Posted on 10/23/2014 11:13:44 AM PDT by Kaslin
Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz doesn't trust Barack Obama to protect Americans against Ebola, defeat the Islamic State, oversee the IRS or revamp the health insurance system. He decries the expansion of federal power Obama has brought about. But Cruz wants to give him another power by letting him decide that some Americans will no longer be Americans.
That's the implication of the senator's Expatriate Terrorist Act, which would let the government go to court to revoke the citizenship of anyone who joins or aids a foreign terrorist group that targets Americans. Cruz thinks this step is necessary to prevent citizens who leave to fight for the Islamic State from returning to carry out "unspeakable acts of terror here at home."
It's not necessary, in strict point of fact. Federal law already makes it a crime to murder Americans and to provide material assistance to terrorist organizations. So anyone who becomes a terrorist for the Islamic State can be arrested and prosecuted and incarcerated for a long time.
John Walker Lindh, who gained infamy as "the American Taliban," is doing a 20-year sentence for fighting alongside our enemies in Afghanistan. As it happens, he remains a U.S. citizen. More recently, Americans have been arrested while trying to leave the U.S. to fight with al-Qaida.
But letting the federal government deprive Americans of their nationality is something that should give pause to anyone acquainted with the Constitution or history. In the bitter aftermath of World War II, a California native named Iva Toguri D'Aquino, accused of being the notorious "Tokyo Rose," was convicted of treason for doing propaganda broadcasts for Japan, sentenced to 10 years in prison and stripped of her citizenship.
Her conviction, historian Edwin Reischauer wrote, was the product of a public "under the influence of traditional racial prejudices and far from free of the anti-Japanese hatreds of the recent war." In 1977, President Gerald Ford acknowledged the injustice by pardoning D'Aquino and restoring her citizenship.
Cruz, who clerked for Chief Justice William Rehnquist and has argued cases before the Supreme Court, is well-acquainted with the Constitution. So he is guilty of deception, not ignorance, when he approvingly quotes Hillary Clinton's statement that working with foreign terrorist groups can be punished in this way because "United States citizenship is a privilege. It is not a right."
Actually, it is a right, affirmed in the Fourteenth Amendment, which says, "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and the states in which they reside." It does not say "unless..." The amendment provides no conditions under which a citizen may be deprived of citizenship.
In 1967, the Supreme Court barred the government from disinheriting one of its own for voting in an election in Israel. "We reject the idea," wrote Justice Hugo Black, that "Congress has any general power, express or implied, to take away an American citizen's citizenship without his assent."
Experts from across the political spectrum reject the legality of what Cruz wants to do. John Bellinger III, legal adviser for the National Security Council and the State Department under President George W. Bush, told me, "It would be very difficult under our Constitution to strip a U.S. national of citizenship; the government would have to show the U.S. national specifically intended to give up his citizenship."
University of Houston law professor Emily Berman, former counsel to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, concurs. "It is unconstitutional to take away an American's citizenship without her consent -- citizenship may be voluntarily relinquished, but not unilaterally stripped by the federal government," she said.
Powers of this kind are susceptible to abuse. "Material support" for terrorist groups, the Supreme Court has said, can include those who engage in mere speech -- even, notes the American Civil Liberties Union, "if their work is intended to promote peaceful, lawful objectives." Citizens wouldn't have to fire AK-47s to come under banishment.
As for those who do fire AK-47s, representatives of the U.S. government may kill them in Iraq or arrest them at a port of entry. Cruz's measure offers no additional deterrent or protection.
Giving additional power to the president is something to be done rarely, reluctantly and only when there is no good alternative. On any day he's not pushing the Expatriate Terrorist Act, Ted Cruz would tell you that.
Even their dogs,
Great idea! Let’s rush through some new laws that empower the government to render whole classes of people stateless at the stroke of a pen! We should do this NOW! Because we’re, um, you know, CONSERVATIVES!
What could go wrong?
Giving this kind of power to the state terrorizes me. Let’s strip Cruz of his citizenship.
What a dope.
That too
I don't know why not. I imagine Congress can declare war on whoever it wants.
Declaring a war doesn't create the war. It recognizes that you are at war, and puts everyone on notice that you will now do what it takes to finish it.
The enemy doesn't need to know you are at war, they already know they are at war with you. You are notifying your own citizens and allies.
If so, then such person automatically becomes an enemy combatant.
For me, before you can deny a citizen his citizenship as an enemy combatant, you need to have established that you are at war. Nothing fancy, just authorization to commence combat operations against a given country or group should do to put your own citizens on notice that supporting that group puts them at war with their own country.
Now, joining a terrorist group can get you prosecuted under various statutes as well as get you killed by a drone or SEAL team. But to remove someone's citizenship you need, I believe, that declaration.
No new laws needed. Use the existing laws for treason.
They get a day in court, which is more than Bam Bam and his drones are giving Americans overseas right now.
War has changed. We’re killing lots of people without a formal declaration these days.
Given that there have been more than a few PC definitions of domestic terrorist floating around that are purely political and directed at conservatives, I would say that assenting to this would turn out to be utter stupidity a few years down the road when it’s used against political enemies of the left.
There are ample means of detaining, punishing and even putting to death individuals who actually do make war on this country. Work within what we have. Don’t open the door to more tyranny.
Yep, according to Obama, Tea Partiers are “Terrorists”. Who gets to define “Terrorist”, that is the question.
I don' believe that's correct in that she was convicted of treason but was not stripped of citizenship. I'm not sure a natural born citizen can have their citizenship taken away.
On the other hand, entering or serving in the armed forces of a foreign state if that state is at war with the U.S. is considered an expatriating act and results in the forfiture of your citizenship, natural born or naturalized. Now we don't recognize ISIS as a soverign foreign state, but modifying the law to specify foreign state or recognized terrorist organization would accomplish the same thing and lead to loss of citizenship. Unfortunately it can't be retroactive.
I believe one of the first US Declarations of War was against the Barbary Pirates (of “shores of Tripoli” fame), and they would have been a non-state entity.
If a combatant does not adhere to the Laws of Land Warfare (wearing a distinctive uniform and being accountable to a recognized chain of command, for example), they are not eligible for the protections afforded by the Hague and Geneva conventions.
German soldiers captured during the Battle of the Bulge wearing American uniforms, for example, were put up against a wall and shot.
Nice thought, but muslims believe dogs are right next to pigs and jews ... they do not have any. Now their goats - a different matter.
if it is terrorism against US targets, definitely YES. If against fellow muslims elsewhere, perhaps.
Why strip them of citizenship? Kill them on the battlefield, or execute them for treason/murder/terrorism. There is no reason to waste time on administrative trivia.
I agree.
And then be shot.
Sure.
But what should really do is strip them of their lives.
That this question has to be asked is bothersome. Arrest, judge, execute.
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