| Chris Dodd returns from his grueling campaign in Iowa just in time to help us ward off another attack on the Constitution. First it was FISA, and now it's the Thought Crime Bill.
All five of Connecticut's Congressmen voted to pass H.R. 1955: The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007, better known as the Thought Crime Bill. The bill passed in the House by a vote of 404 to 6, and it has now moved to the Senate (S. 1959). Among the six Congressmen to vote against the bill were Dennis Kucinich and Neil Abercrombie, who explained to Jennifer Abel of the Fairfield County Weekly why this bill is so scary:
Kucinich ... told us he voted against the bill because it's "unconstitutional" and "a thought-crime bill." And a representative of Hawaiian congressman Neil Abercrombie said his boss voted no because he felt the bill gave law enforcement too much power, and didn't sufficiently protect individual rights. [...]
The bill says nothing explicitly ominous. It even specifies that the "Department of Homeland Security's efforts...shall not violate the constitutional rights, civil rights, or civil liberties of United States citizens or lawful permanent residents." So what's the problem?
"Essentially," said Kucinich, "the bill moves to criminalize thought by giving an overly broad view of the threat of homegrown terrorism."
The bill attempts to prohibit forms of belief that "might" lead to violence -- you don't have to act on those beliefs, just "facilitate" them. Abel writes: "Violent radicalization," one of the threats the bill seeks to curb, is defined there as "the process of adopting or promoting an extremist belief system for the purpose of facilitating ideologically based violence to advance political, religious or social change."
Acts of violence are already illegal, whether stemming from extreme beliefs or not. But "adopting" or "promoting" beliefs is supposed to be covered by the first amendment, which Kucinich said, "protects freedom of speech, which should also include freedom of thought, thought usually precedes speech, unless you're talking about Washington. This undercuts the first amendment, [because] lines like 'ideologically based'...says government should police ideas, not conduct."
One of the other dangers of the bill is that it allows the government to define ordinary, run-of-the-mill activist demonstrations as forms of terrorism. Kamau Franklin, of the Center for Constitutional Rights, elaborated on this point during a discussion with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!: [T]he broad definitions allow for new laws that can be passed, that can basically equate social justice activism and civil disobedience to terrorism in some ways. So in the past if someone got charged for blocking the street, there [sic] were charged with disorderly conduct, or obstruction of governmental administration. Now, after this commission is done, if new laws are passed, with the broadness of the definitions, the Feds can now say "well, wait a minute, you threatened the use of violence or threatened the use of force. And that by itself can mean that we can now charge you with federal terrorist crimes.
Reading that quote makes me think of the Ken Krayeske case, and how Hartford cops threw Ken in jail for taking pictures of Governor Rell. Imagine if they had charged him with terrorism ...
The last chance to kill this bill is in the Senate, where it awaits action by Joe Lieberman in the Homeland Security Committee. Lieberman and the bill's sponsor, Susan Collins of Maine, are strongly in favor of the bill. So is Chris Shays.
Just like the FISA bill, this Thought Crime Bill needs someone to filibuster it or threaten a hold, someone who values the Constitution as much as Chris Dodd. Now that his Presidential campaign is over, let's give Dodd a new mission: Stop the Thought Crime Bill. |
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