

WASHINGTON -- The House today approved a package of child protection legislation that would create a national AMBER Alert child- kidnapping notification network and strengthen the nation's child- pornography laws.

The House voted 400-25 for a compromise crafted by a House-Senate negotiating committee that would institute the national child- kidnapping network urged by the family of Elizabeth Smart.

The Smart family, who were reunited with Elizabeth last month after she had been taken from her bedroom in Salt Lake City months ago, called repeatedly for Congress to pass the legislation.

"We're encouraged by the passage and anxious for it to pass the Senate," said Chris Thomas, a spokesman for Elizabeth Smart's family.

The bill's fate in the Senate is uncertain. Some Democrats, who support a stand-alone AMBER Alert bill, have objected to provisions in the compromise that they say would take away federal judges' discretion in sentencing criminals.

The legislation also strengthens the nation's child-pornography laws, increases penalties for child sexual predators and reduces federal judges' discretion in sentencing criminals.

"The overarching goal of this comprehensive package is to stop those who prey on children before they can harm children," said House Judiciary Chairman James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., who championed the legislation.

The Republican-dominated negotiating committee took less than three hours Tuesday to pound out a compromise of different bills that had passed the House and Senate earlier.

Rep. Martin Frost, D-Texas, a supporter of the stand-alone AMBER Alert bill, said the compromise would be better than waiting even longer to get the national AMBER Alert network placed into law.

But "it contains some needless controversial provisions which will cause some members to vote against it," Frost said.

Rep. Tom Feeney, R-Fla., who authored the sentencing language objected to by Democrats, said a stand-alone Amber Alert bill wouldn't do enough to protect children.

"Amber Alert is wonderful at attempting to retrieve children who are kidnapped and taken across state lines," Feeney said. "What we've tried to do is to deter and punish people and put them behind bars."

But approval in the Senate could hinge on a ruling by the Senate parliamentarian, who decides procedural matters for senators.

Right before the House passed its first version of the bill, Republicans inserted language that would make it harder for federal judges to stray from official sentencing guidelines for criminals.

Republicans say the language would only apply to child sex crimes, but Democrats say a hastily written amendment offered by Senate Judiciary Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, would affect almost all federal crimes, taking away judges' discretion on sentencing criminals.

Supreme Court Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, in a letter to Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said that provision could hurt the federal court system.

"The Judicial Conference believes that this legislation, if enacted, would do serious harm to the basic structure of the sentencing guideline system and would seriously impair the ability of courts to impose just and responsible sentences," he said.

The Judicial Conference of the United States is a panel of 27 federal judges that set policy for the federal courts. Rehnquist heads that panel.

That language -- which has been strongly opposed by Democrats -- shouldn't have been considered by the negotiating committee or included in the final compromise because it has nothing to do with either the Amber Alert system or child pornography, Democrats said.

Senate rules say only related materials can be considered in a conference committee, and Democrats filed an official objection on Wednesday. If the parliamentarian rules with the Democrats and his ruling is upheld, it would kill the compromise.

The compromise would authorize creation of a national child kidnapping notification network named after Amber Hagerman, a 9-year- old girl abducted in Arlington, Texas, and later found murdered.

The legislation would provide matching grants to states and communities for equipment and training for the Amber Alert network, which will distribute information quickly, through radio and television broadcasts and electronic highway signs, about kidnapped children and their abductors.

It also would crack down on child pornography by strengthening bans on depicting minors in obscene material, while dealing with the Supreme Court's constitutional problems with an earlier version.

The high court last April struck down a 1996 law that specifically prohibited virtual child pornography. The court said banning images that merely appear to depict real children engaged in sex was unconstitutionally vague and far-reaching.

The compromise legislation would prohibit the pandering or solicitation of anything represented to be child pornography. It also requires the government to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a person intended others to believe the material was obscene child pornography.

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