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Secretaris-Generaal VN
Geregistreerd: 9 december 2010
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Domestic Terrorism Counsel: VS wilt kritiek op de overheid bannen
Ism. Southern Poverty Law Center zal het Domestic Terrorism Counsel 'homegrown' terroristen trachten te vervolgen, want deze zij vormen een grotere dreiging dan de islamieten.
Maar het eerste amandement baart de VS deftige kopzorgen...
Eerste amendement van de grondwet van de Verenigde Staten
Bill of Rights
Amendement I van de Grondwet van de Verenigde Staten is een onderdeel van de Bill of Rights, die in 15 december 1791 werd toegevoegd aan de constitutie. Het artikel verbiedt het Congres om wetten aan te nemen die een staatsgodsdienst creëren of één godsdienst boven een ander plaatsen, het recht op vrijheid van godsdienst verbieden, de vrijheid van meningsuiting of de persvrijheid belemmeren of de vrijheid van vereniging hinderen.
Het amendement zelf legt deze beperkingen expliciet op aan de wetgevende macht, maar in de loop der jaren hebben verschillende rechtbanken bepaald dat de verboden ook gelden voor de uitvoerende en rechterlijke macht. Het Federale Hooggerechtshof besliste dat het Eerste Amendement onder de bepalingen van het veertiende amendement ook van toepassing is op de door deelstaten genomen beslissingen.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
(Vert.) Het congres zal geen wet aannemen omtrent het vestigen van religie, of het verbieden van de vrije uitoefening daarvan; of het belemmeren van de vrijheid van meningsuiting, of van de pers; of het recht van het volk om zich vredig te verenigen, en de regering te petitioneren voor een herstel van grieven.
The First Amendment (Amendment I) to the United States Constitution prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, impeding the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press, interfering with the right to peaceably assemble or prohibiting the petitioning for a governmental redress of grievances. It was adopted on December 15, 1791, as one of the ten amendments that constitute the Bill of Rights.
The Bill of Rights was originally proposed as a measure to assuage Anti-Federalist opposition to Constitutional ratification. Initially, the First Amendment applied only to laws enacted by the Congress, and many of its provisions were interpreted more narrowly than they are today. Beginning with Gitlow v. New York (1925), the Supreme Court applied the First Amendment to states—a process known as incorporation—through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
In Everson v. Board of Education (1947), the Court drew on Thomas Jefferson's correspondence to call for "a wall of separation between church and State", though the precise boundary of this separation remains in dispute. Speech rights were expanded significantly in a series of 20th and 21st-century court decisions which protected various forms of political speech, anonymous speech, campaign financing, pornography, and school speech; these rulings also defined a series of exceptions to First Amendment protections. The Supreme Court overturned English common law precedent to increase the burden of proof for defamation and libel suits, most notably in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964). Commercial speech, however, is less protected by the First Amendment than political speech, and is therefore subject to greater regulation.
The Free Press Clause protects publication of information and opinions, and applies to a wide variety of media. In Near v. Minnesota (1931) and New York Times v. United States (1971), the Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment protected against prior restraint—pre-publication censorship—in almost all cases. The Petition Clause protects the right to petition all branches and agencies of government for action. In addition to the right of assembly guaranteed by this clause, the Court has also ruled that the amendment implicitly protects freedom of association.
4 februari 2016:
U.S. eyes ways to toughen fight against domestic extremists
Reuters By Julia Harte, Julia Edwards and Andy Sullivan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department is considering legal changes to combat what it sees as a rising threat from domestic anti-government extremists, senior officials told Reuters, even as it steps up efforts to stop Islamic State-inspired attacks at home.
Extremist groups motivated by a range of U.S.-born philosophies present a "clear and present danger," John Carlin, the Justice Department's chief of national security, told Reuters in an interview. “Based on recent reports and the cases we are seeing, it seems like we’re in a heightened environment.”
Over the past year, the Justice Department has brought charges against domestic extremist suspects accused of attempting to bomb U.S. military bases, kill police officers and fire bomb a school and other buildings in a predominantly Muslim town in New York state.
But federal prosecutors tackling domestic extremists still lack an important legal tool they have used extensively in dozens of prosecutions against Islamic State-inspired suspects: a law that prohibits supporting designated terrorist groups.
