Once again, Bush demonstrates his love of liberty:
"The definition is just so broad that it really includes anyone who wants to post something to the Web," Rachel Brand, assistant attorney general in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Policy, said at a House Judiciary Committee hearing here. She also argued it would protect "a terrorist operative who videotaped a message from a terrorist leader threatening attacks on Americans."
And this is a problem for... what constitutional reason? In the case that they try to use to garner sympathy, the "terrorist operative" would already have ample reason to hide behind the fifth amendment's protection against self-incrimination. With the way that things are going today, anyone involved in a terrorist group would have to be insane to cooperate in a court of law if the fifth amendment provided all of the protection they would need to foil the prosecution. That is what this example presumes. It presumes the ability of the federal government to detain people indefinitely, until out of desperation, they turn over their sources, something that the Constitution does not allow on American soil.
This objection by the Bush Administration doesn't even make sense because the terrorist groups that are facing off against our government are doing so overseas. That is also where their propaganda videos are created. Presumably, any propagandist we capture overseas is already an enemy combatant. It is clear that the objection to this law has nothing to do with capturing the propagandists who record in Islamic countries, but that it would provide real protections to American citizens from prosecutions. Presumably, anyone videotaping a terrorist leader on American soil would also have committed other crimes. It shouldn't be hard for law enforcement to find charges that can stick, since they are so good at that in other types of criminal cases. I would assume that it would be as simple as filing conspiracy charges.
Remember the days when you only ran afoul of the law by committing an actual crime? Yeah, that was awesome.
That was before my time. I became aware of politics during the Clinton years. I lost what little political innocence I had left when Bush's true intentions came to light around the time he pushed through the USA PATRIOT Act.
Damn, you're right on. Glad I came across this blog.