In these past few weeks, many have become enraged at the Arizona bill requiring all citizens to have their registration documents on them at all times, allowing police officers to make extensive checks for illegal immigrants. The reason this raised the ire of many is because it seems to violate the fourth amendment right of guard against unreasonable search and seizure.

Also, it promotes racial profiling because, of course, how would a police officer select who to search? To those whom are disgusted by the bill, I am sorry to say that it is nothing compared to the bill Joe Lieberman (I-Connecticut) proposed last week.

            This bill would take away the citizenship of anyone suspected of working within a foreign terrorist organization. If this happened, the government would be able to try them within a military commission as opposed to a jury of their peers. 

I’ve never been a fan of Lieberman. He is constantly hungry for some sort of political power. He has gone from running as Al Gore’s Vice Presidential candidate in 2000 to doing the nomination speech for John McCain (R-Arizona) at the Republican Nation Convention in 2008. Basically, it seems Lieberman will do anything to stay in the political spotlight – this bill being his most recent way to curry the favor of those in the string the terrorists by their ankles faction.

Frankly, I would be much less concerned with this bill if it was just a solo crusade by Lieberman. Unfortunately, that is not the case. McCain and congressman Peter King (R-New York) support the bill. It seems that none of these people are willing to step back and actually review what they are doing. This bill is an extraordinary measure of how far some are willing to give up our constitutional rights to fight “terrorism.”

What’s going on here is that certain people have decided to put safety ahead of civil rights, but does that make anyone safer? Let’s say this bill passes, and I hope to Mount Olympus it does not, and the government is allowed to remove the citizenship of suspected terrorists. This means they can just take these people, send them to Guantanamo or another one of the kangaroo courts and use torture, i.e., enhanced interrogation techniques, to get information which may or may not be correct. None of this in any way seems like it should or will work out.

Now, if the government can take away one’s citizenship rights for just being accused of terrorism what’s to stop higher-ups from accusing people they disagree with of terrorist activity and shipping them off to anywhere because they have no citizenship rights. They don’t have to be Mirandized. They won’t know what they are charged with (and surely will be up a proverbial creek with no paddle or end in sight). 

I don’t think this bill has a chance of being turned into law. However, the ideas that are behind this bill are still festering and still threatening to take away the freedoms American citizens have. If we continue down this path, terrorists will be the least of our problems.