My friend, look at the Democratic Establshment.

Even if they won the 2008 $election, the Security-Industrial Complex would still be calling the shots.

But, such a realization is admittedly a thought crime.

No Hell below us
Above us, only sky

Have you noticed how the "enemy" in Iraq has gradually morphed from "terrorists" to "violent extremists" to "extremists"?

And what, you may ask, is the definition of "extremist"? (Good to know that either everybody on The Hill already knows, or that the Bush Court will happily decide, eh?)

I'd say "extremist" means anybody outside the bounds of normalized discourse, as defined by the Overton Window maintained so carefully by the Village.

Yet another instance of how the war on terror is really going to turn out to be a war on us (or perhaps, a war on the terror inspired in Our Betters at the thought of ever being held accountable for their crimes).

We. Are. Going. To. Die. We must restore hope in the world. We must bring forth a new way of living that can sustain the world. Or else it is not just us who will die but everyone. What have we got to lose? Go forth and Fight!—Xan

How did this obvious fascist bill get thru congress without ever even being heard of by the American people? Was it sneaked thru as an add-on?
Why in the hell would congress pass this kind of garbage?
Somebody PLEASE explain this to me.

The Library of Congress THOMAS site for HR 1955 is here.

This thing started out sometime last spring, after a report or a hearing or an article or something about how domestic counterterrorism was being shortchanged for a foreign focus, and what domestic work was being done was focused entirely on, oh, islamoarabisticmiddleeasternish immigrant types. The very real, ongoing threat from our own homegrown citizens, the kind of terrorism done by clean-cut all-American types like Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols and Ted Kaczynski and Eric Rudolph et al, wasn’t getting watched the way it should be. The point was to set up some sort of organization to focus on domestic threats that would be independent of the existing hierarchy, to ensure that the money and people wouldn’t again be siphoned off to the foreign-focus effort.

Harman jumped all over it, she’s on a campaign to get her chair back after the next election by being busy, busy, busy (she has one bill kicking around committees about energy savings with light bulbs, please), and this is her kind of thing. As it got bounced around the idea moved in the direction of trying to establish proactive, prospective assessment of risk patterns, of behaviors and rhetoric that might tip off in advance the actors who could be actively planning violent activities. There’s precious little hard evidence that this is systematically possible, and an academic approach was settled on to try and sort it out.

An additional objective was to meld into this bill a clear statement of investigatory limits and constitutional rights guarantees, in part to counter the shortcomings of the Patriot and FISA acts. To get this thing to the floor Harmon had to satisfy the desires of the right to attack, rather than react to, terrorist threats AND the constitutional civil liberties concerns from the left. The exact wording of the civil rights and liberties section from the bill as delivered to the Senate is:

`SEC. 899F. PROTECTING CIVIL RIGHTS AND CIVIL LIBERTIES WHILE PREVENTING IDEOLOGICALLY BASED VIOLENCE AND HOMEGROWN TERRORISM.

`(a) In General- The Department of Homeland Security's efforts to prevent ideologically based violence and homegrown terrorism as described herein shall not violate the constitutional rights, civil rights, or civil liberties of United States citizens or lawful permanent residents.

Any bill that appeals to everyone is likely to have some fuzziness. This bill is somewhat fuzzy about terms describing what sort of persons would be targeted, and that is a reasonable cause for some concern. They drafters settled on defining some new ones because the idea is to get to these folks before they actually commit any terrorist acts. I’m not sure what a better terms might be – Whackjob? Nutter? Pre-Terrorist? Much of this behavior is new enough that there are neither societal nor legal terms to fit. Here’s what the bill defines:

`(2) VIOLENT RADICALIZATION- The term `violent radicalization' means the process of adopting or promoting an extremist belief system for the purpose of facilitating ideologically based violence to advance political, religious, or social change.

`(3) HOMEGROWN TERRORISM- The term `homegrown terrorism' means the use, planned use, or threatened use, of force or violence by a group or individual born, raised, or based and operating primarily within the United States or any possession of the United States to intimidate or coerce the United States government, the civilian population of the United States, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.

