Scary Scott Brown: Episode 1

I did not vote for Senator Scott Brown, but I respect that he is the current junior Senator from Massachusetts, and I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. At first, I was ok with some of the moves he made. He voted to pass the jobs bill, proposed by the President and other Democrats, shortly after he took office. Better yet, he was authoritative about his vote, which he delivered early in that roll call.

But this week I saw a very scary side of Scott Brown. His latest proposal would allow the United States to strip citizenship from anyone, without a hearing, if it is believed that person is a terrorist or is aiding terrorists. It is one of the most ridiculous, anti-American proposals I have ever heard of. To put it in perspective, as "The Massachusetts Liberal" points out, even Glen Beck says the proposed law is unconstitutional.

Citizenship is a cherished right, and certainly it comes with responsibilities. However, there is a constitutionally outlined process that allows the U.S. government to strip someone of its citizenship. It's called treason, and it's punishable by death. However, in the spirit of our democracy, treason must be tried in federal court. The law proposed by Brown and his equally delusional counterpart, Sen. Joe Lieberman, would allow the government to strip citizenship without trial-- without a hearing, even.

Jim Braude provided a simple example of the law's ludicrous nature during yesterday's "Jim and Margery" Show on 96.9 WTKK-FM. As he put it, certainly in the past many Irish Boston residents supported the efforts of some of the groups in Northern Ireland who were pushing for independence from the U.K. By certain definitions, those groups were terrorist organizations, meaning under the law proposed by Scary Scott, contributors to the groups could be stripped of their U.S. citizenship.

What bothers me even more is that I think, deep down inside, both Sens. Brown and Lieberman know their law doesn't have a chance to pass Constitutional muster. They made the proposal for two reasons. First, they can tell their constituents they mean business. A caller to "Jim and Margery" yesterday said, "It's about time we grew some balls." Those callers are, of course, Scary Scott's base, and they can cry liberal foul when the law is challenged by the lefties.

Second, and this scares me the most, by proposing the law, Scary Scott can "compromise" by "settling" with a second proposal that is perhaps not nearly as aggressive--but still strips Americans of there liberties. The second proposal would be like a much more powerful Patriot Act. It may or may not pass the Constitutional test, but that doesn't matter to the New England Senators. At that point, they would have tried not once, but twice, to pass a law that "simply cracks down on those citizens whose actions would indicate they don't want their citizenship anyway."

Scary, scary stuff, people.