Thought Police in the Wings

Have you ever heard of the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act? I didn't think you had. The US House of Representatives passed this looney-tunes bill in October last year, by a vote--are you ready for this?--405 to 6. There's half a dozen heroes for you.

The Senate was considering a similar bill, but it appears that the it never came to the floor. You can read all about what this legislation proposes to do in this blog post, or you can click on the first link above and read the text of the bill itself. So I'm not going to go into it in any depth. What we're talking about here is another in the avalanche of bills "to make us safe" at the expense of the Bill of Rights.

I'll just list the salient points for you:

• Congressional commission set up to hold hearings across the country on home-grown terrorists.
• The same commission gets to decide what groups are homegrown terrorists . . .
  
• . . . and propose legislation to take punitive action against such groups and individuals.
• After 15 months a permanent Center for Excellence in this subject will be set up to continue the vigilence.
  

Everything in this bill is vaguely defined, but it's clear the proposed commission will decide who among us is a terrorist and who is not. On the basis of what these people say. Doesn't this sound like just what we need?