If your objection is “who is the factfinder,” then your objection is no different regarding the actus reus or mens rea of the crime. An improper factfinder – one that does not safeguard the due process rights of the accused – is an improper factfinder whether it is making a finding on intent or making a finding on a physical act.
In any event, the criticism based on the substance of the charge is misplaced. For citizenship to be removed, intent to revoke must be shown; the prosecution has to show that. Your ire is more properly directed at procedural safeguards than at this specific offense as written – it’s a little like saying “the murder statute gives the prosecution too much discretion” when your concern should instead be directed at the rules of criminal procedure requiring a jury.
In any event, I think criticism here is a bit premature. This isn’t an actual proposal, you know; it’s a confidential memo. I bet administrations kick around all kinds of crazy shit behind closed doors – I really wonder what the first draft of Hillary’s health care plan looked like. I don’t think it’s too much to ask to wait until an actual proposal is made before criticisms start flying.
(And dear sweet Jesus are the boards slow tonight…)
But elucidator, for me at least, the crucial point, or at least a crucial point, is who makes “that adjudication” now? If this “new” legislation doesn’t change anything then that fact alters the whole nature of the debate.
And remember that people don’t just lose their citizenship for “crimes.” Go back and read that list of seven actions in my first post again. And consider that the actual purpose of that New York Law Review article was that many people who wanted to lose their citizenship for tax purposes were failing to do so because they weren’t performing one of those seven acts.
Anybody here remember the Alien and Sedition Acts passed during John Adams’ administration?
Patriot II is bad, no question, but it’s no worse than the Alien and Sedition Acts were. And I believe the Alien and Sedition Acts were deemed Unconstitutional.
I am assuming as the basis of this discussion that Mr. Moyers representation of the facts is essentially correct. He has availed himself of enough legal opinion that I am content. As a lawyer, naturally, you gravitate towards the finer points. As you say, intent to revoke must be shown. But to whom?
If, as you say, my ire is more correctly aimed at procedural questions, I hasten to point out that this proposition would nullify those procedures in advance. That Mr. Padilla is held without recourse to the procedures we would offer to the vilest murderer is repulsive. Do you suggest that this proposed amendment somehow ameliorates that? I think not, but if I am wrong, kindly advise me.
This point is underlined by Zig, who points out:
Just so. The “adjudication” flies in the face of what we are given to understand are the Constitutional protections of the accused, in that it lies entirely in that hands of the prosecutorial. Not only can the rights of a citizen be abrogated, but for good measure, citizenship itself may be nullified, at the discretion of the Gummint, and thus the accused doesn’t even have any rights to be violated.
Perhaps this is a petty point after the damage of the repulsively named “Patriot Act” has been done. Perhaps, if one is to be unjustly hanged, it hardly matter whether a tree is used or a proper gallows constructed. Perhaps, resistance is futile.
But if resistance is duty, and in this instance I believe that it is, it is never entirely petty. As Ghandhi is said to have remarked “It may well be that your actions have no real consequence. That does not relieve you of any responsibility.”
We can split hairs over possible interpretations all we want but if intent is the criterion, I think the clear intent of this proposed atrocity is to give the executive power to do just about whatever the executive thinks is justified in the matters covered by the law.
Checks and balances be damned! Who has time for such folderol when we might all be murdered in our beds tonight!
Ok, so an American citizen takes up arms with a terrorist organization, he can be stripped of his citizenship. Say that he is deported after that. So what? He’s no longer a citizen.
There is still no evidence whatsoever that American citizens would be deported,
Moderator’s Note: A reminder that any extended discussion of a moderator’s decisions belong in the Pit, not in Great Debates, in order to avoid hijacking the original thread.
Is calling something a “lie” a direct personal insult? It’s certainly a harsh characterization. Of course, claims that the statements of other posters are incorrect are normal and proper for Great Debates; heck, everytime someone posts a “Cite, please?”, there’s an implicit questioning of the possible veracity of the other poster’s statement. “Lie” adds an element that one believes the person making the statement is willfully making an untruthful statement (although there may be various secondary definitions which avoid or soften the implication of willful concealment of the truth).
