Fascism marches forward
There is a troubling resolution that passed the house and is on its way to the senate. H.R. 1955, the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007, is aimed at squashing internal "terrorism". Among other things, it declares the following to be so:
"VIOLENT RADICALIZATION- The term ‘violent radicalization’ means 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."
Note that one need not actually engage in violence, it is terrorism to simply hold a belief that someone could call violent. Further, though the words violent and violence appear repeatedly throughout the bill, they are never defined. Which means the Department of Homeland Security gets to decide what constitutes "violence".
This is how democracy ends.