Today Congress Votes to Take Your Passport Daniel McAdams July 21, 2015
................................... Which brings us to the matter of HR 237, a bill to “[t]o authorize the revocation or denial of passports and passport cards to individuals affiliated with foreign terrorist organizations, and for other purposes,” coming to the Floor of the US House today on, of all things, the “suspension calendar.” This “suspension calendar” accommodates bills that are traditionally considered uncontroversial in nature and thus not requiring the full daylight of a thorough Congressional debate.
Think: renaming post offices.
Under the “suspension of the rules,” bills can be brought to the Floor without going through the rules process and thus not be eligible for any amendment or substantive debate. Forty minutes of mostly praise and usually a voice-vote of approval and the “suspension” is on its way to becoming the law of the land.
As my old colleague Norman Singleton brings to light, HR 237 is hardly uncontroversial. It gives the US Secretary of State the power to revoke the passport of any American he determines has “aided, assisted, abetted, or otherwise helped an organization the Secretary has designated as a foreign terrorist organization.”
This means the Secretary of State can, unilaterally, with no due process and no oversight, deprive an American citizen the privileges of citizenship, thus relegating him to internal exile inside the United States — a practice most recently perfected in the Soviet Union.
What does the word “aided” mean? No one knows. Is there any wiggle room for inadvertency? No one knows. And what about the very political nature of the US “terror” list in the first place? What if I seemed to have winked approvingly at an MeK demonstration on September 27, 2012, the day before the US Secretary of State unilaterally decided that this Marxist-jihadist terror cult, which has murdered American citizens, should no longer be on the US terror list? Would that one day’s lapse cost me my ability to leave the US?
Will the Secretary of State at least consult with other government agencies to determine whether my wink at the MeK might have been simply a speck in my eye and in fact I have absolutely no terrorist sympathies whatsoever? Nothing in the bill requires him to do so.
If the Secretary of State does take away my passport and condemns me to internal exile, will I at least find some way to pursue due process and appeal for the reinstatement of my privileges as a citizen — after all I have not been convicted or even accused of terrorist activity? Again, HR 237 does not provide for that possibility.
Can I at least see the report that the Secretary of State is required to provide Congress to prove that I should be consigned to internal exile? Again, no. As the bill states, “[t]he report submitted under paragraph (1) may be submitted in classified or unclassified form.’’
The US Secretary of State can revoke my passport without meeting any burden of proof that I am actually a terrorist or even that I have ever supported terrorism. He can keep his evidence against me totally secret and will never be required to justify his actions against me.
And this is considered “uncontroversial” in the United States? Even in revolutionary France you had the Vendée which resisted the madness of the totalitarian state. Here we have the “suspension calendar,” a modern guillotine of our rights. 1:39 am on July 21, 2015
Wow. One part of me says, "Well, I certainly agree that anyone involved in terrorist groups should certainly have citizenship revoked. And not only that, face imprisonment or even better deportation." And I would take it a step further that any citizen who has aided and abetted those we are at war with should face charges of treason for sure.
However, based on this administration's tendency to side with our enemies (Bengazi and Iran for starters) I am not convinced this bill would stop there. The rule of law only matters to the peasants not the overlords. So..... I truly believe this bill would be ignored for the above seemingly logical intent, and would instead be a tool used to imprison those on the right who dissent against this administration. Any dissenters would (as they have already done) be labeled domestic terrorists and the floodgates would open up to revoke citizenship and incarcerate all citizens who are loyal to the Constitution and our founding documents.
So, not feeling at all good about this to say the least.
Quote: conservgramma wrote in post #2Wow. One part of me says, "Well, I certainly agree that anyone involved in terrorist groups should certainly have citizenship revoked. And not only that, face imprisonment or even better deportation." And I would take it a step further that any citizen who has aided and abetted those we are at war with should face charges of treason for sure.
However, based on this administration's tendency to side with our enemies (Bengazi and Iran for starters) I am not convinced this bill would stop there. The rule of law only matters to the peasants not the overlords. So..... I truly believe this bill would be ignored for the above seemingly logical intent, and would instead be a tool used to imprison those on the right who dissent against this administration. Any dissenters would (as they have already done) be labeled domestic terrorists and the floodgates would open up to revoke citizenship and incarcerate all citizens who are loyal to the Constitution and our founding documents.
So, not feeling at all good about this to say the least.
Yes, but you know that "home-grown right wing terrorists" are more of a problem than are islamicists or other radicals? And, the law means what you want it to mean, not what it says, so you have very good reason to be concerned.