`(4) IDEOLOGICALLY BASED VIOLENCE- The term `ideologically based violence' means the use, planned use, or threatened use of force or violence by a group or individual to promote the group or individual's political, religious, or social beliefs.

All of these terms hinge on violence, actual, planned or threatened. If there’s a way to anticipate or interdict violence on the order of McVeigh and Rudolph while not interfering with the right of the rest of us to be rude, shrill, forthright and harsh in our criticism of the government and public officials and anything else we feel like, well, that would be a good thing. As Woody cited, the vote In the House was 404-6. The No votes were (D) Abercrombie, Costello & Kucinich, (R) Duncan, Flake & Rohrabacher, an interesting assortment.

A skeptical but rational discussion by Lindsay Beyerstein (Majikthise) is at In These Times, including an interview with Rep. Harman and several others.

The bill establishes a university think tank and a mechanism for gathering some information. It doesn’t specify crimes or punishments. It does call for the universal protection of civil rights and liberties for US citizens and legal residents. The goals seem desirable, and the scope limited. What about this bill is upsetting, exactly?

since it seems typical of Congress and many Americans who myopically discard the Constitution.

...If there’s a way to anticipate or interdict violence on the order of McVeigh and Rudolph while not interfering with the right of the rest of us to be rude, shrill, forthright and harsh in our criticism of the government and public officials and anything else we feel like, well, that would be a good thing.

So the police state would never abuse their privilidges over this kind of bill, huh?

They would never create a slippery slope condition either.

Preemptive stikes against homeland extremists that could plan violence becomes a good thing too. Even "lone wolf" types, no? Because isolated extremism is the most dangerous kind.

There are already laws that target people who seriously plan violence.

This simply puts people like us and potentially any political enemies of the system under the microscope and potentially in prison for simply blowing off steam.

If you can't see the problem in that, perhaps you should examine Pakistan right now and become familiar with the kind of society laws like this will inevitably produce.

No Hell below us
Above us, only sky

and they neither like nor trust me, i can tell. Measures like this one make that abundantly clear...

so i am charry about giving them more power to surveille me, to monitor me, to threaten me, no matter how fine are their putative motives, or how pure their intentions.
Cuz NOBODY is better at deluding themselves than the powerful seeking more power.

Me? A Quick Study, But A Slow Learner

But our world, and in particular the Village that rules it, is not sane. There is also no good reason to give the Bush administration an ounce more power, or an ounce more patronage opportunities. Envision a think tank set up at, oh, Pepperdine, staffed with Federalist Society lawyers parked there until the next Dick Cheney brings them back into office, and with links to, oh, the Christian Embassy. That strikes me as exactly the kind of apparatus that the Republicans would set up, and if you think that their targets will have anything to do with McVeigh et al, you're dreaming. Or, to use your word, not "reasonable." We know the playbook, by now, surely?

And I don't have much more faith in Hillary. The rest of 'em I have somewhat more faith in.

The word "extremist" is a very, very slippery one. "Liberal extremist" is already coin of the realm in the wackosphere.

They've been calling us traitors for thirty years. It won't stop. They'll act on that belief if they can. Until I'm satisfied this law can't be perverted to that use, I could never support it.

We. Are. Going. To. Die. We must restore hope in the world. We must bring forth a new way of living that can sustain the world. Or else it is not just us who will die but everyone. What have we got to lose? Go forth and Fight!—Xan

I believe passing HR 1955, or any bill that further enhances the power of the government, at this time is a bad idea. All actual crimes of violence are already illegal. In addition, the level of so-called homegrown terrorism is effectively zero, except for the Bush administration along with its congressional enablers and supporting corporate media, who fit the HR 1955 definition perfectly:

‘(3) HOMEGROWN TERRORISM- The term ‘homegrown terrorism’ means the use, planned use, or threatened use, of force or violence by a group or individual born, raised, or based and operating primarily within the United States or any possession of the United States to intimidate or coerce the United States government, the civilian population of the United States, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.

