Roundup: You Won’t BELIEVE What’s Going On with Government Spying on Americans

[JDPriestly]

68. Thank you.

As soon as the Patriot Act was available to read, I sat with a group of people who should have known. They were all enthusiastic. I was the only one who pointed out that the definition of terrorism, especially domestic terrorism, was vague and overly broad.

This is a major problem. How can anyone read that definition and not immediately see it has problems. It is so ambiguous as to be meaningless.

18 USC § 2331 - Definitions

5) the term “domestic terrorism” means activities that—
(A) involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State;
(B) appear to be intended—
(i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;
(ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or
(iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and
(C) occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2331

OK. Driving while drunk is against the law and dangerous to human life. From then on, it all depends on the intention of the person committing the act. I can think of some pretty stupid scenarios that could qualify a person for a harrowing experience as a defendant in a terrorism case. Yet the man who shot Gabby Giffords was not tried as a terrorist. He may have been insane, but he had to know that he was shooting a member of Congress.