[Sosfbay-discuss] Lofgren is Co-Sponsor to "Thought Crime Bill" HR 1955

[Brian Good]

The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007
passed in the House 404 to 6 in October, 2007.  The only CA Rep who opposed 
it was Dana Rohrabacher.  Dennis Kucinich opposed it, reportedly saying it “moves 
to criminalize thought by giving an overly broad view of the threat of homegrown 
terrorism” and that it "says government should police ideas, not conduct.”

http://www.hartfordadvocate.com/article.cfm?aid=5068


The Center for Constitutional Rights article "Here Come the Thought Police," 
claims the legislation could be stretched to cover someone like Rosa Parks. (1)  
What was Zoe thinking?  Zoe came up as a staffer for her predecessor in office, 
Rep. Don Edwards, who was characterized in a New York Times writeup as a
"champion of civil liberties". (2) Zoe's campaign website employs phrases like: 
"the most serious erosions
of civil liberties in the history of our country....  I have 
stood against all these attacks on  the Constitution."  (3) Edward's NYT article 
suggests an important difference between the two:

     Mr. Edwards has been chairman of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Civil
and
     Constitutional Rights for more than two decades. He passed up
opportunities 
     to lead other committees so he could keep his position as
monitor of the 
     Federal Bureau of Investigation and as field marshal in
the battles over civil 
     rights. 
 
     Mr. Edwards also turned down a
seat on the House Permanent Select 
     Committee on Intelligence. "I
thought I would be trapped by secrecy oaths, 
     and it would interfere
with my free speech," he said. 

Zoe
serves on two subcommittess of the
Committee on Homeland Security: 
Subcommittee
on Border,
Maritime, and
Global Counterterrorism and


Subcommittee on
Emerging Threats,
Cybersecurity,
Science and
Technology.  

The current status of the Senate version of the Bill, SB 1959, is unclear.

(1) http://ccrjustice.org/learn-more/faqs/factsheet%3A-violent-radicalization-and-homegrown-terrorism-prevention-act-2007

(2) http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A03E2DF103FF930A35757C0A962958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all


(3) http://www.lofgrenforcongress.com/node/46







_________________________________________________________________
Send e-mail anywhere. No map, no compass.
http://windowslive.com/oneline/hotmail?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_hotmail_acq_anywhere_122008
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.cagreens.org/pipermail/sosfbay-discuss_lists.cagreens.org/attachments/20090105/bad7ebeb/attachment.html>