The real danger of radical violence is from the government itself:

http://www.nota.org/NSPD-51/NSPD-51NationalEmergency.htm

Blackwater is coming home from Iraq in January.

There's a whole security-industrial complex that thinks even you are extreme in your views, bringiton, and would love to "prove" it.

With waterboarding, more than likely, to faciliate your confession to crimes of violence against the state.

All it takes is your acquiescence and the co-operation of the sonderkommandos you trust, like DiFi and ChuShu.

No Hell below us
Above us, only sky

Whenever have I said anything nice about DiFi? For the record, for the umpteenth time, don't like her, don't trust her, don't approve of her, wish she were not there and we had someone actually progressive instead. Please don't accuse me of things that aren't true. Schumer I don't know, seems a bit slippery to me and with this AG thing he is disgustingly, ah, tortured in his reasoning, but DiFi is a tool and always has been. Its the Eastern MSM that keeps calling her a liberal, she isn't and never was.

Thanks for the warning about the Man seeing me as an extremist, but I already know that. I'll put my liberal street cred, and my FBI file, up against yours any day, yours and Woody's put together. I'm not ignorant, or stupid, or lazy, or complacent, or a tool of the Corporatists. I also don't jump up in fright everytime somebody says "law".

My beef here is that by the left lashing out at everybody not just perfect the real malefactors escape some of the heat they should be getting, and the movement to counteract them is diminished in its strength.

The enemy in the Democratic Party is in people like DiFi and Lieberman and Hoyer, complete sellouts who would slit your throat, and mine, for a dime. Reid and Pelosi aren't perfect, and they aren't as progressive as I'd like, but they aren't my enemies - nor IMHO are they yours.

Is this really the time to be giving the government more power? (Except for socialistic stuff...) And is it really the time to be enabling more of the winger apparat to get funding? (See comment on Federalist Society, above.) I don't think so.

We need some kind of inventory or stocktaking on programs like this. The size of the vote in favor doesn't make it seem innocuous to me at all; I remember the Iraq vote, and lots of crazy stuff gets done by universal acclamation.

As far as "the left" "lashing out" -- when they fuck up, I chew on their ankles. If the Dems have a problem with that, they can stop fucking up. And if my views, or views like mine, bubble up to the A-listers--as, I will remind you, they did on both surveillance and Constitutional government -- then so much the better. If they don't, no harm, no foul.

We. Are. Going. To. Die. We must restore hope in the world. We must bring forth a new way of living that can sustain the world. Or else it is not just us who will die but everyone. What have we got to lose? Go forth and Fight!—Xan

that the provision he cites could - at a stretch -apply to the Bush regime itself, and I did see somewhere a frothing wingnut complaining that this whole bill was a sly attempt by the VLeftWC to criminalize and imprison Bush et al. Maybe this is some sort of a magic mirror bill, look into it and see your own deepest fears.

"All actual crimes of violence are already illegal." Yes they are, and this bill does nothing one way or the other to change that, nor does it make anything newly illegal. So what's your point?

"the level of so-called homegrown terrorism is effectively zero" What world are you living in? Not this one. If you include gang operations, which are determinedly terrorist in their approach, then terrorist acts and the enterprises that are supported by them are far and away the largest source of crime in this country. If you limit it to people like Rudolph and McVeigh and the organizations that supported them, the threat to life and limb and social tranquility is still far, far larger than any threat from al Quaida or the like.

"any bill that further enhances the power of the government, at this time is a bad idea" Probably, almost certainly, so. However, this bill doesn't enhance the power of the government over any citizen - not at all. So what's your point? That there should be no legislative action to try and deal with anything, just sit on our butts until Bush leaves office?

Content-based analysis, not fearmongering, please.

Bringiton, I think you really do have a problem grappling with threads like this one.

Let me try to diagnose by way of a parable. Back when Homicide was still on TV, Pembleton (Andre Braugher) and Bayliss (Kyle Secor) are driving through Baltimore down a street of row houses. Paraphrasing:

Pembleton asks Bayliss: "What do you see?"

