Senator McCarthy wants to put teeth in Bush's Secret Terrah Watchlists...

[benEzra]

...by revoking the gun-ownership rights, without trial, of anyone the Bush Administration secretly blacklisted. This legislation was originally requested a couple of years ago by Alberto "No Habeus Corpus" Gonzales himself, but the congressional ban-guns caucus has gladly taken up the armband.

http://carolynmccarthy.house.gov/?sectionid=155§iontree=189,155&itemid=1038

And you don't even have to be a terrorism suspect to have your rights revoked; you just have to be an environmental activist, an anti-war protester, a completely innocent person with a foreign sounding name, or someone who got stuck on the list because a bureaucrat needed to meet their end-of-month watchlist quota.

For those who have forgotten why the secret Bush blacklists were and are a bad idea...

No-Fly Blacklist Snares Political Activists:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2002/09/27/MN181034.DTL

Innocent People Placed On 'Watch List' To Meet Quota:
http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/9559707/detail.html

People placed on the list as infants (and how do you get taken off it when you grow up?):
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/08/infants_on_the.html

More criticism, from the Boston Globe:
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/07/21/the_terrorist_batting_average/

The thing is, if someone is an actual terrorist suspect, put them under active surveillance and arrest them when they do something illegal; if not, leave them alone. But due process is the absolute foundation of our legal system, and destroying it over fear of Terrah! or hatred of gun owners would be a severe loss indeed.

I suppose this means it must be OK to waterboard suspects in gun smuggling cases, too...because, unlike the word TERRAH!, the word GUNZ! automatically justifies the revocation of civil rights without due process.

:sarcasm:

[virginia mountainman]

1. Well

McCarthy, was a Rethug once, no surprise she is shouting "TERRA TERRA TERRA"....

What is surprising will be the DEMOCRATS that join her chorus line.

Keep pushing McCarthy, your making legislators take sides, and we have you outnumbered, like the recently passed Coburn Amendment...

Go ahead...Keep it up....Help get more pro gun laws passed.. I just pray you don't take down too many Democrats in your holy war.

BTW great post Ben!

[wpelb]

3. She's a Democrat now

She's a Representative, not a Senator.

According to Wikipedia, "She is best known as a vigorous advocate of gun control."

Is she (or her husband) related to the late Sen. Joseph McCarthy?

[jody]

2. How can anyone claim to be a progressive and support bills that prohibit rights government is

obligated to protect such as those pre-existing rights enumerated in the First, Second, and Fourth Amendments and for which SCOTUS regarding the Second Amendment, said “{t}his is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence."

Government is obligated to protect pre-existing rights for every minority whether it be the right to keep and bear arms for 84 million gun-owners or the right to same-sex marriage for 8.4 million gays and lesbians or other unenumerated rights protected by the Nninth Amendment that a simple majority vote could eliminate in a moment.

[DrCory]

4. Saving For Future Reference...

Should any DU'er declare support for her. It will be interesting to see if any dare to post in this thread.

[Caliman73]

7. Oh someone will and they will come up with the usual arguments

about how gun control is "best" for the people because the "flood of guns" is causing the problem with violence and crime. They will say that gun owners are being paranoid as usual because if you aren't doing anything wrong then you have nothing to worry about. They will say that there is no need for military style weapons because they have no use for "hunting". They may even throw in a phallic reference for good measure. To some people, it is ok to restrict rights so long as it is something that they agree with.

[DonP]

5. Didn't they have Ted Kennedy on the "No Fly" list for a while?

I seem to remember that Ted Kennedy wound up on that list for a while early on and was briefly stopped when he tried to board a plane at
Logan to fly to DC.

That's prime example of how incredibly stupid the No Fly "Watch" list is. No way to tell if you're on it, or how you got there and no way to get off the list for an ordinary citizen.

Yeah, that sounds like a fair reason to suspend some one's rights. Ha!

McCarthy is such a tool. At what point will her constituents realize they elected an ineffective one trick pony out of misplaced sympathy?

