HR 1955 is officially titled: The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act. It was voted on in Congress and passed overwhelmingly 404-6. So why can't a reporter get anyone who voted for it to talk about it on the record? 404 members of Congress and not one of them is willing to grab a microphone and say why it's necessary to have such legislation?
From the article:
“Violent radicalization,” one of the threats the bill seeks to curb, is defined there as “the process of adopting or promoting an extremist belief system for the purpose of facilitating ideologically-based violence to advance political, religious or social change.”The whole article is here (with an oversized picture of Dennis Kucinich to go with it, you've been warned).Acts of violence are already illegal, whether stemming from extreme beliefs or not. But “adopting” or “promoting” beliefs is supposed to be covered by the first amendment, which Kucinich said “protects freedom of speech, which should also include freedom of thought — thought usually precedes speech, unless you’re talking about Washington — this undercuts the first amendment, [because] lines like ‘ideologically based’ … says government should police ideas, not conduct.”