Bayliss answers: "A stoop. Some cars. A mailbox."

Pembleton: "No. You see a door you can bust open, a car you can hotwire, and a mailbox to knock over because it's the first and Social Security checks might be in the mail."

Meaning: If you want to be a cop, you've got to see the street with the eyes of a criminal.

Meaning: I don't think you've internalized the notion that when we write "the criminal Bush regime," we're not speaking metaphorically. We are speaking literally, and, I would argue, with good reason. (This is the point behind my, alas, failed renaming of the theory of the unitary executive as "the extremely Constitutional Theory Of We Get To Do Whatever The Fuck We Want.")

So, with HR 1955, you, like Bayliss, see "a car." Kelley (and I think most of us) see "a car the administration will hotwire and steal."

Of course, in the individual case, we may be too foily; that can happen. But overall, if there's one thing we can be sure of, it's that we are almost never cynical enough. The Republicans will always surprise us by lowering the bar. We know the playbook by now.

Now, as to this particular law, these are my two concerns:

1. It gives the term "extremism" a foothold in a statute (and from there, in case law). As I indicate above, it's a slippery term. Please remember that Bush uses the term to label the enemy in Iraq; but the Conservative movement uses it to label their enemies here at home. (And why shouldn't they? To them, it's all the same way.) That puts you and I and all those like us squarely in the crosshairs of this act, in the best case, as objects of study, and in the worse case, as subjects of tyranny.

2. It funds our enemies and the enemies of the Constitution. As I wrote above:

Envision a think tank set up at, oh, Pepperdine, staffed with Federalist Society lawyers parked there until the next Dick Cheney brings them back into office, and with links to, oh, the Christian Embassy. That strikes me as exactly the kind of apparatus that the Republicans would set up, and if you think that their targets will have anything to do with McVeigh et al, you’re dreaming.

Sure, the idea of this bill as the thin end of the wedge for, oh, a RICO for thought-crime may seem a little.... Extreme?

Not if you think like a criminal, it isn't. As soon as you model the Bush regime as a criminal enterprise that uses the law to effect desired outcomes, everything falls into place. Eh?

NOTE It's better to sit on our butts than to give the Conservative movement more power, yes. Because any power we give them will be abused and used against us. This is why I've always consistently advocated for the Dems to focus on first on oversight, and only then on legislation. Alas, they have not followed my advice....

We. Are. Going. To. Die. We must restore hope in the world. We must bring forth a new way of living that can sustain the world. Or else it is not just us who will die but everyone. What have we got to lose? Go forth and Fight!—Xan

To reiterate:

But, if you couple this bill, and its companion in the Senate, with the National Security Directives the Bushevik Cabal signed into action last summer (NSID 51?), making the president the sole authority and power in the case of a national emergency, it’s hard to escape the feeling that these folks aren’t really planning to leave in Jan, ’09. This measure would be an exceptionally effective way to repress resistance to such an outcome…

Me? A Quick Study, But A Slow Learner

on topic - go read this by: Naomi Klein

I have argued that in the closing stages of a `fascist shift’, events cascade. I am hearing about them, even across the globe. Here in Australia I hear from the nation’s best-know feminist activist, and former adviser to Paul Keating, Anne Summers, who was also at the time this took place Chair of the Board of Greenpeace International. Summers was detained by armed agents for FIVE HOURS each way in LAX on her way to and from the annual meeting of the board of Greenpeace International in Mexico, and her green card was taken away from her. `I want to call a lawyer’, she told TSA agents. `Ma’am, you do not have a right to call an attorney,’ they replied. `You have not entered the United States.’

Apparently a section of LAX just beyond the security line is asserted to be `not in the United States’ — though it is squarely inside the airport — so the laws of the US do not apply.

*

Missed this one:

Lambert: "when they fuck up, I chew on their ankles. If the Dems have a problem with that, they can stop fucking up."

Absolutely agreed, supported, endorsed, appreciated, please do, every time. Just so we're clear on that.

