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vincentML -> RE: Police foil 'active terror plot (4/28/2017 2:35:00 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Real0ne
quote:
ORIGINAL: vincentML
Yeah well, no.
The United States does have laws against conspiracy to commit a crime, so basically everything in this thread is bullshit except for Wicked and Greta who are always delightful company. [:)]
the only thing that is bullshit in this thread is using terror to replace an actual crime and your fucked up conflation between having a law versus how that law is applied.
What is the difference between terror and an actual crime?
Is it terror or an actual crime if one shouts "boo" behind a mask of Freddy Krueger on a Halloween night? We would agree right that it was neither?
But suppose you and your friend got on a plane, you tried to light your trainers with a match while your friend chanted in Arabaic on a prayer rug in the middle of the isle 20,000 feet in the air. Would that be terror or an actual crime or both? That might qualify as both don't you think?
Now consider the 1918 Sedition Act. You might think it was passed and signed by the Kaiser but, no, it was signed by Woodrow Wilson, who was about making the world safe for democracy.
The Sedition Act of 1918 (Pub.L. 65–150, 40 Stat. 553, enacted May 16, 1918) was an Act of the United States Congress that extended the Espionage Act of 1917 to cover a broader range of offenses, notably speech and the expression of opinion that cast the government or the war effort in a negative light or interfered with the sale of government bonds.[1] The Sedition Act of 1918 stated that people or countries cannot say negative things about the government or the war.
It forbade the use of "disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language" about the United States government, its flag, or its armed forces or that caused others to view the American government or its institutions with contempt. Those convicted under the act generally received sentences of imprisonment for five to 20 years.[2] The act also allowed the Postmaster General to refuse to deliver mail that met those same standards for punishable speech or opinion. It applied only to times "when the United States is in war." The U.S. was in a declared state of war at the time of passage, involved in the conflict at the time referred to as the Great War but generally later referred to as the First World War.[3] It was repealed on December 13, 1920.[4]
Though the legislation enacted in 1918 is commonly called the Sedition Act, it was actually a set of amendments to the Espionage Act.[5] Therefore, many studies of the Espionage Act and the Sedition Act find it difficult to report on the two "acts" separately. For example, one historian reports that "some fifteen hundred prosecutions were carried out under the Espionage and Sedition Acts, resulting in more than a thousand convictions."[6] Court decisions do not use the shorthand term Sedition Act, but the correct legal term for the law, the Espionage Act, whether as originally enacted or as amended in 1918.
Now that is pretty bad and shocking to an American but go back 120 years earlier:
The Alien & Sedition Acts 1798, passed ironically at the same time as the Bill of Rights Amendments were added to the Constitution
The Alien and Sedition Acts were four bills passed by the Federalist-dominated 5th United States Congress and signed into law by President John Adams in 1798.[1] They made it harder for an immigrant to become a citizen (Naturalization Act), allowed the president to imprison and deport non-citizens who were deemed dangerous (Alien Friends Act of 1798)[2] or who were from a hostile nation (Alien Enemy Act of 1798),[3] and criminalized making false statements that were critical of the federal government (Sedition Act of 1798).[4]
The Federalists argued that the bills strengthened national security during an undeclared naval war with France. Critics argued that they were primarily an attempt to suppress voters who disagreed with the Federalist party, and violated the right of freedom of speech in the First Amendment.[5]
Three of the acts were repealed after the Democratic-Republican party of Thomas Jefferson came to power. But the Alien Enemies Act remained in effect, was revised and codified in 1918 for use in World War I, and was used by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to imprison Japanese, German, and Italian aliens during World War II. Following cessation of hostilities, the act was used by President Harry S. Truman to continue to imprison, then deport, aliens of the formerly hostile nations. In 1948 the Supreme Court determined that presidential powers under the acts continued after cessation of hostilities until there was a peace treaty with the hostile nation. The revised Alien Enemies Act remains in effect today.
So, it is not correct to say the United States would avoid such draconian laws in the name of expedited security, or that we are lax in our defense, and sometimes for all his hysterical paranoid conspiracy theories, RO comes pretty close to the truth.
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