[benEzra]

6. Yes. And it took the senior senator THREE WEEKS to convince TSA he wasn't a terra-ist.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17073-2004Aug19.html

Sen. Kennedy Flagged by No-Fly List

By Sara Kehaulani Goo
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 20, 2004; Page A01

U.S. Sen. Edward M. "Ted" Kennedy said yesterday that he was stopped and questioned at airports on the East Coast five times in March because his name appeared on the government's secret "no-fly" list.

Federal air security officials said the initial error that led to scrutiny of the Massachusetts Democrat should not have happened even though they recognize that the no-fly list is imperfect. But privately they acknowledged being embarrassed that it took the senator and his staff more than three weeks to get his name removed.

A senior administration official, who spoke on condition he not be identified, said Kennedy was stopped because the name "T. Kennedy" has been used as an alias by someone on the list of terrorist suspects.

While he worked to clear himself, Kennedy kept having to wait in terminals at Reagan National, Boston's Logan International and at least one other airport, his staff said. All of the flights were on US Airways. When the senator checked in at the counter, airline employees told him they could not issue him a boarding pass because he appeared on the list. Kennedy was delayed until a supervisor could be summoned to identify him and give approval for him to board the plane.

Kennedy's description yesterday of his air-travel troubles -- mentioned during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the 9/11 commission's recommendations -- renewed questions about the quality and effectiveness of the no-fly list. The list was established by security, intelligence and law enforcement agencies after the 2001 terrorist attacks. Critics said the senator's experience served as the latest example of how a system designed to improve security is instead targeting innocent travelers.

The government does not make public the names or the total number of people on the list, which officials say is constantly updated. According to FBI documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union under a Freedom of Information Act request, more than 350 Americans have been delayed or denied boarding since the list's inception. The list has not led to any arrests, officials said.

The ACLU has sued on behalf of six Americans who have had experiences similar to Kennedy's. The travelers suing the government include a Vermont college student, a retired Presbyterian minister and an ACLU employee.

"That a clerical error could lend one of the most powerful people in Washington to the list -- it makes one wonder just how many others who are not terrorists are on the list," said Reginald T. Shuford, senior ACLU counsel. "Someone of Senator Kennedy's stature can simply call a friend to have his name removed but a regular American citizen does not have that ability. He had to call three times himself."

[slackmaster]

8. The fact that he is a Senator made it possible to get his name removed from the list

For the rest of us, fat chance. There is no appeals process.

[DonP]

9. Oh, I'm sure they would offer us the same treatment Kennedy got (HA!)

I have the feeling if we even asked the TSA why we were being questioned we'd be in cuffs in about a minute.

I wonder if there is some way to get McCarthy's name on the list and see if she enjoys the treatment and loss of rights, 2nd and 4th amendment?

[Euromutt]

10. I'm actually disappointed the "No Fly" list still exists

I'd been kind of hoping Napolitano would have scrapped it by now. The real kicker about the "No Fly" list is that people who are seriously suspected of being terrorists aren't put on the list, because the powers that be don't want actual terrorists being able to find out that they're suspects by bribing some two-bit airline employee to look up the "No Fly" list.

In another example, a Canadian businessman who was repeatedly harassed because his name was on the list managed to circumvent it by changing his name. Which means that you can evade notice by traveling under a false name; I bet no terrorist has ever thought of trying that!

In the meantime, Daniel Brown from Minnesota ended up on the "No Fly" list in 2005 because the TSA detected gunpowder residue on his boots. At the time, Mr. Brown was an activated marine reservist returning from Iraq.

But hey, this is Carolyn McCarthy we're talking about here, who included barrel shrouds among the items restricted in H.R. 1022 <110th>, but when pressed by Tucker Carlson to state what a barrel shroud actually is, was forced to admit that she didn't actually know; she said she thought it was "a shoulder thing that goes up." This is the same Carolyn McCarthy who introduced legislation in 1997 to prohibit temporary visitors to the US from purchasing firearms, happily oblivious to the fact this has been illegal since the passage of the Gun Control Act of 1968.