But....

Sometimes, and I'm not singling out any one person, there appears a tendency to move from "You fucked up" to "You're a fuck-up" and then to "You're a malicious fuck-up." When all are true, as with Bush et al, no problem, skip right to Descriptor C. When instead what is true is Descriptor A, then using B is demeaning and damaging, and C is ultimately alienating.

Truthful, constructive criticism, however blunt, always good;

Unfounded condemnation of intent or character, always hurtful and usually destructive. That's what I meant by lashing out.

Hope that's clear.

Think of us as verbal Herblocks. What is Nixon, after all, without the five-o-clock shadow?

A taxonomy of personal vituperation might look something like this:

1. The dull, the equivalent of "running dogs of capitalism" in Marxist literature. Nobody can take this seriously, because the language is bad. One attempts to rise above.

2. The counterproductive, as calling somebody from the military a babykiller in the midst of an otherwise informative thread.

3. The painful but correct, as when some call out, say, me-the-WASP on participation in a racist system, which is why I now check Jack and Jill and Field Negro regularly (just doing my bit).

4. The hygienic, as in my recent interaction with Ashley.

5. The brand-destroying, where any Conservative is "fair game" ("sluttish, pouty-lipped autocoprophagic concentration camp advocate and stalker of 12-year-olds Michelle Malkin")

6. The head-slap, where one seeks to get an individual Democrat's attention. (This is quite different from #5; this blog was waged a long and reasonably successful war to destroy the Conservative brand by associating it--justly--with every form of abuse of power, from torture through sexual molestation through abuse of animals. Any personal attacks on Democrats are love taps by comparison with this sustained campaign. For DINOs like Lieberman (I-Likud), of course, #6 turned into #5.)

The point, I guess, is that your dichotomy is not well structured. You contrast "truthful constructive criticism" with "unfounded condemnation of intent of character," but you leave out "truthful, well-founded condemnation of intent or character." And, for good or ill, here, the only possible test of intent or character is sustained posting over a long period of time. It's the other side of "on the Internet nobody knows you're a dog."

The larger point is that this blog is among other things a laboratory for the invention of language designed to destroy the authority of Our Betters in the Conservative ascendancy, as well as their enablers, wherever found. You could call this a species of framing, but it's a lot closer to the lizard backbrain--disgusted, fearful, shocked, laughing, even joyful--than Lakoff and his ilk. (It's excellent, for example, that we can tag Romney with having strapped his dog, Seamus, to the top of his car, and that Seamus ended up crapping all over the car because Romney was too driven to stop. Not only is it true, it's totally emblematic of the Conservative project, and--not be coincidence, I would say--fits into the animal abuse aspect of #5.)

Alas, rhetoric ain't beanbag, and sometimes elbows get thrown. Besides vituperation that falls into categories #1 and #2, my only profound objections are to language that is both highly unlikely to propagate and makes the blog look bad ("Puke" for Republican) and to stupid arguments that one must waste precious non-billable hours refuting--both of which do actually occur on the left, although the left has not developed institutions for funding them. Both get the lab dirty, and make it hard to get the real work done.

We. Are. Going. To. Die. We must restore hope in the world. We must bring forth a new way of living that can sustain the world. Or else it is not just us who will die but everyone. What have we got to lose? Go forth and Fight!—Xan

Language is the primary tool the fascists have to try to control us with.

If we can generate constructs and concepts that enlighten others we're using this cyberspace for what Big Al invented it for.

We're creating a matrix of resistance.

Yes, it does sometimes make you stretch a neuron or two. There are more than a few posts I've had to give some serious thought. But it seems there are occasionally concepts vocalized here first that spread all over.

I've been muttering "Chaos is the plan" idea ever since 9/11. Whether that particular meme landed in Naomi Klein's consciousness before or after it landed in mine is irrelevant. That I can know I've crystallized it and amplified it for some makes it worth something, if it's only the worth of fertilizer.

It's something real, and it makes the fields greener.

No Hell below us
Above us, only sky