Carlin and other Justice Department officials declined to say if they would ask Congress for a comparable domestic extremist statute, or comment on what other changes they might pursue to toughen the fight against anti-government extremists.
The U.S. State Department designates international terrorist organizations to which it is illegal to provide "material support." No domestic groups have that designation, helping to create a disparity in charges faced by international extremist suspects compared to domestic ones.
A Reuters analysis of more than 100 federal cases found that domestic terrorism suspects collectively have faced less severe charges than those accused of acting on behalf of Islamic State since prosecutors began targeting that group in early 2014.
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Carlin said his counter-terrorism team, including a recently hired counsel, is taking a “thoughtful look at the nature and scope of the domestic terrorism threat” and helping to analyze “potential legal improvements and enhancements to better combat those threats.”
The counsel, who was appointed last October and has not been named publicly, will identify cases being prosecuted at the state level that “could arguably meet the federal definition of domestic terrorism," a Justice Department official said.
That would give the department a direct role in more domestic extremism cases.
Recognizing that domestic threats were “rapidly evolving, and had the potential to grow,” the department in March 2015 rated disrupting such terrorists as a key component of its broader counter-terrorism efforts, officials said.
THE THREAT PENDULUM
The Justice Department aggressively pursued domestic extremists after Timothy McVeigh bombed a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995, killing 168 people.
The government shifted its focus to international terrorism after al Qaeda killed nearly 3,000 Americans on Sept. 11, 2001.
But in recent years anti-government activists, like those who occupied a wildlife preserve in eastern Oregon last month, have regained prominence.
As law enforcement experts confront domestic militia groups, "sovereign citizens" who do not recognize government authority, and other anti-government extremists, they also face a heightened threat from Islamic extremists like the couple who carried out the Dec. 2 shootings in San Bernardino, California.
"A new development we're seeing is that when it comes to ISIL investigations, the flash-to-bang time from radicalization to action appears to be happening faster than with other types of terrorists," said Michael Steinbach, the head of the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division.
As a result, government agents are quick to investigate people who appear sympathetic toward Islamic State, current and former officials say. But some say the government has been overzealous in its pursuit of Islamic State suspects.
Similar actions by extremist suspects have yielded sharply disparate sentences.
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Domestic groups enjoy greater constitutional protections because being a member of those groups, no matter how extreme their rhetoric, is not a crime.
Prosecutors can bring “material support” terrorism charges against defendants who aren't linked to groups on the State Department's list, but they have only done so twice against non-jihadist suspects since the law was enacted in 1994. The law, which prohibits supporting people who have been deemed to be terrorists by their actions, carries a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison.
Current and former federal prosecutors say they rarely consider that statute in domestic terrorism cases because it is often hard to convince a jury that someone who is not affiliated with a foreign group can be guilty of terrorism.
William Wilmoth, a former federal prosecutor who invoked that law in a 1996 case against a West Virginia militia member, said he was surprised to hear that it isn't used more often.
"These guys have every right to have off-center political views," he said. "But when they made affirmative steps to blow up an actual federal facility... we thought it was an important place for us to go and prosecute."
U.S. eyes ways to toughen fight against domestic extremists
http://news.yahoo.com/u-eyes-ways-to...060402478.html
15 oktober 2015:
(CNSNews.com) – John Carlin, the assistant attorney general for national security, announced Wednesday that the Justice Department is creating the new position of domestic terrorism counsel to combat the “real and present threat” of domestic extremism.
Carlin praised groups such as the Southern Poverty Law Center “that dedicate themselves to examining what the threat is, observing it, and reporting on it,” adding that the work of the SPLC was “very important.”
The SPLC says it places groups -- including conservative, Christian groups -- on its "Hate List" based on their beliefs, not their propensity for violence.
"Homegrown violent extremists can be motivated by any viewpoint on the full spectrum of hate — anti-government views, racism, bigotry, anarchy and other despicable beliefs," Carlin told a gathering at George Washington University. The discussion was co-hosted by SPLC. "When it comes to hate and intolerance, no single ideology governs."
