Congressional Quarterly's national security correspondent, Jeff Stein, reported in mid-December that the " Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Act" "died a quiet death in the Senate last week."[1] -- So quiet that Paul Craig Roberts, generally a well-informed commentator, was still denouncing the bill three weeks later as an attack on fundamental American freedoms, on Jan. 9 the Ithaca Journal published an Op-Ed arguing against the bill, and Dan Scott posted a denunciation only last week on an Indymedia site. -- These are only a few among a stream of criticism that continues to be directed against the allegedly defunct HR 1955, which passed the House on Oct. 23, 2007, by a vote of 400-6. -- There seems to be no official record of the bill's death however, which was formally introduced in the Senate on Aug. 2, 2007....
1. BACKCHANNEL CHATTER
By Jeff Stein Congressional Quarterly
December 14, 2008 http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docID=hsnews-000002643554 . . . Radical: Legislation to create a “National Commission on the Prevention of Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism” (HR 1955) died a quiet death in the Senate last week. Much maligned here as a $22 million boondoggle, the idea to create yet another government entity to study an overblown threat already addressed by the $44 billion-a-year U.S. intelligence community, not to mention countless think tanks and authors, was the brainchild of Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif. A few years ago local police and the FBI broke up a prison-based plot to bomb synagogues in the name of jihad in her district. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, introduced a companion measure, but it was doomed by a lack of specificity on who the commission’s targets were, among other problems. . . .
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