[OWK]

However, in California, verbally threatening me (a "commoner") can be charged as "communicating a terrorist threat." I think the difference between that and assault is that assault requires someone's physical presence--i.e., it has to be in person--whereas "terrorist threats" can be communicated in writing or by phone. There is an element of direct threat (i.e., not shooting one's mouth off at a bar about how one will "shoot that so-and-so"), but not the direct presence.

I can assure you that communicating a threat to do harm to an individual or a group of individuals (either in person, or via some medium) was already illegal in every state in the Union, prior to the introduction of any legislation specific to terrorism.

[Poohbah]

That's just IT. It's called a "terrorist threat" without reference to the common definition of "terrorism," which is politically motivated violence.

It's called a "terrorist threat" in the context of attempting to terrorize a specific person.

Of course, I once changed my answering machine when I was getting a string of threats over my pro-life activities:

"Hi, I can't come to the phone. Do it at the beep. By the way, if you're calling to threaten me, I just got a new rifle from the gun store, would you be so kind as to ACT on your threats for once so I can boresight it?"