In this year of our Lord, 2011, we have a "new" Sedition Act --
Thanks to McCain, Graham, Levin of the Senate (and despite a terrific speech for OUR rights under the Constitution from Senator Rand Paul) we now have a new, updated Sedition Act flying under the guise of the National Defense Authorization Act, fiscal year 2012, that gives our erstwhile "acting" president Barack Hussein Obama unlimited discretionary powers to deploy OUR military against OUR citizens. All under the fears and threats of terrorist attacks. Barack can now hold and detain ANY citizen of the USA anywhere in the world including here in the good old USA for suspected terrorist or anti-government activities. Suspected. That's the key word. In effect, all our judicial rights under the law are now in the hands of . . . you guessed, it: Barack Hussein Obama and/or Eric Holden.
McCain. What were you thinking? Lindsey. Say it ain't so. And, Carl Levin big old Liberal Democrat that you are; shame on you. Shame on all of you. All of you must have slept through American History 101:
The Espionage Act of 1917 made it a crime to interfere with the war effort or with military recruitment or to aid a nation at war with the U.S. Wartime violence on the part of local groups of citizens, sometimes mobs or vigilantes, persuaded some lawmakers that the law was inadequate. In their view the country was witnessing instances public disorder that represented the public's own attempt to punish unpopular speech in light of the government's inability to do so. Amendments to enhance the government's authority under the Espionage Act would prevent mobs from doing what the government could not.
The Sedition Act of 1918 enacted May 16, 1918) was an Act of 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. One historian of American civil liberties has called it "the nation's most extreme anti-speech legislation."
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 5 to 20 years. 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." It was repealed on December 13, 1920
One historian reports that "some fifteen hundred prosecutions were carried out under the Espionage and Sedition Acts, resulting in more than a thousand convictions." 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.
There was considerable opposition in the Senate, almost entirely from Republicans like Henry Cabot Lodge and Hiram Johnson, the former speaking in defense of free speech and the latter assailing the administration for failing to use the laws already in place. Former president Theodore Roosevelt voiced opposition as well. President Wilson and his Attorney General Thomas Watt Gregory viewed the bill as a political compromise. They hoped to avoid hearings that would embarrass the administration for its failure to prosecute offensive speech. They also feared other proposals that would have withdrawn prosecutorial authority from the Justice Department and placed it in the War Department, creating a sort of civilian court-martial process of questionable constitutionality. The final vote for passage was 48 to 26 in the Senate and 293 to 1 in the House of Representatives with the sole dissenting vote in the House cast by Meyer London of New York.
With the act rendered inoperative by the end of hostilities, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer waged a public campaign, not unrelated to his own campaign for the Democratic nomination for president, in favor of a peacetime version of the Sedition Act. He sent a circular outlining his rationale to newspaper editors in January 1919, citing the dangerous foreign-language press and radical attempts to create unrest in African American communities. He testified in favor of such a law in early June 1920. At one point Congress had more than 70 versions of proposed language and amendments for such a bill, but it took no action on the controversial proposal during the campaign year of 1920. After a court decision later in June cited Palmer's anti-radical campaign for its abuse of power, the conservative Christian Science Monitor found itself unable to support him any more, writing on June 25, 1920: "What appeared to be an excess of radicalism...was certainly met with...an excess of suppression." The Alien Registration Act of 1940 was the first American peacetime sedition act.
The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Sedition Act in Abrams v. United States (1919) Subsequent Supreme Court decisions, such as Brandenburg v. Ohio in 1969, make it unlikely that similar legislation would be considered constitutional today.
Congress repealed the Sedition Act on December 13, 1920.
Please take the time to watch the entire video of the Rand Paul address to the Senate trying to block the McCain amendment which I find very very scary. This not only bends the Constitution, it breaks it. Please write and call your representatives. Your very freedom is at stake, believe me, this is only the beginning. Once this train gets rolling, we won't be able to stop it.
Congress needs to repeal the Sedition Act of 2012
(AKA The McCain amendment to NDDA 2012)
Thanks to Gary who alerted me to this. Check out his site, it's great.
http://www.freedomisknowledge.com/meltingpot/usatforkintheroad.html
