Follow the center for public integrity link given in the second post on this thread. The draft law is a 12MB download.
I presume they will Expatriate people whereever the hell they want. Just look at what they did to Maher Arar ( http://cbc.ca/storyview/CBC/2002/10/16/arar021016 ) (Best I can tell, Maher Arar “knew” – was not friends, was not business partners – a guy who may or may not have had ties to Al Queda. The U.S. Government had no proof Maher Arar did anything wrong. This really annoyed the U.S. Government, so after pulling him off a plane where he was making a connecting flight in JFK from Tunisia to Montreal, they decided to “expatriate” him, not to Tunisia, where he was comming from, not to Canada, where he holds citizenship, but Syria, which he fled from as a child. As a result, the Canadian government issued a travel advisory warning to Canadian citizens traveling through the United States ( http://www.cnn.com/2002/TRAVEL/10/30/canada.us.travel/ ). Last I heard, Maher Arar was rotting away in a Syrian Prison.
Did I mention Worst. Administration. Ever.
So Pencil Pusher…it would appear that if this not actually proposed legislation passed, and if shein fein were designated a terrorist organization, and if one joined shein fein with the intent to relinquish his nationality then one could, indeed, lose one’s citizenship.
So, the jack-booted thugs break down your door, haul you away and put you in front of …what? an INS judge? a military tribunal?.. claiming that your intent can be inferred from your actions. You protest, but, but I love this country (well, you thought you did).
Is this your signature on this Shen Fein membership card?
Well, yes.
There it is, your honor, don’t believe his terrorist lies.
Wait, don’t I get an attorney?
Sorry, only American Citizens have a right to counsel.
But, but, I’ve never been outside this country before.
Don’t worry, we have reached an agreement with the Syrian government, they will put all of our deportees in jail for us, no questions asked.
Not quite, zigaretten Close, but no cigar (ha!) One can also lose one’s citizenship if it is decided that one’s behavior implies an intent to reliquish one’s nationality, which I take to mean if one’s behavior is “disloyal”. As determined by the proper authorities, of course. Someone like, oh, say, the Attorney General.
Somebody leaked this. Somebody with solid brass cojones. May the good Lord bless him/her all the days of his/her life. I dont want to know the name, I want him/her to get away scot free. But we should put up a Statue of the Unknown Snitch, in honor of a real American! J’ais vous salut!!
Notices that the major news outlets have not picked up on this. Control the media and you control the country. Well…it’s actually control the money. But the media works too.
What upsets me about all this is that it is as though people just wait for the right moment to launch an assault on the average person’s basic rights. Imagine that. Did constitutional rights really enable the September 11 hijackers? No, not really. They had few rights under the old regime. Only bureaucratic malaise prevented the CIA and FBI from catching them. They had to ignore warnings from their own field agents.
So, in light of all this, they propose to attack the constitutional rights of suspects on every level and to carve a new gaping set of exceptions in the law for “terrorism.” Square hole, meet giant round peg.
I have the firm belief that Bush & Co. wanted to do this all along. The irony is 911 gave them the hook to actually get this crap passed (PATRIOT Act I) and now this draft legislation.
Are you refering to something “new” or to provision 7 in the current law: "committing an act of treason or other seditious act specified in the statute.”
Both require an “intent to relinquish one’s nationality.”
I agree with you that we have some changes here and I’m not going to pretend that I understand exactly what these changes are. (IANAL)
Under the current law the state appears to be required to prove that the “act” was voluntary. But I’m not certain about the “intent to relinquish” part. Pencil Pusher’s quote says that the state can “infer” the intent from the “act,” but doesn’t address the question of who has to prove what or what standard of proof is required. (I was surprised by that “preponderance of the evidence” bit.)
Duckster…I’m just catching you on preview so I read a little fast, but I don’t see any disagreement between our cites.
Here’s a little more from the New York Law Journal…
So…this suggests, to me at least, that the state can already infer one’s intent from one’s acts. But Vance v. Terrazas dates to 1980, so something may have changed since then.
The story of Maher Arar is a true and awful one, but you are confusing expatriation in the sense of physical removal from the U.S. with expatriation in the sense of losing one’s U.S. citizenship.
However, they are definitely related issues, and both provide evidence of the current administration’s “might makes right, and we can do whatever we want if we can disguise our actions with even the thinnest veneer of self-defense.”
Too bad the attorney general is appointed by the executive branch. I wish the AG was another check on the powers of the powers that be. Because no matter what unholy crap is enforced it is more or less legal until it is ruled otherwise through the judicial process. We just have to count on the grace and goodwill of our executive branch.
Maybe the Mail Order Militia has some good points.
Well, the groundwork has already been laid in the SCOTUS. There has been considerable blather emanating from the Gang of Five as to justifying the abrogation of individual rights in a time of crisis. Of course, the underlying assumption is that they’ll give 'em right back just as soon as the crisis is over. And the crisis will be over when they say its over.
Here is another source for information about Patriot Act II.
But, hey, this only applies to bad guys, right? If you don’t do things that displease Fuehrers Bush, Rumsfeld, or Ashcroft you have nothing to worry about, right?
MEBuckner, your “post” is complete twaddle. Do you want to make another feeble attempt?
Okay, I really don’t mean it – I am just trying to make a point. Sorry for the hijack, but how can something like the above, putting quotes around a word to indicate derision, bolding another word to punctuate an insult, and then continuing with a mocking tone be okay? Didn’t you read the above sentance and feel insulted (or, at least, that an insult was directed towards you)? What is the justification in publicly chastising one party in an exchange, and not the other who was clearly an instigator?
Or, are you stating your approval of the above tactics? Can I start deriding people by characterizing their “arguments” as lies with impunity?