Comments | wealhtheow: Re-instate HUAC!

wealhtheow

Re-instate HUAC!

Nov 22, 2007 10:14

Yet again, a California politician wants to crush your civil liberties and quash dissent. (And all but SIX members of the House do too.)

I'm thankful for what civil liberties I have left. Check in this time next year and the number will be yet smaller.

congress, hate, first amendment

Comments 8

spider88 November 22 2007, 19:10:21 UTC

Would it even be worth writing to our Senators at this point?

wealhtheow November 22 2007, 20:07:52 UTC

I'm not sure where the bill is right now and I'm too lazy at the moment to look it up, but if it hasn't passed the Senate, then yes, absolutely, it's worth it!

thewronghands November 22 2007, 20:08:32 UTC

I will anyway. Not Okay. Even if I lose, I want to have tried.

ilcylic November 22 2007, 19:18:44 UTC

Yes, I'm pretty sure those members of the House that voted for this are guilty of Unamerican Activities.

dreamword November 23 2007, 22:04:52 UTC

From the text of the bill:

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h110-1955

it doesn't look like the Commission has subpoena powers, so the comparisons to McCarthyism in the article you link to seems a little overblown.

Certainly seems unnecessary and a little scary to establish such a commission at all, but the commission's actual powers appear to be pretty limited. I'd like to think this is a well-intentioned attempt to spend some resources on understanding the causes of violence, rather than an attempt to suppress dissent.

wealhtheow November 23 2007, 22:16:15 UTC

Thank you for taking a look. So it's just a hero bill that won't really do anything. Great. (And it's not like there's nobody out there who knows about this kind of thing.)

I wonder what sort of "violent radicalization" they're thinking about. I just finished reading a book about the Abrams case (prosecution of anarchists and socialists under WWI-era Sedition Act), and it's making me skittish that people such as those prosecuted in Abrams and similar cases (advocating government overthrow/worker uprising) would be included.

dreamword November 23 2007, 22:33:19 UTC

Interesting question of how far a commission studying the advocacy of non-imminent violent uprising against the government could go in chilling such advocacy before it ran afoul of the First Amendment -- and whether, if such a chill was an inevitable byproduct of the study, whether the government would/should be prohibited from studying some topics.

wealhtheow November 23 2007, 22:40:26 UTC

Ooh, that is interesting. However, I much prefer overt study to covert study...