Saul Friedman: The Sleeping Press and the Coming of the Thought Police
from Nieman Watchdog
Just the title of the bill making its way through the Congress ought to frighten hell out of us or at least prompt a reporter worth his or her computer to find out more: “The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism and Prevention Act.” Yet so far no one in the Main Stream Media–newspapers, television or magazines–has told us about it.
Why not? An alert friend who called my attention to the bill and who inquired of the Washington Post, was told that the bill passed so easily in the House–404-6 on October 23 –that congressional reporters thought it was non-controversial and therefore no story. Well, a senator friend of mine once told me to watch out for legislation with such lop-sided support–it either means nothing or it could get us into a war.
In the case of the “Terrorism Prevention Act,” a few bloggers and scholars (see this Google listing), writing for online publications liken it to “Alien and Sedition Acts.” I would compare it to the notorious Smith Act, which put people in jail for “teaching and advocating” the violent overthrow of the government, despite the words of the Declaration of Independence and Thomas Jefferson’s view that rebellion now and then may be a good thing.
But I digress. The bill’s chief sponsor is Rep. Jane Harman, a California Democrat who was the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee and such a good friend of the intelligence agencies, that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi denied her the chairmanship of the committee. Harman, by the way, learned more than a year ago that the CIA had destroyed its interrogation tapes, but she failed to make that public.
Her bill, written in part by the intelligence agencies and the Department of Homeland Security, would create a ten-member National Commission appointed by the president, the Secretary of Homeland Security and lawmakers of both houses to hold hearings, investigate and “examine and report upon the facts and causes of violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence in the United States, including United States connections to non-United States persons and networks, violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism…and other faces of the phenomena of violent radicalization…and ideologically based violence that the commission deems important.”
(Continued here.)
Just the title of the bill making its way through the Congress ought to frighten hell out of us or at least prompt a reporter worth his or her computer to find out more: “The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism and Prevention Act.” Yet so far no one in the Main Stream Media–newspapers, television or magazines–has told us about it.
Why not? An alert friend who called my attention to the bill and who inquired of the Washington Post, was told that the bill passed so easily in the House–404-6 on October 23 –that congressional reporters thought it was non-controversial and therefore no story. Well, a senator friend of mine once told me to watch out for legislation with such lop-sided support–it either means nothing or it could get us into a war.
In the case of the “Terrorism Prevention Act,” a few bloggers and scholars (see this Google listing), writing for online publications liken it to “Alien and Sedition Acts.” I would compare it to the notorious Smith Act, which put people in jail for “teaching and advocating” the violent overthrow of the government, despite the words of the Declaration of Independence and Thomas Jefferson’s view that rebellion now and then may be a good thing.
But I digress. The bill’s chief sponsor is Rep. Jane Harman, a California Democrat who was the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee and such a good friend of the intelligence agencies, that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi denied her the chairmanship of the committee. Harman, by the way, learned more than a year ago that the CIA had destroyed its interrogation tapes, but she failed to make that public.
Her bill, written in part by the intelligence agencies and the Department of Homeland Security, would create a ten-member National Commission appointed by the president, the Secretary of Homeland Security and lawmakers of both houses to hold hearings, investigate and “examine and report upon the facts and causes of violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence in the United States, including United States connections to non-United States persons and networks, violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism…and other faces of the phenomena of violent radicalization…and ideologically based violence that the commission deems important.”
(Continued here.)
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