On the other hand, “By the way, how do you manage to stuff your foot in your mouth with your head up your ass? Yoga?” is definitely crossing the line. “He did it too” is not a defense.
Any more discussion of this issue (as opposed to discussions of extensions of the “PATRIOT Act”) belongs in the Pit, not here.
It may have been a misstatement, but the end result is just that deporting a citizen would be a 2-step process instead of a one-step process.
I’m worried about the terrifying precedent of stripping citizenship that was lawfully gained, as well as the prospect of who might be classified as a terrorist and/or what kinds of actions might be deemed to be knowing provision of aid to terrorists.
Alternatively, an American citizen is accused erroneously of associating with a terrorist organization, he can be stripped of his citizenship over his objections and without his constitutional rights o a trial of his peers, based on the inference of the government agents. Say that he is deported after that. In this case, his lack of citizenship, while technically true, has been rendered falsely. He’s no longer a citizen, but only because it suits the government to pretend that he is not a citizen.
Your persistent accusations of “lies” simply reveals the extreme casuistry of your position.
Does the prospect of the state being able to strip citizenship for “joining or providing material support to” a terrorist organization strike you as worse than their ability to strip one’s citizenship for “committing an act of treason or other seditious act?” If so, why?
And if they the government were really determined to run roughshod over the rights of the people, couldn’t they already do so under this provision?
I’ll simply repeat again, I don’t see any evidence that this “new legislation” would change things as much as some people seem to fear.
I wonder what “acts inconststent with United States citizenship” means. Is this anything like being unamerican?
If I read this right, citizenship stripping would under these proposals be ok even for otherwise legal activities (i.e., you don’t seem to have actually take up arms: just claim a membership in a political wing of an otherwise violent group (say… the Army of God) which is not itself illegal).
That would certainly be quite useful for stripping and deporting those you have no real evidence against other than association.
Of course, we could get even more paranoid…
“To those who pit Americans against immigrants, and citizens against non-citizens; to those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty; my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists - for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America’s enemies, and pause to America’s friends. They encourage people of good will to remain silent in the face of evil.”
So, the Attorney General has now put us on notice: those who bemoan “phantoms of lost liberty” aid terrorists, and having now been told this by the AG, the man who would presumably be in charge of carrying out the proposed law, how can anyone deny that they acted without knowing that they were aiding terrorists? They were duly informed by the highest civil authority in the land.
And, scraping the bottom of the barrel even further… what if we took some popular conservative collumnists at their word?
Andrew Sullivan called peace protestors a “fifth collumn” (and then lamely tried to deny it meant what it means).
Michael Kelly: “The American pacifists, therefore, are on the side of future mass murders of Americans. They are objectively pro-terrorist. There is no way out of this reasoning…” (then, later:) “As President Bush said of nations: A war has been declared; you are either on one side or another. You are either for doing what is necessary to capture or kill those who control and fund and harbor the terrorists, or you are for not doing this. If you are for not doing this, you are for allowing the terrorists to continue their attacks on America.”
Ann Coulter famously accuses “liberals” of “Twenty years of treason.” (I still ponder… why only twenty years? Why leave out the Carter administration while you’re at it?)
Maybe this is a false dilemna, but it seems to me that either these people are full of it, or their arguments are correct (“there’s no way out of this reasoning”) and this means legal grounds for all sorts of new actions against the groups they charge as knowingly aiding terrorists or simply commiting treason.
Almost assuredly, these people are full of it. Q.E.D.?
—Well, it would suck to be that person. It also has nothing to do with the original claim that American citizens would be deported.—
I agree: your persecutors are falsely slinging the OLD definition of “American citizen” against you. Get with the times people!
The Trial by Franz Kafka is getting more real very day. And the possibility of secret arrests begins to resemble the situation in Chile (or was it Argentina?) who simply disappeared.
I’m reminded of an old Twilight Zone episode in which aliens landed in a peaceful and happy town and did a few dirty tricks. The townspeoplethen panicked and destroyed their own town.
I still can’t understand those who believe that if such powers are given to federal law enforment that they will be used only agains “those people.”