Carlin was asked about the value of SPLC’s work in helping DOJ deal with the threat of domestic terrorist extremism.
“I can say, based on our briefings, that as I said in my opening remarks, we very much think that the domestic terrorism threat is a real and present threat that demands to be addressed in new, creative ways,” he replied emphasizing that “Southern Poverty Law Center and other groups in this space are very important.”
The SPLC’s website features a “hate map” that lists the conservative. Christian Family Research Council (FRC) as a “hate group” because of its defense of traditional marriage. The “hate map” was cited by convicted domestic terrorist Floyd Lee Corkins in his decision to attack the FRC in 2012 when he shot and wounded a security guard before being subdued.
“We recognize that, over the past few years, more people have died in this country in attacks by domestic extremists than in attacks associated with international terrorist groups,” Carlin said in his remarks.
...
CNSNews.com asked Beirich about their designation of the Family Research Council as a hate group.
“I think there’s a common misunderstanding about the way you get on our Hate List. We post groups on the basis of ideology, not whether they’re violent or not,” she replied.
“Of course some of the groups are particularly violent, the Skinheads, Neo-Nazis, and what not,” she continued. “Others are simply pushing propaganda that we consider hateful. For example, there’s an organization called American Renaissance, it puts out reams and reams of information about why black people are inferior, it lies basically, so black people are dumber, they’re psychopathic, they’re more violent.
“In the same way groups like the Family Research Council and the American Family Association do that but what they’re putting out is anti-gay material so gay people are pedophiles, or molesters, or whatever the case may be, and that’s why they’re on the list and that’s the direct analogy.”
“Look our list is, we’re a nonprofit, we put out a list every year, we have relationships with people in federal law enforcement, but we’re a completely separate entity and we put our material out to the entire public, right?” Beirich replied when CNSNews.com asked how these listings might affect SPLC aiding in domestic terrorism investigations.
“So it’s there to be seen, so it’s not like we’re somehow, the Southern Poverty Law Center’s controlling domestic terrorism investigations. It’s clearly not the case. It’s public information, it’s our opinion that it’s hateful, and that’s basically it,” she concluded.
The new Domestic Terrorism Counsel will serve as the main point of contact for U.S. Attorney offices nationwide and will work to identify trends across cases, help shape strategy and analyze legal gaps that need to be closed, the Associated Press reported.
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/laur...work-combating
14 oktober 2015:
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department is creating a new position to coordinate investigations into violent homegrown extremism, a department official said Wednesday.
Assistant Attorney General John Carlin, head of the department's national security division, said that while the international terror threat occupies the public attention, federal officials remain just as concerned about the prospect of violence from Americans motivated by anti-government views and racist ideologies.
"We need to make sure we have the mechanisms in place so that we can continue to remain just as focused on the domestic terrorism threat while addressing the international terrorism threat," Carlin said in a question-and-answer session after a George Washington University speech.
The new position, the Domestic Terrorism Counsel, will serve as the main point of contact for U.S. Attorney offices nationwide and will work to identify trends across cases, help shape strategy and analyze legal gaps that need to be closed.
Carlin's division in the last year has been heavily focused on the Islamic State, bringing roughly 60 cases to date tied to followers of the terror group.
But the speech Wednesday was an unusually blunt acknowledgment from the department's top national security official that Americans inspired by racial hatred — but without any ties to established terror groups — remain a "clear and present danger" to the public. He noted that more Americans have been killed in recent years in attacks by domestic extremists than in attacks associated with international terrorist groups.
Though he said experts have identified commonalities among the Islamic State followers and domestic extremist groups, including their ability to attract disaffected individuals, the legal framework for dealing with them is intentionally different.
The Justice Department routinely charges Islamic State sympathizers with providing material support to foreign terror groups, though there's no comparable statute for aiding white supremacist organizations in part because of First Amendment concerns.
"To do that for a group here would mean, based on who the group is and what they're doing, that the entire group is designated as the terrorist group," he said.
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/...c-terror-cases
Zal de VS het Eerste Amendement van de Amerikaanse grondwet zoals deze nu is blijven respecteren?
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Citaat:
Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door Salah
Het zal weer het gekende Zonbron momentje zijn.
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22 februari 2016, 11:32
